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Conference of Parliamentarians for Water

Plenary Session III: Right to Water
Introductory remarks as Facilitator
Stphane Dion
Member of Parliament and former Minister of the Environment of Canada
Gyeongju, Republic of Korea
April 15, 2015

What exactly is the right to water? The right of every human being to a sufficient
supply of clean and safe drinking water and to adequate sanitation.
According to UNESCO, access to water and sanitation is a prerequisite for the
realisation of the right to life, dignity, health, and education. UNESCO asserts that the
greatest ecological and human rights threats of our time are freshwater shortages and
inequitable access to water.
In approving the 2010 UN Millennium Development Goals, every member state
committed to ensure that all its citizens get access to clean drinking water by the end
of 2015. But with some 768 million people with no access to safe drinking water, 2.5
billion with no access to basic sanitation and 1.5 million children below five years dying
every year of water-related illnesses, we know we will miss the 2015 target.
Despite this setback, the goal remains the same: to provide water for all. So we need
to increase our efforts, and in order to do so, to find adequate answers to three
questions, which I will ask our distinguished panelists to answer:

1. How do we address current and future water needs?

Since providing safe drinking water and sanitation for all today must not preclude the
right of the next generations to the same, upholding the universal and intemporal right
to water includes an obligation to sustain the water needs of the natural environment.
Upholding the ability of nature to fulfill the quantitative and qualitative water needs of
plants and animals, to preserve biodiversity, is essential to the survival of human
civilization. If nature lacks water, humans will not be able to meet their basic water

requirements for domestic, agricultural and industrial applications, sanitation and

waste management.
Groundwater and surface water degradation and misuse affects ecosystem and
human health; they are also a major obstacle to fostering education and eradicating
poverty.
Therefore the question is : how can we, at the same time, meet immediate water
needs and act as bona fide trustees of water resources that must be protected and
conserved for future generations?

2. How do we address public and private water needs?

To provide water for all, how should we regulate private water property rights?
I think that we all agree that the right to water does not equate to an absolute right of
economic operators, such as power stations and farmers, to extract water from rivers,
lakes and aquifers.
But if we opt for full collective property, for state ownership of water resources
exercised on behalf of citizens, there is the risk of discouraging private initiatives.
A lack of access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation is not always due to an
insufficient resource; it is often caused by inadequate infrastructure and defective
facility operation and maintenance. To correct these deficiencies, we need to develop
and implement coherent policies and practices, and to pool individual and collective
resources and initiatives. How can this be done?
Most countries try to strike a balance between collective and private rights. They aim
to modulate water property rights through a mix of sound environmental policies,
practices and laws that impose a legal duty on economic operators and consumers to
use water efficiently and ethically. One example is to require agricultural producers to
use accurate irrigation scheduling, green spray irrigation, effective use of soil moisture
and best water application technology practices.

3. How do we address local and global water needs?

While the right to water must be addressed locally, it is closely linked to global energy,
climate, economic, social and political issues. This raises many thorny questions:

How do we protect water rights among States that share transboundary water bodies?
How do we cut across separate political jurisdictions and different socio-economic
conditions? How do we achieve sufficient conditions of transparency, sound
management and regional cooperation?
How do we improve the capacity of States to pool their financial and technical
resources so as to scale up efforts in the provision of safe, clean and affordable
drinking water and sanitation to all nationals?
If we do not radically improve international management and monitoring of shared
oceans, surface freshwater bodies and aquifers, we will not be able to meet the goal of
providing safe drinking water and adequate sanitation for all.
The right to water is a key 21st century issue. I had the easy part in this plenary
session: framing the issue, asking the questions. Now, lets hear what answers our
honourable panelists have for us.