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Should all humans have guaranteed access to clean water, or is water an increasingly scarce commodity that should be priced according to its value?
The question stands at the center of a global debate over threats to the world's water resources, as competition for water increases among industry, farming and households. It is also critical in efforts to protect the long-term environmental viability of rivers, lakes and aquifers.
The debate goes back at least to 1992, when an international commission on water and the environment meeting in Ireland issued the "Dublin Principles," which were later adopted by a U.N. panel. The commission concluded: "Water has an economic value . . . and should be recognized as an economic good." Only by recognizing that economic value can water "be properly conserved and allocated to its most important uses."
But the principle also declared it a "basic right of all human beings to have access to clean water and sanitation at an affordable price." Poor households cannot compete with industry for scarce water supplies. Nor could most farmers, who typically receive subsidized prices for irrigation water.
The U.N. Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights declared in 2002 that all people are entitled to an essential minimum amount of clean water. "Water is fundamental for life and health," it said. "The human right to water is indispensable for leading a healthy life in human dignity."
Canadian activist Maude Barlow says, "You can't really charge for a human right; you can't trade it or deny it to someone because they don't have money." Barlow is co-author of Blue Gold: The Battle Against Corporate Theft of the World's Water.
A man protesting the privatization of water in Cochabamba, Bolivia, waves a sign saying “what is ours is ours and it cannot be taken away.” (AP Photo/Julie Plasencia)
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The other side in the debate argues that until water is priced and valued as a scarce resource it will be wasted and billions of dollars required annually to extend water service to the poor and fix leaking water systems will not be forthcoming. Two years before the U.N. declared clean water a human right, the World Water Council — which reflects the views of international lenders and the water-supply industry — called for "full pricing" of water to reflect its "economic, social, environmental and cultural values."
Farmers in dry regions throughout the world get water at preferential rates — or at no charge at all — as a matter of government policy. But if farmers were required to pay the full price for water, they could not compete with industry, which would be willing and able to pay market price.
In industrial countries, 60 percent of the water withdrawn from freshwater sources is used by industry, mainly to generate electricity. The developing world is moving rapidly in the same direction. China's industrial water use, for example, is projected to grow fivefold by 2030.
"As urban centers and industry increase their demand for water, agriculture is losing out," said the U.N. "Human Development Report 2006."
And the world's poor cannot compete with either farmers or business for water at market prices, said the report. About a third of those without access to clean water live on less than $1 a day. Twice that many live on less than $2 a day. "These figures imply that 660 million people lacking access to [safe] water have, at best, a limited capacity to pay more than a small amount for a connection to water service," the report said. "People might lack water because they are poor, or they might be poor because they lack water." The end result is the same: a limited ability to pay for water.
American water expert Peter H. Gleick calls for a truce in the water rights dispute in favor of problem-solving. Workshops on privatization standards and principles for implementing a human right to water "would be far more likely to produce progress," he writes.
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