Water for Commons
(from Vocabulary of Commons, article 44)
by Dr Geeta Lakshmi
Disparity in Chennai
The commons is a new way to express a very old idea, the idea that dates back with the origin of human race: this says that some forms of wealth belong to all of us. These community resources would be actively protected and managed for the good of all having a common and shared ownership. The commons are the things that we inherit and create jointly, and that will (hopefully) last for generations to come. The commons consists of gifts of nature such as air, water (oceans and other freshwater resources) and wildlife anything that involves some kind of common pool of resources, be it natural or be it shared social creations. This could be identified by four central elements.1
- Belonging—to something bigger than ourselves.
- Relationships—as the starting point for collaborative work.
- Benefits—those go to all, not just a privileged few.
- Governance—not just government, but a whole set of ways to manage commons for the greater good of everyone.
The subtle monopolisation of the global commons began in the middle ages when the rights to land were claimed by the aristocracy and feudalism. The common people and their resources were thus exploited by those who owned the land. Over time, this accumulation of power through resource acquisition allowed cities to plunder the country, taking control of yet more land and resources and thereby establishing ever larger empires. The same principle of monopolisation currently threatens countless resources, common to the global public, which we hold in trust for future generations. Apart from our global ecological system, our shared resources include all creations of nature and society; all are coming under the control of few. Added to this monopolisation, our governments have neglected their responsibility to protect these common resources and make them equally available for all. They have given a free hand to the private sector to control and exploit theseresources to their benefit. This leads to private corporations seizing the resources. As the harshest result of the privatisation, in many regions across the globe, communities are forced to pay an exorbitant price for privatised essentials such as water.2
Of the many essential elements for human existence, water is of the greatest importance. Over two-thirds of the human body is constituted of water. Be it any form of life, plant, animal or human, it cannot exist without water. Civilisations have evolved and developed around water bodies, as most human activities, including agriculture and industry, depend on water. History has witnessed that the development of the human race from nomads to settled life and then inventions and discoveries to better their life and society have always revolved around water. Many a time it is a source of conflict and problems. Though all human inventions and creations are not towards the development of the human race and society, water has been an integral part of the journey from the pre-historic to present times. This life-giving resource rightfully belongs to all of humanity as well as animals.
Water: A resource for commons
Over 70% of the Earth is covered with water. Nearly 97% of the world’s water is salty or otherwise undrinkable. Another 2% is locked up in ice caps and glaciers. That leaves just 1% for all humanity’s needs—all its agricultural, residential, manufacturing, community and personal needs. But even this 1% is not available for the society’s use nor use for the entire human race uniformly. This source of life without which life is nonexistent has grown to be branded as a commodity and property, access to which is subject to many restrictions ‘to common people, especially poor and that 80% of population which swing around the poverty line’.
With present consumption patterns about one-fifth of the world’s population lacks access to safe drinking water. The prediction is that two out of every three persons on the earth will live in water-stressed conditions by 2025. Pollution, scarcity of water resources and climate change will be the major emerging issues in the next century. Water pollution adds enormously to existing problems of water scarcity by removing large volumes of water from the available supply to cater towards the city water supply, corporate and industrial purpose. The pollution threat is particularly serious when it affects groundwater supplies, where contamination is slow to dilute and purification measures are costly. This trend has started in the big industrial cities like Chennai, Bengaluru, Mysore, Delhi, Kolkata. Despite this water consumption and utilisation patterns have not changed. The result-the life source has literally turned to be a costly commodity. This has given rise to water stress. The stress gets built up mainly due to failure of conventional water management strategies for resolving emerging challenges and conflicts.
Water management is a big challenge in a transforming agro-economic and social setting. The penetration of markets into the countryside, fast urbanisation, rapid industrial expansion and open entry of global markets (globalisation) cause new dimensions of water management problems across many parts of the world, especially the Third World nations and more so in South Asia. All these complexities pose renewed threat of water management concerns. One of the manifestations of this emerging complexity is the growing conflict between different sets of water users: the traditional and the conventional ones. For traditional users water is a natural resource and access to it is free and equal for all. On the other hand the conventional users not only consider water as a resource but also as a commodity which can be bought, controlled and manipulated to personal advantage.
Conflicts over usage of water occur for many reasons such as over-use, competing demand for water, declining water quality, taking water out of agriculture land and sell it to agencies; an emerging rural-urban water trade and so on. Existing legal measures are unhelpful not because laws are particularly ineffective but the law enforcement mechanisms are minimal and non-mandatory. Though there were some expectant relief witnessed in a few historic judgments delivered by the highest judicial authorities of India, it could not also travel too far due to faulty monitoring mechanism and corrupt governance. All these are inter-related and complex set of factors, which trigger off conflicting and real explosive situations.
Water scenario in India
With the rapid population growth since independence, water is becoming an increasingly scarce resource in the country. Despite this, water continues to be used inefficiently on a daily basis in all sectors. At independence, the population was less than 400 million and per capita water availability was over 5,000 cubic meters per year (m3/cap/yr). Today, in 2010, the population has grown to 1 billion and water availability has fallen to just about 2,000 (m3/cap/yr). India’s finite and fragile water resources are stressed and depleting, while sector demands (including drinking water, industry, agriculture, and others) are growing rapidly in line with urbanisation, population increase, rising incomes and industrial growth. This has resulted in declining per capita availability and deteriorating quality of water. Inter-sector allocations, planning, and management of increasingly fragile water resources have thus emerged as a major challenge before the nation.
The situation in Chennai
Chennai is the capital of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and is on the eastern coast of India. In recent years, the inhabitants of the city of Chennai and the surrounding metropolitan area have been facing increasingly severe water shortages. Many programmes of work and large amounts of money have been directed at solving these water shortages but with limited success. In fact, as both competition for water and demand continues to rise sharply, it can be argued that the water challenges facing Chennai are becoming more severe and more difficult to handle or solve. It is also clear that the escalating demand for water in Chennai metropolitan area is putting more pressure on the peri-urban and more distant rural area that are the main sources of Chennai’s water supply.
This chapter discusses the nature and scale of water scarcity in the city and the approaches taken by the government to tackle the situation. This paper also discusses how the state government’s approaches to water service delivery in the city caters to the water needs of city dwellers and industries outside city on the one hand but on the other hand, deprives the entire population (the commoners) of the peri-urban areas and more distant rural areas of their water rights. It is argued that this leads to an imbalance of water equity between urban areas and the areas that are the sources of Chennai’s water supply. Finally, it analyses how legislation, which has been formed to protect ground and surface water exploitation, has been blatantly violated and how this has led to a deprivation among the urban and peri-urban commons.
State of the city’s water resources: Saline intrusion
Groundwater levels in the Chennai metropolitan area in 2003–04 had fallen to alarmingly low levels and, in many places, intrusion of seawater into coastal aquifers has been reported. A national study conducted by the Central Groundwater Board stated that Tamil Nadu, Puduchery, Daman and Diu, and Lakshadweep topped the list for saline intrusion into coastal aquifers caused by excessive groundwater extraction. The C.P.R. Environment Education Centre conducted a six-year survey of groundwater in coastal areas around Chennai from Injambakkam in the south to Ennore in the north. The main finding of this survey, which was based on monitoring 150 wells, was that the Total Dissolved Solid (TDS) and chloride content of water samples registered a significant increase during the six-year period. In other words, salt-water intrusion into Chennai’s groundwater sources is steadily increasing. Of the three zones in the city, namely south, central and north, central Chennai is the most severely affected. In Mandavellipakkam and Mylapore, TDS has doubled in the last four years. While 85% of water sources in Central Chennai have shown an increase in TDS levels during the last three years, 50% of water sources in north Chennai have shown an increase in the last four years and 66% of all monitored water sources have registered increase in TDS levels during the last six years. Heavy withdrawal of groundwater by industries and increasing number of high-rise apartments have aggravated the situation. Unavailability of potable water in the metropolitan area and lack of proper water management has left the Chennai Metro Water Supply and Sewerage Board (CMWSSB) with no alternatives but to look outside the metropolitan limits for good-quality water resources.
Since 2005 Chennai has been receiving considerably good amount of rain and, as per the government and other sources, it is noted that the groundwater quality and quantity has improved. But on the other hand the industrialisation, population and the subsequent demand for water have increased manifold. The maddening industrialisation and the increasing density of population in the city have increased the groundwater withdrawal.
Efforts to supply water to the city
In 2003, Chennai received only 280 mm of rain from the northeast monsoon against the normal of 580 mm. Consequently, storage levels in the city’s reservoirs, namely Red Hills, Chambarambakkam, Cholavaram and Poondi fell to the lowest in 55 years. If the Tamil Nadu government and CMWSSB officials pinned their hopes on the Telugu Ganga Project to combat the resultant water supply problems, the project flattered to deceive. The Krishna river water released from the Kandaleru reservoir in Andhra Pradesh reached the zero point near Uthukottai in Tamil Nadu, after covering a distance of 152 km. The plan had been for this water to be conveyed to Poondi and then to the Red Hills reservoir before being treated and ferried to the city in tankers. But such hopes evaporated on 18 February 2004 with the Poondi canal remaining dry. Illegal tapping of water by farmers and the withdrawal of water to meet the demands of Tirupati town in Andhra Pradesh were offered as the reasons for the non-arrival of the Krishna water in the Poondi canal.
For the last decade, CMWSSB has depended heavily on peri-urban water resources as a source of supply. This water has been extracted from agricultural and domestic-supply wells and transported to the metropolitan areas on a daily basis using 10,000, 12,000 and 20,000 litre capacity tankers. In 2004, improved rainfall meant that some parts of the city received water through corporation pipes and as a result the number of tanker lorries supplying water in the City was reduced as compared to 2003.
Apart from transporting by tanker from peri-urban areas and requesting Andhra Pradesh for more water, Tamil Nadu government has come up with a few so-called long-term strategies. Foremost amongst these schemes was the one named as the ‘Revised Chennai Veeranam Project’. This hugely expensive project aimed to bring 0.18 Mcum of water per day to Chennai by pipeline from 235 kms away. In 2004, it was anticipated that this project would supply about one third of Chennai’s daily water requirement. However, the viability of this scheme is under question given that it depends on diminishing flows in the Cauvery River. The fact that, to date, the project pipelines have been used to convey groundwater rather than surface water only heightens concerns over the viability of the project. Other schemes that were considered included bringing water from Tirunelveli dams (Papanasam dam in extreme Southern Tamilndau) to Chennai by rail.
In 2008 the Chennai Metropolitan area has been upgraded to the Greater Chennai Metropolitan Area, which has now has increased to 780 sq km from a mere 170 sq km. Even in the CMA, a large number of individual houses have been either converted into commercial complexes or multiple residential units. Due to this the pressure on groundwater resources and piped water supply has increased multifold. Sensing this pressure, World Bank has sanctioned a huge loan to upgrade the water supply infrastructure. In 2008 the state government sanctioned setting up of a desalination plant at Ponneri at a cost of Rs 2,300 crores. The supply is expected to start from October 2010. The government, since 2009 March has started monitoring the groundwater level and quality in certain pockets. But, it is yet to come up to a systematic level.
Cost of water
In the summer of 2003, 2,000 privately-owned water tankers were in operation daily in addition to those hired by the Chennai Metropolitan Water Board. At the peak, a 12,000 litre tanker of water would cost as much as Rs 1,500 to Rs 2,000. Even though a number of apartment buildings were prepared to pay this amount, the quality of water was not assured. The informed view was that a number of fly-by-night operators, most of them with just one tanker, became involved in the tanker business sensing good fast money. According to industry sources, the cost of a 12,000-litre tanker of water fell to around Rs 450 to Rs 600 in 2004 depending upon the area of supply and the periodicity with which water was required.3 In 2003, a well owner was paid Rs 3.30 per 1000 lts of water by the CMWSSB whereas water consumers paid as much as Rs 80 per 1000 litres to CMWSSB and even more to the private lorry owners. For purified mineral water, the amount charged was as high as Rs.50 per 25 litres or Rs.2000 per 1000 litres of water. Rs 5 was being charged for 250 ml water sachets. This price is uniform for all, the rich and the poor slum dwellers. During 2003–2004, the CMWSSB was spending around Rs 500 million to buy 3.7 billion litres of water each month. During summer months the figures were even higher.
Wastewater treatment in the city
In the present system of water governance, CMWSSB is responsible for water supplies and domestic sewage treatment and management. It is believed that the amount of sewage generated in the city surpasses the amount of water supplied by the board. Around 220 Mcum of wastewater is generated every year as compared to 85 Mcum of water supplied by the board. As per the sewage water treatment and management system of the board, the sewage is supposed to be treated up to the permitted level and then discharged into the waterways and sea. The wastewater system in the city has evolved over the past century and, although upgraded, much of the old system is still in use. The existing wastewater system consists of five independent zones. However this system is undergoing modification to a recently formulated comprehensive plan. Wastewater in all areas is collected in pumping stations in the respective regions. The sewage is then pumped to treatment plants. There are at present five treatment plants in the city: 2 treatment plants in Kodaingayur, one each in Koyambedu, Nesapakkam, Perungudi and Villivakkam. But out of these five plants, only three are functioning. Four new treatment plants have been constructed one each in Kodaingayur, Koyambedu, Nesapakkam and Perungudi. The city generates around 220 Mcum of waste water every year but, according to the CMWSSB, the total capacity of treatment plants does not exceed 80 Mcum per year. So the big question is where does the rest of untreated sewage go? Into the sea? Moreover the board also confirms that during treatment, only Biochemical oxygen demand and Chemical oxygen demand (BOD, COD) and suspended solids are brought down to permitted levels. TDS (Total Dissolved Solid) is not tackled. All sewage, whether treated or not, is discharged into the Bay of Bengal directly or via the Adayar River, Coovam River and Buckingham canal with obvious consequences for the ecology and the environment. The board has now come up with a proposal to plug all the outlets that drain into Adayar and Coovam River with the result that all the sewage generated in the city would be discharged directly into the sea.
Impact on environment and livelihood
There are laws to tackle these water and wastewater issues but in the sharply polarised political arena that characterises water-related decision making in Chennai, they are rarely implemented. For their utter political benefit, the ruling party always tends to overrule the existing laws. To recharge the depleted aquifers the government has made rainwater harvesting mandatory in all residential and industrial complexes and, according to the board, around 98% of all houses and complexes have now installed rainwater harvesting systems. But the irony is that the government has not prepared plans to harvest floodwater. Each year large volumes of urban runoff discharges directly into the sea via storm water drains. The existing water supply and sewage systems are essentially the result of crisis management and not part of a long-term sustainable water management strategy. The result is that:
- Insufficient attention has been given to ensuring the water rights of each of every inhabitant of Chennai;
- Many agricultural and domestic wells have been depleted to the point of failure; and,
- Livelihoods and the environment in peri-urban areas are being badly affected as Chennai’s water footprint grows in size.
In most parts of the city, pipelines have been laid and crores of rupees have been spent to bring water from Veeranam as an additional source of supply. But is the supply from Veeranam sustainable? It is highly dependent on nature’s vagaries as it is not a perennial source. The indications are already that once the sources in Veeranam have been exploited, the government will have to switch to some other area as a source of supply. Of course, no one can altogether deny the considerable challenges faced in meeting Chennai’s increasing demand or the efforts made by the state government to provide drinking water to the people. But, given the lack of success to date, important questions that have to be asked include:
- Why has the state failed to provide drinking water facilities to its entire population?
- What are the main constraints on providing drinking water when the city lacks neither money nor technology?
The answer is quite simple. Tamil Nadu has an annual ritual of money allocated, money spent and areas covered. Each year money is allocated for the water crisis and spent to address the crisis on a temporary basis. The following year brings on the same water crisis and money is again allocated. The government continues to look at this issue solely in terms of money spent. However, everyone knows that increasing expenditure will not solve the problem unless the state takes a more strategic long-term approach to tackling the problem of escalating demand and increasing competition for available water resources.
Rise of conflicts on water sharing
Compared to India’s four other mega-cities, Chennai is alone in suffering from a lack of a reliable perennial source of water. Delhi and Kolkata have access to the Yamuna and Ganges rivers (or rather Hoogly River in Kolkata) and heavily-populated Mumbai is fortunate to get copious rains from southwest monsoon via a well-organised system of storage reservoirs. Chennai is unfortunate in that there is no perennial water source and the monsoon rains are both unpredictable and hugely variable.
Extracting water from one place to supply it to another has given rise to many inter and intra state water conflicts. There is an ongoing dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu on the issue of sharing of Cauvery River water. Conflicts have also erupted within Tamil Nadu on the issue of sharing water between different areas of the state. Peri-urban areas and more distant rural villages feel deprived of their water rights when water is extracted from their area and supplied to the urban areas. When some suggestions were made to draw water from Madhurantakam Lake some 80 km away from Chennai, there was stiff opposition and people demonstrated on the roads. Similar resistance was prompted by the proposal to draw water from the Veeranam Lake. The lake generally gets its supply from the Cauvery river system. However, in the last couple of years, it has dried up as a result of poor flow in the Cauvery. Now under the New Veeranam Project, as there is no water in Veeranam Lake, the government is drawing water from bore wells that have been constructed by the government. Since 2004, Chennai residents have been getting Veeranam groundwater in their pipelines but all these processes have irked people of Veeranam region. They feel deprived of their share of water and their water rights. The same scenario can be seen in many parts of the Kancheepuram and Chenglepet regions. People, especially farmers, have come on to the roads protesting against the heavy withdrawal of water from their domestic and agricultural wells by CMWSSB and also by private tanker owners. In many areas, the people, after giving an ultimatum to the CMWSSB authorities, have gone on to ransack pump sets and pipelines laid to draw water from bore wells. Since 2005 due to good rains the storage situation in Veeranam lake has improved thus reducing the pressure on the groundwater.
Reasons for conflicts can be summarised as follows:
- There is a huge and escalating demand for water from all sectors.
- Lack of a water pricing policy between and within sectors is further driving demand. In particular, industries, who can afford to, buy huge amount of groundwater for industrial purposes.
- Policies and institutions, which are supposed to solve conflicts, are to some extent contributing to further conflicts.
- Drinking water, which is hardly 2–5% of the total water consumed, and this ostensibly gets priority.
Conflicts have given rise to many questions that include:
- How can the state government secure this 2–5% of available water for drinking and domestic use without imbalancing equity between regions?
- Are the state government and the state-engaged organisation (e.g. CMWSSB) the appropriate institutions to manage water resources? Would vesting power to manage water to village panchayats be more appropriate and sustainable?
- What kind of regulations are needed to prevent groundwater exploitation without pushing peri-urban regions into a tighter corner?
- How can industries be forced to pay the true cost of water and of cleaning up waste?
The basic problem with the state government and the CMWSSB is that they lack appropriate long-term strategies to tackle the ever more serious water scarcity in the city. This is no easy task given that the challenge also has to be to maintain some kind of equilibrium between the metropolitan, suburban, peri-urban and more distant rural areas given the level of interdependency between the areas. Clearly the city’s needs should be given priority over the needs of other areas; however, one region’s benefit need not be the loss of another region (conflict between urban commons and peri-urban commons). Moreover no policy or strategy should ignore the specific needs of the environment and poorer and more disadvantaged social groups.
The Constitution of India, National Water Policy (NWP, published once in five years since 1987) and the Tamil Nadu State Water Policy (TNWP), have given the highest priority to drinking water in the country. In fact, the latest version of NWP not only talks about the access and quantity needed but also the quality aspect of drinking water. The silver lining of NWP is that the irrigation and the multipurpose projects should include a drinking water component wherever there is no alternative source of drinking water. In other words, NWP unambiguously states that water for drinking cannot be a competing a claim with other uses.
Tamil Nadu state water policy
TNWP was formulated in the year 1994 within the framework of NWP, 1987. The TNWP 1994 was revised in 2003 to keep it in line with the revised NWP and to suit the present scenario. The revised policy claims to have included all the features of the NWP—including giving utmost priority to drinking water quality.
Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board (TWAD Board) and CMWSSB are the major governmental agencies which are responsible for providing drinking water and sanitation facilities to the rural and urban areas of the state. TWAD Board, which came into being on 14 April 1971, is vested with the responsibility of investigation, formulation and execution of water supply and sewerage schemes in the entire State of Tamil Nadu except Chennai Metropolitan area. For Chennai Metropolitan area the responsible authority is the CMWSSB. The Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board Act, 1970 opened the door for establishing the Water Supply and Drainage Board and the regulation and development of drinking water and drainage in the State of Tamil Nadu except the Chennai Metropolitan Area. This Act empowers the TWAD Board to take up the responsibility to ensure drinking water and drainage facilities all over the state.
Besides, there are a series of legislations and Government Orders (GOs) enacted/executed to facilitate groundwater governance in the state. Important among them are the Tamil Nadu Groundwater (Control and Regulation) Bill 1977 which aimed to regulate and control the development of groundwater in Tamil Nadu and The Tamil Nadu Groundwater (Development and Management) Act, 2003. There is also a special Act called Chennai Metropolitan Area Groundwater (Regulation) Act, 1987 to manage and regulate the unmindful extraction of groundwater around the peri-urban areas of Chennai city. This Act was to regulate and check over-extraction and unmindful transport of groundwater from peri-urban villages into the city of Chennai.
There was always an emphasis on drinking water in the water policy of Tamil Nadu. With all these legal interventions, the city of Chennai depends upon groundwater for over 60% of domestic needs. The seawater intrusion has taken place already to an extent 9 km. The entire coastal freshwater has turned saline. Despite these legal interventions and transport of water from one part of the state to another, drinking water scarcity remains a pressing problem in the state. In Chennai, the state government has already spent over Rs.40 billion during the last three decades to augment the city’s water supply. But the water stress continues to frighten the people of this city, in particular poor and lower middle class population.
In recent times, the governments (both the state and centre) have decided to install a series of desalination plants along the coast of Tamilnadu to augment the city’s water supply and to supply drinking water to coastal villages. Chennai receives an average annual rainfall of 1250 mm which is quite substantial by any standard. Why then does the city need a desalination plant worth Rs.10 billion to generate 150 mld of water. Why do the poor pay for the basic life source, which is also their fundamental right to life? Is there anything seriously wrong with our water policy? Or does our water governance call for more proactive, transparent and eco-friendly interventions?
The disastrous effects of privatisation
Basic water rights generally amount to a very small percentage of overall water resources, whereas water resources allocated for municipal, industrial, or irrigation uses are generally far larger. Water is being taken from aquifers or watersheds either by virtual trade in water or by pipeline or by mass irrigation, (all these types are prevalent in Chennai). Whatever the method, the consequence is that water is vanishing from where nature put it. In the process, we are actually losing water from the hydrologic cycle. The global freshwater crisis is the ground level equivalent to greenhouse gas emissions from the top. Water is being more and more controlled by corporations. Now we all know about the delivery of water by these big utility corporations like, Suez, Vivendi, or Veolia, and that continues with renewed pace every year. Bottled water is an enormous industry.4
The creation of a massive new water reuse technology which is being heavily funded by governments, particularly by US, European and Indian governments and international financial apex bodies like the World Bank and The Asian Development Bank, is going to be a hindrance to enact or to enforce water protection laws since there exists a massive international industry to clean up the water sources. So in a bizarre logic of development and GDP, since cleaning up water technology is available and cleaning up will add to the GDP, clean water practices are actively discouraged. As usual, there is going to be trade and environmental services through the WTO and GATS (General Agreement on Trade and Services) around water technology cleanup.5
With the growing demand of fresh water, governments have started plundering the oceans. Modern technology has facilitated in setting up of massive desalination plants, drawing the sea and ocean water. This is terribly polluting, and an energy intensive industry. Rich people buy bottled water, while millions of commoners die of thirst, denied access to safe water. This is not only an ecological crisis but a human rights crisis, and corporate control can be one of the reasons.
Efforts to common water
The human rights approach to water puts the peoples’ need first, regarding water use and promotes human-centred water resource development based on a coherent framework of binding legal norms and accountability. It aims to empower individuals to achieve their full potential, and the freedom, to take up opportunities in using water. Agencies, both national and international, NGOs and INGOs, environmentalists and the numerous global communities have joined hands to de-commodify water and to ensure water as a common.
In 2000, 147 Heads of State committed to achieving eight goals to halve global poverty by 2015 in the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These targets include decreasing hunger and disease, increasing access to water and basic shelter; closing the gap on gender inequality, education, and human rights; and environmental sustainability. In terms of water alone, achieving these goals would mean 350 million more people would have access to safe drinking water and 650 million would benefit from basic sanitation. The vision is one of shared responsibility to bring about positive change in the developing world.6
If some Asian countries face a water crisis in the future, it will not be because of physical scarcity of water, but because of inadequate or inappropriate water governance, including management practices, institutional arrangements, and socio-political conditions, which leave much to be desired. A report by World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) 2007, considered water an entitlement, which confers on the holder the right to withdraw water. This report focuses on ‘basic water right’ that people have as a consequence of primary legislation, which is permanent and not subject to any administrative process.7
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reviewed 60 national constitutions and found that only South Africa’s 1996 Constitution, in article 27, expressly enshrined a fundamental right of access to sufficient water. Priorities for domestic consumption appear in water legislation of other countries, but South African legislation has definitely made the right of access for basic human needs (water commons) so explicit. Indonesia’s Water Resources Law (Law No. 7/2004) is close to defining water for basic needs as a basic water right by establishing the state’s responsibility to guarantee water for rudimentary needs. In article 48 of the National Water Law of the People’s Republic of China (2002), domestic consumption by households is exempt from licensing requirements as well as drinking water for scattered or penned livestock and poultry. This approach is important but stops short of including water as common for basic human needs. It implies a more passive approach to providing water for commons.
With the adoption of the MDGs, the target of halving the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation by 2015 has taken center stage in countries around the world. At the 3 rd World Water Forum in Japan in 2003, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and its partners showed that water and poverty are connected in both vicious and virtuous cycles, and targeted water investments to reducing poverty. At the 4th World Water Forum in Mexico in 2006, this understanding was reconfirmed in a multi-agency paper by the Poverty and Environment Partnership (Stockholm Environment Institute and United Nations Development Programme 2006). The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) recognises the right to an adequate standard of living, including adequate food, freedom from hunger (art. 11), and the right to enjoy the highest standard of physical health. The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights offered further interpretation of the role that the ICESCR gave to water. In its General Comment in 2002, the committee stated:8
- The human right to water is indispensable for leading a life in human dignity. It is a pre-requisite for the realisation of other human rights.
- The human right to water entitles everyone to sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic uses.
- The right to water clearly falls within the category of guarantees essential for securing an adequate standard of living, particularly since it is one of the most fundamental conditions for survival.
Why is retaining water as commons and a de-corporatisation of water allocation important? The answer is for security. Security for the rural and urban poor, as with other users, water rights relate to the security of having a basic supply necessary for a healthy and dignified life. Beyond water for domestic use, the livelihood security of commons. There is security in survival of agriculture through water for cultivating basic crops and rearing livestock on which village commons depend. For those with more land, water provides the security to invest labour and money into development. For urban dwellers, the security of a more advanced lifestyle inevitably involves higher rates of water use. For industrial and commercial users, it relates to a secure investment climate for business development plans. In the absence of clearly articulated water rights, there is a risk that the security of water for these purposes will be compromised, and lives and livelihoods of commons be adversely affected. Water rights and water de-corporatisation systems play a significant role in providing these kinds of security and addressing real challenges.
The way forward
With population growth in many parts of the world, especially in urban areas, freshwater resources are affected by increasing pollution and overuse of existing natural resources. It has resulted in growing scarcity in quality and quantity of water. A raising competition among the different users and uses of water is the consequence. Climate change and profound social injustices make sharing water among the world’s people an urgent challenge for our generation. Communities, local groups, NGOs and many more from all around the globe have vehemently opposed water privatisation. They have resisted this basic life source, which is nature given for all, being turned into a commodity to be controlled by few. One of the definitions of commons is that it should be available to all without discrimination. The global tragedy is that though water belongs to the commons, the poor and marginalised suffer from a denial of water almost on the lines of a ‘water apartheid’. This water apartheid will not end unless we declare water as a ‘common’ available to all. All over the globe, different campaigns for water justice demands that water be declared a fundamental human right. This right can not be denied to anyone just because of their inability to pay for the water.
Endnotes
1 A Rousing Day of Commons, A People’s Assembly and International Workshop focus on what we share By Jay Walljasper; http://onthecommons.org/rousing-day-commons
2 http://www.stwr.org/land-energy-water/the-global-commons-our-shared-resources.html
3 Geeta Lakshmi and S. Janakarajan; “Intricacies of Chennai Metropolitan Water Laws”; The ICFAI Journal of Urban Policy, Vol.2, No.1, pp.29-41, April 2007.
4 http://www.globalissues.org/video/739/maude-barlow-water-stress
5 Ibid.
6 http://www.globalwaterfund.com/Government.html
7 http://www.adb.org/Documents/books/Water-Rights/Water-Rights.pdf
8 http://www.refworld.org/docid/4538838d11.html