Water, a Human Right

Canada has an abundance of water, so much that we take it for granted. A spike in fecal coloform levels at our beaches makes the front page of our newspapers. Alarms are sounded, action taken.

Ours is a blessed condition. Much of the rest of the world lives in an entirely different reality. Well over a billion unfortunates don't have access to safe water and more live in regions with nonexistent or inadequate sanitation. The net result is death on a scale that eclipses casualties from war. Here are some facts (or if you're a neo-con, call them "talking points") from the U.N.:

- in the past 10-years, diarrhea has killed more children than all those lost to arm conflict in the 60-years since the end of WWII

- in 1998, 308,000 people died of war in Africa but two million lives were claimed by diarrhea

Because safe water is such a scarce commodity, corporations have been quick to see the opportunities to be had in gaining control of the resource. In part because the very people who suffer most are those who can least afford to pay for it, the U.N. has declared access to adequate supplies of safe water a basic human right. In 2002, the provision of essential sanitation was also established as a human right.

Canada has seen repeated attempts to privatize our water resources, primarily to export it commercially. So far these efforts have been thwarted but the commodity merchants aren't giving up.

Water is essential for life. So is air. We would think it preposterous for companies to gain control of our air. The same thinking ought to be applied to our water.

Climate change is upon us and it will bring both drought and flood. Either calamity can create stresses on our water supply. It is essential that we maintain all of our options to control our water resource free of any commerical constraints.