Go On! Right to water @ Willamette

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest)

Implementing the Human Rights to Water in the West is the title of a conference to be held February 3 to 5, 2011, at Willamette University College of Law in Salem, Oregon.

Featured will be studies of how the human right to water interact with water law and policy in the Western United States, which, as organizers write,

already suffers from water shortages projected to grow worse. ... Our three-day conference will tackle two critical questions: How Western water law and policy deals with the human right to water; and if, in the face of increasing water scarcity, we should change our laws to assure clean water for everyone.

Working groups will produce a report to be submitted to the U.N. expert on the human right to water, Catarina de Albuquerque (prior IntLawGrrls post).

In addition to Willamette Professors Robin Morris Collin (above, near left) and Susan L. Smith (above, far left), the conference co-chairs, and their colleague Gwynne Skinner, among the many speakers scheduled are the keynote speaker, Professor Gabriel Eckstein of Texas Wesleyan Law, Director of the International Water Law Project, as well as: Gail Achterman, Executive Director, Institute of Natural Resources, Oregon State University; Sarah Hunt Vasche, Staff Attorney, Commons Sense for Oregon; and Elizabeth Burleson, University of South Dakota School of Law.

Registration and other details here.

General Assembly proclaims right to water as United States & 40 other countries abstain

The human right to water and sanitation yesterday won the immediate acclaim of the United Nations.
Most nations, that is.
Meeting at its headquarters in New York, the U.N. General Assembly adopted Resolution A/64/L.63/REV.1, by which the Assembly:

1. Declares the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights;
2. Calls upon States and international organizations to provide financial resources, capacity-building and technology transfer, through international assistance and cooperation, in particular to developing countries, in order to scale up efforts to provide safe, clean, accessible and affordable drinking water and sanitation for all;
3. Welcomes the decision by the Human Rights Council to request that the independent expert on the issue of human rights obligations related to access to safe drinking water and sanitation present an annual report to the General Assembly, and encourages her to continue working on all aspects of her mandate and, in consultation with all relevant United Nations agencies, funds, and programmes, to include in her report to the Assembly, at its sixty-sixth session, the principal challenges related to the realization of the human right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation and their impact on the achievement of Millennium Development Goals.

France's Secretary of State for Ecology, Chantal Jouanno, judged the decision "historique" -- and many countries' delegates echoed that adjective.
The vote on the resolution was overwhelming: 122-0-41.
The representative of the United States explained its abstention as an objection not to the importance of access to water, an issued on which we've frequently posted. Rather, he said that the United States objected to the Assembly's decision to go forward now rather than to await other U.N. action:

The United States had hoped to negotiate and ultimately join consensus on this text, on a text, that would uphold and support the international process underway at the Human Rights Council. Instead, we have here a resolution that falls far short of enjoying the unanimous support of member States and may even undermine the work underway in Geneva. This resolution describes a right to water and sanitation in a way that is not reflective of existing international law; as there is no “right to water and sanitation” in an international legal sense as described by this resolution.

The United States was joined in abstention by 40 other countries: Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Britain, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Ethiopia, Greece, Guyana, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Latvia, Lesotho, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, South Korea, Moldova, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Ukraine, Tanzania, and Zambia. And Japan.
Coincidentally, yesterday Japan finished hosting the 9-day official visit by the independent expert cited in ¶ 3 of the Resolution, Catarina de Albuquerque (right), an attorney, law teacher, and Senior Legal Adviser on International Affairs to the Portuguese Secretary of State for Justice. On the whole her observations were favorable, though she expressed concern with regard to certain minority populations. De Albuquerque began her statement by quoting a legend that she'd seen on a Kyoto shrine:

Mizukara Katsudoushite Hokawo Ugokashimuruha Mizu nari.

Translation: "It is the water which proactively moves and influences others."

Condoms against climate change

'Women are on the front lines of many societies buffeted by climate change -- and research indicates they tend to be more vulnerable to these impacts.'

So said Robert Engelman, author of a report by the U.N. Population Fund, quoted in a CNN article. Entitled The State of World Population 2009, the report was released yesterday as part of the runup to COP15, the U.N. Climate Change Conference due to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark, from December 7 to 18.
The report focused on climate change and women; in particular, older women less able to leave communities suffering from drought and other ill effects.
As reported by the Associated Press, the Population Fund
did not recommend limiting the number of children a woman should bear, yet said:

'Women with access to reproductive health services ... have lower fertility rates that contribute to slower growth in greenhouse gas emissions.'

That reference to contraception (photo credit) drew the ire of Caroline Boin (below right), a Conservative critic and property rights advocate at the London-based International Policy Network, who told CNN:

'Whatever the problem, UNFPA repeats the same old mantra -- the culprit is population and the solution is condoms. Food scarcity, water shortages, and health problems in poor countries truly are threats for women. Population and climate control policies are not the solution, and if anything, will give governments an excuse to remain complacent in addressing poverty.'

On May 21

On this day in ...
... 1979 (30 years ago today), the newly formed National Assembly of Namibia abolished racial discrimination. The body was not recognized internationally, and Namibia (flag at left), which had been under control of South Africa's apartheid regime for much of the 20th century, would not gain full independence until 1990.
... 1997, the U.N. Convention on the Law of Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses was adopted. It sets out a framework for conservation of surface and groundwater that crosses international boundaries. The treaty has not yet entered into force. (credit for photo of Mekong River, which runs through China, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia)

(Prior May 21 posts are here and here.)

'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

What we need now are guiding principles that set priorities for water. Water is a public trust that belongs to the Earth and all species. It is a basic human right. Yes, there is a commercial dimension to water. But the only possible path to a water secure future is based on the twin foundations of conservation and justice. All water use, public and private, must now serve these goals.

-- Maude Barlow (left), board chair for the D.C.-based nongovernmental organization Food & Water Watch, senior advisor on water to U.N. General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, and author of Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water (2007), in a recent San Francisco Chronicle op-ed about the right to water, an issue on which IntLawGrrls also have posted.

Groundwater law courses U.N. currents

We've posted in the past on issues related to water -- its scarcity, the inescapable need for it, claims of right to it, and increasing attention to same. Well worth noting, then, is the initiative featured in a new ASIL Insight by Kerstin Mechlem (left), Lecturer at the Transitional Justice Institute, University of Ulster, in Northern Ireland.
Mechlem underscores the adoption last month by the United Nations' 60-year-old legal research arm, the International Law Commission, of draft articles for an international framework convention on transboundary aquifers; that is, on groundwater sources that cross national frontiers. (The draft articles are expected soon to be available here.)
After outlining the scope of the problem and events leading to adoption, Mechlem points to key aspects of the draft articles:
► the principle of equitable and reasonable utilization of water resources;
► the imposition of an obligation not to cause significant harm; and
► the imposition of an obligation to cooperate, by sharing information about water and entering agreements to protect water resources.
One novelty in the draft articles is the recognition of "the need to protect aquifers against harm, resulting, for example, from fertilizers or pesticide use or industry discharge," she writes.
The articles stop short of embracing the precautionary principle. The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development stated:

Principle 15
In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.

The Rio Declaration was proclaimed in 1992, and Principle 15 has gained currency since then. Nonetheless, in the view of the ILC, precaution has not yet become a principle of customary international law. Mechlem writes: "Thus, the draft articles refer in Article 12 to a 'precautionary approach' rather than to the 'precautionary principle.'"
Mechlem, who served from 2002 to 2006 as a Legal Officer for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, concludes her ASIL Insight by stating:
"Despite their shortcomings the draft articles are a significant step in the protection of transboundary aquifers." She looks forward one day to entry in force of "binding framework convention." (groundwater image credit)

"Rainmakers" and global warming

First, in the figurative sense, 8 scientific organizations representing thousands of American scientists and technicians are calling for the development of a policy to help (the United States, presumably) better withstand global warming and meteorological extremes. Noting that the country loses billions of dollars per year because of natural disasters such as flooding, tornadoes, cyclones, forest fires, snow storms and drought, these organizations suggest creating an Earth-observation network of satellites and ground instruments while improving the calculation ability of computers fed meteorological and climate data. By investing about 9 billion dollars in such a program, the scientists hope to better prevent catastrophes. Meanwhile in Burkina Faso (map credit), a landlocked country in the Sahel, local farmers, agricultural engineers and NGOs are working in a more literal sense to battle desertification, a phenomenon closely related to global warming. Desertification results from farming techniques that deplete the soil: in Burkina Faso, a standard technique was to chop down the trees then plant and harvest until nothing more would grow, then move on and do the same thing again. Desertification contributes to global warming just as does the destruction of forests, and can also be intensified due to global warming: longer dry spells followed by torrential rains leave even less water in the soil. Since the 1980s, a return to traditional techniques involving terracing and other methods to retain water and help it penetrate deep into the soil are helping to green the Sahel.
Despite the clear benefits, not everyone is leaping on the bandwagon: the farmers are so poor and donations so few that not enough of them can afford the roughly $84/acre investment in picks and shovels to dig trenches, gas and a rental truck to go get stones to use for terracing, hired help for the heavy work (note however that the article discusses the success of one man while the photo shows barefoot women digging trenches with picks and shovels) and ongoing training in greening techniques.
Since activities in one place affect the climate in another, perhaps rather than (or along with) investing 9 billion dollars in a system to alert the US of disasters in time to prevent them, we could invest more in greening the Sahel and other areas suffering from desertification, as this might actually reduce some of those catastrophes and their attendant human security problems wherever they occur.

On this day

On March 22, ...
... 2008 (today), is marked World Water Day. An observance that resulted from the 1992 U.N. Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, it's intended to raise awareness about the need for and dearth of clean water in many parts of the world. (It's an issue on which we posted here.) In more fortunate regions many restaurants this past week took part in the Tap Project, by which patrons were asked to contribute $1 for each glass of tap water they otherwise would have been served free.
... 1638 (370 years ago today), the Massachusetts Bay Colony expelled Anne Hutchinson for religious dissent. Hutchinson was an antinomian, an opponent of the rule of law, a position that set her at odds with her male-dominated, Puritan society. In unsuccessful defense at her religious trial (left), Hutchinson proclaimed:

As my sin hath been open, so I think it needful to acknowledge how I came to fall into these errors. Instead of looking upon myself I looked at men. … I spake rashly and unadvisedly. I do not allow [that is, sanction] the slighting of ministers, nor of the Scriptures, nor any thing that is set up by God.

Following her banishment Hutchinson lived in Rhode Island and then in New Amsterdam (later, New York); there she died in 1643 during a battle between European settlers and Native Americans.

Go On! Common Grounds, Common Waters: Toward a Water Ethic

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia of interest.) This Friday (March 14th), my institution (Santa Clara University School of Law) will be hosting a symposium on the Ethics of Water. According to the conference organizers:

The purpose of the symposium is to seek common ground in identifying a water ethic that are fundamental to [the multiple competing] interests and that might lay the foundation for compromise, cooperation, and sound management of fresh water resources. Fundamental to this goal is the ideal that common water ethics should be at the base of all agreements, legislation, and management efforts related to fresh water resources.

The conference will feature panels such as "Ethics and Commodification" and "Water in a Globalized World" and speakers from UNESCO, the U.S. Department of the Interior, and Coca-Cola as well as leading environmental law scholars. The conference will conclude with a roundtable focusing on the question of whether

a consensus can be achieved on a core set of water ethics that society should pursue. They will also be tasked with negotiating disparate or conflicting ethical bases that may arise, as well as developing the processes and mechanisms for implementing the agreed-upon water ethics.

Details and registration materials may be found here.