Water: a common good in our hands
The fil bleu of life
Relegating the value of water to only one dimension, to only one aspect of life is not only a deception but a dangerous disregard.
Water is the foundation of life in its complexity, from the macrocosm to microcosm, regulating life on Earth but also our own organism, of which it is the major component. Water is a universal human right in itself, ensuring survival and dignity, but also an indirect basis for ensuring food, nutrition, and health, aspects never so urgent as in this period of pandemic and dysfunction. Water may divide peoples, but in many cases, it unites communities, religions, and cultures. Entire economies depend on water, it sustains delicate diplomatic relationships and marks commercial relations.
Water is a multifaceted resource. Yet at the same time, it remains the fundamental good that connects every living being on Earth.
In talking about water it is necessary to remember the crucial value of this resource, still too often underestimated, forgotten, ignored, wasted, contaminated, and debased.
In March 2021, the latest UNESCO report entitled Valuing Water highlighted how, in a world increasingly desertified and altered by climate change, water management and water security are still far from the goals set out in SDG 6.. 2.2 billion people in the world still do not have access to drinking water. More than 700,000 children under the age of 5 die every day from diseases caused by the absence of adequate sanitation and quality water.
These are data that clash with inefficiencies and losses, carelessness and speculation. In fact, since December of last year, water has been listed on the Nasdaq California financial market, with the Water Index. This decision has generated reactions and strong opposition, but also many interests, especially from traders and investors waiting to see the price of water rise as a result of its progressive depletion.
Water markets are already widespread in other countries of the world, such as Australia, and are used by the government to “manage the problem of impending water scarcity.” Yet, the fact that water is a common good of humanity, and as such “the management of water resources should not be subject to the rules of the internal market;” was already clearly recognized back in 2004 in the resolution of the European Parliament.
How then can we protect a common good from such paradoxes and illogicalities in a world that is and will always be more thirsty?
The Italian case: 10 years after the referendum for public water
Between 12 and 13 June 2011, almost 26 million Italians voted in the referendum for the national water service to remain public. A clear decision, expressed by the absolute majority of the Italian people and promoted by the Italian Forum of Water Movements, a group of associations, unions, and citizens’ organizations, to promote the concept of water as a common good, free from the dangers of commodification.
Yet 10 years after this referendum, the Italian picture appears fragmented, incomplete, incredibly complex, and at times contradictory. Despite sudden interruptions of water supply and increasing regional indices of water dependence, there is still no law on public water management in Italy. Nor is there the text of the referendum as voted by the Italian citizens, transformed over time by more than 200 amendments and adjustments, including those aimed at reinserting the “guaranteed profit” for water managers.
One of the most obvious consequences, besides the progressive increase of private water management, is the lack of investment in the maintenance of water networks, money that, according to the Italian Water Forum, instead ends up in the pockets of shareholders, both public and private, as dividends. Yet the state of the Italian water network is obsolete, with 42% of the water supplied lost on average in distribution. This is an amount that, as estimated by ISTAT 2021, could ensure water for about 44 million people a year.
To this particularly complex situation, it is necessary to add the increases in water prices for consumers in most Italian regions, that are now preparing for water rationing. In Sicily alone, 552,000 families report irregularities in water supply, dealing with situations in which homes, bars, and restaurants can go up to 20 days without water.
With higher tariffs and difficulties in accessing the water service, the risk that only those who can afford to pay for water will actually have access to it is becoming more and more real.
Water: the snapshot from Europe
The debate sparked by water in Italy is not an isolated case.
The first two decades of the 2000s also saw several other countries in Europe in turmoil to ensure full implementation of the right to water. Alongside Paris, which started a process of re-municipalization of water services in 2008, there have been many referendums on water, through which the people have made their voices heard: in Berlin (2011) to end the concession given to the private companies RWE and Veolia; in Greece (2014) to avoid the privatization of the public company that provides water services; in Spain — Barcelona (2018), to request a re-municipalization of the water supply; in Slovenia where its citizens will go to vote next month, on 11 July.
Contexts that have been bolstered by the presence and support of Right2Water, a movement of citizens, community groups, and trade unions leading a rights-based, not market-based, approach to water. Contexts that are often intertwined with legal disputes, political interests, social activism, resistance, and contradictions, complexities that in some cases hinder the very understanding of the real local and national scenarios.
The reason why understanding the real functioning of national scenarios is so important stems from the fact that the European Commission defers the implementation of the human right to water to its member states.
Equally, water is back among European priorities, first with the Drinking Water Directive (2184/2020) aimed at ensuring free access to high-quality tap water in all public buildings and with the European Green Deal, in which minorities and poor people are put back at the center of water access policies, focusing on win-win investments, reusing water for agricultural irrigation, promoting sustainable water harvesting infrastructure, and nature-based solutions to prevent droughts and floods.
Towards Water Participatory management
One of the main misunderstandings when dealing with the sensitive issue of access to water is that private water is mistaken for high-cost water, while public water is confused with free water. In reality, efficient and widespread management of services and water supply imposes costs (management, maintenance, efficiency, and modernization) even in the case of publicly managed water, costs that fall on consumers.
What is frightening is that when goods as precious and exhaustible as water are subject to market principles, their price is subject to speculative logic rather than the real cost of providing the service, with the result that it is often the poor who pay the most. In fact, states have an obligation to use the maximum resources available to ensure the fulfillment of human rights, something that private companies do not have.
Studies also confirm that those who find themselves in conditions of economic scarcity are often less intuitive, less farsighted, and less mentally responsive, with the consequence that they will unconsciously tend to repeat their condition of scarcity ad infinitum. A mechanism that subordinates them to the control of the rich, increasing the gap of inequality that already scratches the current social and economic fabric of the world and undermining the principles of water justice.
For this very reason, UN representatives such as the current Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, in charge since 2020, have expressed serious concern about the commodification of water.
“Water is indeed a vital resource for the economy — both large and small-scale players — but the value of water is more than that. Water has a set of vital values for our society that the market logic does not recognize and therefore, cannot manage adequately, let alone in a financial space so prone to speculation,” said Arrojo-Agudo.
A view already expressed by his predecessors, Leo Heller and Catarina de Albuquerque, who recall the importance of ensuring transparent, democratic water management, ensuring full participation and collaboration by citizens. Forms of integrated and participatory water management, in which governance comes from below or is entrusted directly into the hands of those who actually use the service, are in fact fundamental tools to ensure systems of socio-ecological development. A confirmation comes from an FAO case study in Andhra Pradesh (India), where participatory forms of groundwater management are considered as necessary methods to ensure the survival of rural communities and small producers.
The ongoing debate on the ecological transition and the important political and institutional appointments of this year, including the G20, COP26, and UN Food System Summit, all start from the assumption that we cannot delay any longer: we need equitable and inclusive systems that disseminate and defend natural resources and their ethical use.
If this is true, we cannot allow the existence of first and second-class citizens in access to resources essential for life, such as water. Guaranteeing water as a common good is, therefore, a central prerogative for collective well-being.
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