Ecopsychology: Water — A Fundamental Human Right

[Explor­ing Life] Can an indi­vid­ual or orga­ni­za­tion claim the right to own and profit from a nat­ural resource that is essen­tial to the preser­va­tion and well being of all life on our planet? The bat­tle to claim own­er­ship and con­trol the world’s fresh water sup­ply brings us to the par­tic­u­lar nexus where money, the nat­ural envi­ron­ment, and the vagaries of human cul­ture inter­sect, often in a man­ner that painfully reveals the deeply rooted of human tra­di­tions of greed, want, and con­sump­tion. In other words, human­ity has not yet learned to live in har­mony and equa­nim­ity with the nat­ural forces that are the basis of all life. The strug­gle and loom­ing cat­a­stro­phe sur­round­ing the world’s fresh water sup­plies is a stark exam­ple of how imma­ture and and inept our capac­ity for learn­ing really is.

Nat­ural Resource: Right or Privilege?

Water is, of course, essen­tial to all life on this planet. With­out it life ends. Given this, water can only be right right; it is never a priv­i­lege or a com­mod­ity. There is no valid claim to own­er­ship that can be made over any nat­ural resource that is the basis for liv­ing. Nor can any indi­vid­ual or orga­ni­za­tion be trusted in this capacity.

His­tory pro­vides an end­less flow of evi­dence to sup­port to state­ment that human progress is per­me­ated with death, destruc­tion, dom­i­na­tion, vio­lence, sep­a­ra­tion, and extreme naivety. The evi­dence of our fail­ure is obvi­ous in all forms of cul­tural enter­prise includ­ing pol­i­tics, reli­gion, char­ity, and busi­ness. This fail­ure orig­i­nates in the belief that humankind has, in a bizarre twist of mind that can only be described as a form of mass men­tal ill­ness, spe­cial sta­tus in our world and can there­fore claim spe­cial sta­tus in the world. To trust in the cur­rent ideal of progress is to put one’s faith in fail­ure and the even­tual col­lec­tive destruc­tion that flows from it.

Of course, there are peo­ple in the world that ded­i­cate them­selves to oppos­ing the psy­cho­pathic and sui­ci­dal real­ity of progress. Yet these peo­ple are clearly in the minor­ity, oth­er­wise we would not find our­selves in the cir­cum­stances we are in. The fact that we have to even raise the ques­tion of whether water is a fun­da­men­tal human right ver­sus a priv­i­lege or com­mod­ity is enough evi­dence in itself to reveal that we are, as a col­lec­tive, woe­fully mis­guided, self-centered, and arrogant.

Arti­cle 31: Water is a right, not a privilege

Every­one has the right to clean and acces­si­ble water, ade­quate for the health and well-being of the indi­vid­ual and fam­ily, and no one shall be deprived of such access or qual­ity of water due to indi­vid­ual eco­nomic cir­cum­stance. (Arti­cle 31: Water is a Right)

The Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights (UDHR) con­sists of thirty arti­cles that out­line the fun­da­men­tal human rights of every­one in the human fam­ily and attempts to pro­tect those rights through law. It is one of the most impor­tant doc­u­ments pro­duced by humankind since it takes on the immense chal­lenge of iden­ti­fy­ing and pro­tect­ing basic human right regard­less of coun­try, race, polit­i­cal alliance, or reli­gious per­spec­tive. The thirty arti­cles of the UDHR have not be updated since 1948.

Now, sixty years later, rec­og­niz­ing that over a bil­lion peo­ple across the planet lack access to clean and potable water and that mil­lions die each year as a result, it is imper­a­tive to add one more arti­cle to this his­toric dec­la­ra­tion, the Right to Water.

We, the under­signed, respect­fully call upon the United Nations to add a 31st arti­cle to the Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights, estab­lish­ing access to clean and potable water as a fun­da­men­tal human right. (Arti­cle 31: Water is a Right)

Arti­cle 31 is a pro­posed addi­tion to the UDHR that would serve to include the right to fresh potable water sup­plies to all of human­ity. This means that the sup­ply of clean water can­not be owned, con­trolled, or com­mer­cial­ized by any indi­vid­ual or group.

What Makes Water a Uni­ver­sal Right?

The sludge of human inten­tion is all too often revealed through the impact we have on oth­ers and the nat­ural world. To say that progress has in gen­eral had a ben­e­fi­cial effect on the lives of oth­ers and our planet is to be utterly delu­sional. To den­i­grate this glar­ingly obvi­ous real­ity into a mere crit­i­cism or cyn­i­cism is to suc­cumb to fear and inse­cu­rity. Quite sim­ply, the col­lec­tive impact of human­ity on the Earth has been self-serving, destruc­tive, and inept — even­tu­ally, unless we change our capac­ity for learn­ing, this will become unavoid­ably fatal.

The strug­gle to declare water as a fun­da­men­tal human right is an oppor­tu­nity to lift our­selves up out of the sludge and set an exam­ple that human­ity can aspire toward learn­ing that val­ues the preser­va­tion and well being of all life above any­thing else. Fresh water sup­ply is a finite resource on this planet. If we con­t­a­m­i­nate it, we con­t­a­m­i­nate our­selves as well as all other life forms. If we fail to pro­vide for all life, then we den­i­grate the very mean­ing and essence of human­ity and we remain mired in the sludge of mod­ern progress.

To achieve this, it is essen­tial to elim­i­nate any pos­si­bil­ity of cor­po­rate own­er­ship or involve­ment with respect to fresh water sup­ply. Water belongs to the uni­ver­sal com­mons of life; we do not own water but we are respon­si­ble to cher­ish and pre­serve it. Since a cor­po­ra­tion is by its very nature unavoid­ably irre­spon­si­ble and self-serving in its pur­suit of profit, there is no place for cor­po­rate involve­ment. There is no busi­ness of water to be pil­laged and con­quered. The reg­u­la­tion of fresh water can only be a pub­lic endeav­our to be pre­served and pro­tected by the commons.

Water is a uni­ver­sal right sim­ply because it is a uni­ver­sal pre­req­ui­site for the preser­va­tion of life. This is not an ideal that can merely be taught in school or broad­cast through the media; it is an ideal that must sim­ply embraced as a nor­mal assump­tion of being alive. The preser­va­tion of all life is an innate respon­si­bil­ity of every­one on this planet, and if we fail in this respon­si­bil­ity we effec­tively com­mit suicide.

Water and Our Capac­ity for Learning

The suc­cess or fail­ure in the chal­lenge of res­cu­ing water from our own greed and want is at its core a fun­da­men­tal chal­lenge for learn­ing. Water as a fun­da­men­tal human right requires us to face our own assump­tions, change them, and live dif­fer­ently. In chang­ing our assump­tions in order to live dif­fer­ently we face the uncom­fort­able real­ity of admit­ting our own flaws and weak­ness in a man­ner that reaches into our minds and hearts.

To do this we must acknowl­edge that progress as an inter­sec­tion of mate­r­ial con­sump­tion, delu­sional mar­ket­ing and adver­tis­ing, tech­no­log­i­cal prowess, gov­ern­men­tal flat­u­lence, and com­mer­cial profit will never be any­thing more than a bog of eter­nal stench. Learn­ing in its most pow­er­ful form demands that we face the things we avoid and pulls us how­ever unwill­ingly into the murky depths of our own folly.

This is what learn­ing really is and what it must be. Human­ity must embrace learn­ing as a means to find another path, to make fun­da­men­tal shifts not only in our beliefs and assump­tions but in the things we do. Real progress is not related to money and profit in any mean­ing­ful way. A cor­po­ra­tion is noth­ing more than a very bad idea that has man­aged to sur­vive far too long. If water is the “con­tent” of learn­ing, then the ulti­mate stake is the preser­va­tion and well being of life itself.