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Canada Turns Its Back on Thirsty World
March 22 was World Water Day. But who knew?
No, it wasn't a day that owners of even- or odd-numbered houses might have thought allowed them to turn the sprinklers on their lawns.
In fact, March 22 was the date set aside this year to observe the goal adopted by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 -- the same one that precipitated us into that Kyoto madness five years later -- to halve the number of people in the world living without basic sanitation by 2015.
Fat chance. People who claim to know these things say that the way things are going 2.1 billion people will still be wallowing in filth by that date. Those poor souls in sub-Saharan Africa won't reach that goal until 2076, they say.
I don't remember being urged not to flush that Saturday, but I did notice a news item last week that put Canada in what must have been rather a bad light for the world sanitationists among us.
Canada, reportedly the lone dissenting voice at a session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, succeeded in derailing a resolution that would have recognized water as a basic human right.
It's odd to try to make access to water a universally recognized basic right, so that fewer people die of thirst or disease, when the UN hasn't got around to giving the same attention to people who are dying of hunger.
When we talk about basic human rights we tend to think of things like free speech or the right to vote. But those can hardly be viewed as basic to the millions around the world whose very survival is at risk from the lack of things like food, water, sanitation, shelter and health care and a glut of things like bombs and bullets and improvised explosive devices.
Another UN agency -- the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights -- declared in 2002: "The human right to water is indispensable for leading a life in human dignity. It is a prerequisite for the realization of other human rights."
Yet only two years earlier, the World Water Forum in The Hague said water was a salable commodity and not necessarily a basic right.
That seems to be the official position of Canada still.
It worries the Council of Canadians and others wary of what's being discussed in secret talks between Canadians and Americans under the guise of the Security and Prosperity Partnership and of what might happen if the North American Free Trade Agreement were reopened, as the leading Democratic candidates in the U.S. presidential election campaign suggest is likely.
Maude Barlow, the council's chairwoman, has suggested Canada was acting as stalking horse for the U.S. in Geneva, noting the U.S.
doesn't have a seat on the UN rights body.
The official explanation from Ottawa is that "the right to water is not explicitly recognized as a fundamental human right under international human rights law."
It notes that the consensus forced by Canada resulted in an agreement to examine obligations "related to access to safe drinking water and sanitation under international human rights instruments." That must be a little disheartening to those living in expanding deserts and rapidly drying gulches.
What are the obligations of the rest of the world when, as Allen Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists asked last week, Peru and Chile, and later, China and India, are faced with serious water problems?
And what are the obligations of Canada in the face of mounting complaints of water shortages in parts of the U.S.?
I share Barlow's concern that what Canada has done is make it easier to turn water resources over to private concerns for profit.
She says it's "fantastical" to believe that declaring water access a basic human right would force nations to export water to regions of drought.
UN declarations are not noted for "forcing" very much. But they can remind people that they have obligations as human beings to do what they can for others in dire straits.
For my part, I'd have no problem with providing clean drinking water to American desert dwellers.
But I'd be inclined to draw the line at keeping the golf courses green in Arizona, swimming pools full in Texas or the vulgar fountains playing in Las Vegas.
--Iain Hunter
© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2008
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26 Comments so far
Show AllMaude Barlow is quite right in saying that water is a human right. No water, you die. Harper, our corporate shill (and Bush's puppet), once again embarrasses Canada. We should not ever make water a consumer good. However, there is nothing wrong with sending our water to drought stricken countries of the Global South to GIVE to people who are dying because of N.A. corporate/consumer greed. As for sending water to other greedy consumer countries, I cannot say that I have much pity.
Q: What's 18" long and hangs between Dubya's legs?
A: Stephen Harper's necktie.
"For my part, I'd have no problem with providing clean drinking water to American desert dwellers...as long as they dont mind that it has already passed through my bladder once."
When I think of donating Canada's precious fresh water supply to thirsty millions....I have to admit that Arizona does NOT spring to the front of my mind. Let the rich Yankees buy it one bottle at a time like everyone else. Then if they want to pour it on their golf courses, it is entirely up to them.
Now AFRICA is another matter.
"But I'd be inclined to draw the line at keeping the golf courses green in Arizona, swimming pools full in Texas or the vulgar fountains playing in Las Vegas."
Once the water crosses the border, Iain Hunter has no say in how it is used.
There is a great myth that Canada has a surplus of water. When you look at all the lakes and streams, it does appear that way, after all, for our tiny population, on paper, we have more than 6% of the freshwater in the world.
However, when you look at the water cycle in Canada, ( consumption and replentishment through snowpack, etc), we have only 2.5x what we currently use.
With Global warming, we are losing the glaciers, losing the snowpack, in 20 years time, there may be only enough water in the water cycle to meet our current population.
The great majority of water that Canada has, is what can be considered fossil water, accumulated over millions of years, that when you take a cup out, it is not replaced. Most of the water on the taiga for example, is what remains of the melted glaciers of the last ice age.
Do you really want to pump them dry and ship the water south, destroying what remains of the stresssed ecosystem of the taiga?
Do you really want to start shipping water from the Columbia Icefields south, when they are already disappearing at such a great rate?
While water, like food is critical for life, it is not a "human right". It may be a human need, but it is reliant on sustainability and the health of the environment, and is not a "human right".
What I said about an oil co-op among the countries of the world as a way to stop these stupid, useless wars in another post, would do well to be created ASAP for water - to make water owned by all instead of the few it's destined to become when it becomes scarce. And with an emphasis on getting our water sources cleaned up and healthy again.
Let's do a nice google search on "hemp" and "water shortage", shall we?
A good one Jan Steinman!
I still think that water is a human right, just like being allowed to live in your home country without being bombed by elitist corporate hogs swilling at the trough while the water supply fills with toxins.
It is not the fault of Sub-Saharan Africans that resource extracting countries have polluted what little water they have.
I have the misfortune of reading Mr Hunter's opinions all too often in my hometown daily paper. As usual, his simplistic views of resource issues leaves much to be disired.
Mr. Hunter has, in the past, claimed that global warming would be a good thing because it would increase crop production up here in the Great White North. He neglected to divulge where the water supplies will come from for these crops considering retreating glaciers, polluted surface waters, and depleted aquifers.
In this story, Mr. Hunter gives only brief mention to the profit motive, which is one of the key issues in declaring water access as a human right. Large corporations such as Suez are members of the World Water Council. Thus it's no wonder that their World Water Forum would declare that water is merely a commodity.
Don't worry, if water becomes a valuable and scarce resource, we'll just declare Canada a terrorist state, invade them, build some bases around Toronto and Montreal, and then promote better democracy there. Besides, they promote violence(hockey), and send cold weather down to us (WMD-weather of mass destruction).
It seems that most journalists, like most politicians, know nothing about ecology (aka, how the real world works).
Water is an integral factor in the functioning of large ecosystems. Remove enough water for sale around the world to the thirsty hoards (6.6 billion and rising fast) and watch ecosystems react in ways not expected.
All efforts by scientists to alert the world to overpopulation have gone for naught. We continue to breed at an idiotic rate (another human "right"?)
You can call anything and everything you want "a human right", but nature can only offer so much support. Nature's laws outstrip any laws and "rights" that people can dream up.
I agree with Gene Therapy and Partisan.
The amount of water on the planet as a whole does not change.
Overpopulation and climate change are causing redistributions.
How exactly is the water supposed to go from Canada to Africa anyway? Even if it were feasible, more fossil fuels would be burned in the process, causing more climate change.
I guess we are supposed to just facilitate the population explosion and then feel guilty about the inevitable misery.
Here in Florida a great deal of water is squandered on golf courses, but apart from that, many condo complexes that spend fortune on lawn care over water to over cut and the cycle recurs ad nauseum. I have often seen these automatically programmed sprinkler systems working when it's raining out. This type of automated nonsense is an abuse to nature. American children are seldom if ever even taught the PREMISE that water is precious and therefore deserves CONSERVATION. The nation has turned to a spiritual wasteland where actual value has been replaced with the manmade system of artificially rendered costs. One is not the same as the other, and therein lies the basis for the tactical rub.
OIL in the TAR SANDS IS THE REASON
Pleae read and learn
It is that is takes thousands of gallons of clean water to get the tar out of the sand in Alberta. Water heated into steam is used to a point enough natural gas to heat every home in Canada for the winter is used EVERY WEEK. Lakes have been drained almost dry to make this steam to get the oil shipped to the USA. If it was made a human right then oil companies would have to stop using all the water. Shipping water to the USA is the cover story. Also Canada has moved to #1 in pollution with huge open pools of greasy oil sand that can't be used for anything. This info was on a CBC show The Nature of Things
This info was on the CBC show The Nature Of Things. It is an environmental disaster with open pools of the run off in some cases over 60 miles long and a mile wide.
If we 'liberate' Iraq for oil - we can do the same for Canadian water.
you can't liberate what isn't there anymore and that is why Harper voted the way he did. So the oil keeps flowing. I guess you missed the point about the natural gas. Enough gas used to heat every home in Canada for a year is used every week toseperate the oil from the sand. They are using more energy to get the oil than the energy they get FROM the oil.
Read this and you won't want Canadian water anymore: http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2008/04/07/boil-advisory.html
Beaver fever anyone? Lasts a long time and is a lovely viral infection that keeps on going, just like malaria. It comes and goes.
The tar sands are another issue, but yes, they seriously degrade both our water and our air qualities. But don't ever ask Albertans to give up the sludge retrieval. They get too rich off it even as it kills them.
Yup having children is a human "right" and many of the extra 20 billion coming in the near future will die very prematurely...a human can live for only a short while without water. Whole civilizations have died out because of drought and global warming brings drought. Pollution is indeed frightening but horrid as it sounds, overpopulation is the biggest polution, in my opinion. There are very powerful interests objecting to this idea and having a debate about population control...a tragedy in the making!!!!......sadness.
Beaver Fever, that's a good one. Use to get it more when I was young. I drink the water right out of the ground on my land. It has passed every test it was taken to for the last 30 years.
As for water VS OIL I guess the people who run the world and oil industry don't get it. We only have this planet to live on.
Did anyone see the Doc on the History Ch last night. What would happen to the world is all humans were gone from it. Sort of interesting. Animals wouldn't mind a bit
several open to the air pools of toxic waste that birds fly into thinking it is water? It makes Canada #1 in the world for pollution. Now in Ontario where I live it is a different story.
LET THEM DRINK COKE!!
It only takes 4 gallons of water to make one gallon of coke..I believe the other main ingredients are human blood, and the tears of children
Golf is a shame, a disgrace, and an outrage. Every city that hosts those scars on the landscape should replant them all with native trees.
Who needs those nasty tar sands? Canada can just build huge canals to the border and sell the water from all those melting glaciers to us and figure we deserve it for our role in creating and sustaining global warming and our profligate use of resources.
CANUCK CHUCK: I remember sitting in a little cafe in Puerto Rico more than 25 years ago and I began to share a coke with a friend. I got jittery, major case of what I later learned was hypoglycemia... that was the last time I ingested that crap. (I believe it can eat paint off a car.) When I see parents give little children coke, I want to either cry or grab the children away from them. WE see these poor little ones run around restaurants like an enactment of the "Road Runner" cartoon, the parents trying to cajole or discipline them into compliance when it's their blood sugar that's gone out of whack. The stuff should be banned... if I were a dentist, I'd own stock in coke!
Tar sands, trouble is there is more oil in the Tar sands than Saudi Arabia and that is why the oil companies love the high price of oil to get the stuff out of the sand. When it was 20$ a barrel they couldn't make a profit but at 100$ a barrel well who cares about the environment, why do you think Harper DIDN'T sign Kyoto
2/3 of ALL our (Canada's) greenhouse gas emissions come from the previously discussed tar sands of Alberta!
You all better buckle up...NAFTA in one "form" or another is going through. In the words of the late Bill Hicks regarding NAFTA: "They are selling out your country from underneath you tomorrow. and dont you ever f***ing forget it!"