Human rights, Water and Commons
there. And water gives us life. For gold we die, for water we live. Until 20 years ago I never thought that water would be marketed, commercialized, commodified in the plastic bottles that are made out of petroleum. And the most grave, selling one bottle for 50 cents and 4 bottles (making one litre) that cost 2 dollars. Where is the right to water? This is the irrationality of human being that has lost its hearth that is privileging the pocket. For this is the fight... Main issues First the lack of drinkable water,
second the lack of water in general, third the lack of a purification systems of water, of waste water, and perhaps the most worrying thing that I see recently is the water scarcity. Water runs out, drop by drop. Before we had plenty of water because there was plenty of forests. But now the forests are being destroyed. Each tree that we destroy represents one glass of water less. And all this unconstrained deforestation, all this destruction of the ground water, of the wetlands and the chaparras. All this is accelerating the global warming, an environmental crisis. And the main repercussions will be - I think - the lack of water and the
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lack of food that will take us very soon - I hope to be mistaken - to a world conflagration in the fight for water. There is a solemn declaration of a human right to water in the constitution but this is like the cackle of a hen that never puts the egg because now there was a great opportunity to incorporate in the new Water Law the human right to water but in practice that is that there is a minimal amount of water which would not have a price so all the people could have access to water. But this was not legislated. Secondly, this Water Law is permissive, this means that it allows mining and extractivist activities in the water sources... and this is very grave. There is not a national water fund that would allow to improve the water projects. Thirdly, the communitarian administration of water is being limited, controlled and regulated, it’s a meddling into the autonomous systems of water. And to top off the regulation of the Water Law in the article 46, 47, 51 and the article 6 of this regulation allows to snatch away the communitarian systems of