Why World Water Day Matters
UN-designated ‘World Water Day’ — March 22 — is nearly upon us.
Held annually since 1993, this year’s World Water Day should serve as a reminder of the distance we must travel if we are ever to make water what the UN in 2010 declared it to be: a universal human right.
‘America’s Water Crisis’
The lack of access to clean water is one of the global issues that the Covid-19 era has brought into urgent focus. Frequent hand-washing is not just impractical but impossible in large areas of the world — including in parts of the US, where the crippling impact of freezing storms on the water infrastructure in Texas and Jackson, Mississippi has made recent headlines.
The UK Guardian has provided an in depth look at the extent of the problem confronting the U.S. with its series ‘America’s Water Crisis,’ based on an investigation of 140,000 US public water systems. According to its findings, 25 million Americans are forced to drink contaminated water, with communities of color disproportionately affected.
Six years ago in Flint, Michigan city officials decided to save money by switching the city’s water supply to the Flint River, thereby exposing residents to high levels of lead and bacterial infections. As the UK Guardian documents, this is one of all too many examples of populations being supplied with contaminated water that causes stomach problems, cancers and neurological disorders.
Is bottled water a safe — if expensive — alternative? Not necessarily. The UK Guardian found that Whole Foods-manufactured bottled water, for example, contained potentially harmful levels of arsenic.
Meanwhile, water bills are becoming increasingly unaffordable. In some of the 12 cities the UK Guardian focused on, these bills consume more than 12% of the expenditure of low income families, and that percentage is predicted to swiftly rise. Often water shutoffs for nonpayment of bills have forced people to leave their homes, paving the way for gentrification.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who has sponsored legislation to deal with such endemic water problems, has estimated that 15 million Americans experienced a water shut off before the pandemic began. As many as 161,000 households in Detroit experienced water shut-offs between 2014 and the beginning of the pandemic, according to Monica Lewis-Patrick of We the People of Detroit.
The situation is even more dire in Indigenous lands in the U.S. — and around the globe — where water resources have long been plundered and polluted, with devastating consequences for traditional ways of living and the environment.
This has contributed to alarming rates of Covid-19 infection in, to take just one example, the Navajo Nation, where as many as 1 in 3 residents lack indoor plumbing and running water. Because uranium mining has contaminated many wells and springs in the Navajo reservation that crosses the borders of Arizona, Utah and New Mexico, households often are forced to depend on prohibitively expensive bottled water.
Another story of water injustice
The ongoing seizure and diversion of water to drive Indigenous peoples from their land have been tools of colonial domination from the Americas to Palestine and beyond.
Why should Palestine particularly concern us? In many ways, what is happening there is a joint Israeli-US endeavor. It is difficult to imagine how Israel could sustain its ongoing subjugation of the Palestinian people and colonization of Palestinian land without the $3.8 billion American taxpayers give Israel every year and the unstinting military and diplomatic support of the US government.
Since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip began in 1967, Israel has seized some 85% of the water in West Bank aquifers for its own exclusive use and that of its illegal West Bank settlements. The more than 650,000 Israelis living in those settlements are allotted six times more water than three million West Bank Palestinians.
While Israeli settlers freely irrigate their land and fill swimming pools with stolen water, the Israeli army and settlers routinely destroy Palestinian wells and water infrastructure, forcing farmers off their land. Israel regularly cuts off the water supply to Palestinian towns, villages and refugee camps, especially in the summer months when water allocated to them is diverted to settlements.
Families are left with only two options: spending up to half of their monthly expenditure on trucked water or leaving altogether.
In the Gaza Strip, the situation is even more dire, as 97% of the water is unfit to drink and the sole aquifer is on the verge of collapse. A 14-year-long Israeli blockade has barred the import of materials needed to repair the water and sanitation infrastructure, which has been repeatedly damaged by Israel’s military attacks.
The water crisis in Gaza is one reason why a 2012 UN report predicted that the Gaza Strip would be “unlivable” by 2020. It is not surprising that today in Gaza — and in the West Bank — the number of cases of Covid-19 is surging.
Taking a stand for water justice
Water is the basis of life and may increasingly be a cause of untimely death. Wars are already being fought over the control of water, and this is only going to continue as we confront the devastating effects of climate change.
Given these urgent circumstances, and with lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic to draw on, what will it take to move towards a world in which water is valued as a human right? And how can you get involved?
The struggle to achieve water justice is the broad theme of a March 22nd webinar, Water, Health and Human Rights: Marking World Water Day, from the U.S. to Palestine. You can get more information about it and register here.
Nancy Murray has taught and worked on human rights issues in Kenya, the UK and Middle East, and was for 25 years director of education at the ACLU of MA. She is a co-founder of the Alliance.
Children collecting water in Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem.