There’s No Such Thing as Free Water
Part III: The Problems We’re Not Solving by Banning Bottled Water
An Ecofiscal blog series by Jessie Sitnick and Dale Beugin
The Problems We’re Not Solving by Banning Bottled Water, seeks to unravel the web of issues that underlie “Ban the Bottle” movements and policies. As we discovered in part 2, reducing plastic waste is both a laudable and negligible goal of most bottled water policies. Laudable, because plastic waste really is a costly problem. Negligible, because if diverting plastic bottles from landfills was truly the point, other policies — for example, pricing of plastic waste and/or improved recycling programs — would make much more sense.
A fuzzier, but more powerful motivator behind many bottled water policies is a belief that water is free, should be free, and that selling it as a commodity is therefore a violation of our inalienable rights to it. Here we take a brief look at what is arguably one of the most important issues of our time — the human right to water — and ask an essential question: whose rights are we protecting when we ban bottled water?
Water Security and the Human Right to Water
Thousands have lived without love, not one without water. So wrote Auden. However a future with less available water to share amongst growing global populations is likely to lead to both love and life lost.
According to the World Bank, an increasingly hotter, dryer climate could raise water security issues and tensions in places that have historically enjoyed unfettered access to reliable water supplies. Already, 1.6 billion people live in countries and regions with absolute water scarcity. That number is expected to rise to 2.8 billion people by 2025. We will most viscerally experience climate change through our water, and the policy decisions we make around that water will have significant ethical dimensions and fairness implications.
In this context, there is understandable and urgent concern around who will, and will not, be afforded access to safe, healthy drinking water in the thirsty years ahead.
In 2010 the United Nations passed a resolution explicitly acknowledging the human right to water and sanitation, and more specifically to clean drinking water. The tenets of its water resolution are worth noting:
1 Sufficient. The water supply for each person must be sufficient and continuous for personal and domestic uses. These uses ordinarily include drinking, personal sanitation, washing of clothes, food preparation, personal and household hygiene. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), between 50 and 100 litres of water per person per day are needed to ensure that most basic needs are met and few health concerns arise.
2 Safe. The water required for each personal or domestic use must be safe, therefore free from micro-organisms, chemical substances and radiological hazards that constitute a threat to a person’s health.
3 Acceptable. Water should be of an acceptable colour, odour and taste for each personal or domestic use.
4 Physically accessible. Everyone has the right to a water and sanitation service that is physically accessible within, or in the immediate vicinity of the household, educational institution, workplace or health institution.
5 Affordable. Water, and water facilities and services, must be affordable for all. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) suggests that water costs should not exceed 3 per cent of household income.
These tenets define what the UN means by the human right to water: that all people should have affordable, physical access to enough safe, clean water to meet their basic human and domestic needs. It is disturbing, and surprising, that people across Canada live without these basic provisions, but that is indeed the case. A recent report counted 1,838 water advisories in effect across the country, 139 just in First Nations communities, and 500 in B.C. alone.
It is also important for Canadians to note what the UN is NOT saying when it defines the human right to water. It is not saying that all human beings have the right to use and consume as much free water as they want.
Here is what the UN is saying: all people should have affordable, physical access to enough safe, clean water to meet their basic human and domestic needs.
Here is what the UN is NOT saying: all human beings have the right to use and consume as much free water as they want.
There is a substantial difference between those two statements, which directly connects to an ecofiscal approach to water policy. When water is free, or cheaply priced, people over-consume it, and this — in turn — results in significant environmental and economic costs (not to worry, part 4 is devoted precisely to that issue).
The High Cost of Free Water
It is easy to confuse the price we pay for something with its cost. But in the case of water — as is the case with many other things we consume — the two are not equal. Indeed, the gap between price and cost is the circle ecofiscal policies strive to square. Call it a correction of market signals. Call it an internalization of externalities. Call it full-cost accounting. Whatever you call it, the underlying premise is the same: the cost we pay for our water consumption far exceeds the price we pay for it.
Among other unintended consequences of bottled water bans is the unfortunate message that water should be free. Paired with the myth of Canada’s limitless water abundance, this narrative is leading us in a dangerous direction.
As the chart below shows, Canadians have some of the cheapest water in the developed world and, correspondingly, use significantly more of it on average than people living elsewhere. Indeed, Canadians use three times the amount sited by the UN as “sufficient for basic human and domestic use.”:
Do we somehow need more water than other peoples (what with all our sweaty hockey equipment and sticky maple syrup stains)? No. But it’s hard to value what you don’t pay for and, in this way, our water resources are vulnerable to the tragedy of the commons.
Internalizing the external costs of water gluttony is necessary if we want to protect our collective water resources, especially as dry-spells and droughts become more common. And that means putting a price on something many of us are used to getting, and expect to get, for free.
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
The governments of both California and BC have come to terms with the need to price water in the midst of unprecedented and crushing droughts. But not without question or controversy.
Interestingly, the move to institute stronger water pricing in BC has met with opposing opposition. On the one hand, BC’s water pricing policy was criticized for being too cheap — charging big water users, for example Nestlé, a flat fee of just over $2 per million litres. On the other hand, some individuals equated pricing water to commodifying it , thus opening up a dangerous precedent under NAFTA.
There’s a lot of tension within and between these two perspectives. How do you measure the value of water? How do you price it fairly and effectively? Who should have to pay and how much is enough? (We have some thoughts on that). Finally, what’s the difference between the government charging people for their water use and a company selling it to them? (There is a difference and here’s a great blog on that topic, as well).
These are not easy questions to answer. But try to answer them we must if we are intent on protecting the water we depend on — now and in years to come.
What Human Rights Problem Does Banning the Bottle Solve?
Given all this, one could fairly argue that the best way to secure the human right to water is to stop thinking of it as ample and free, and to start treating it as what it truly is — valuable.
Chances are, the progressive decision-makers who have led bottled water bans on university campuses and city halls would agree completely with the paragraph above. So when these same decision-makers argue that water from the tap is the more ethical choice than water from the bottle, whose rights are they seeking to protect?
One thing is clear: it’s probably not the rights of their own constituents. Students at the University of Vermont and the University of Winnipeg — where bottled water was banned — were not being forced to pay for water, they were choosing to pay for it (and when that was no longer an option, they chose to buy pop instead). Their human rights were never really in question.
The same could be said for banning bottled water on city-owned properties. As long as our city buildings still have clean tap water pumping through their fountains and faucets, we needn’t fear that people enjoying our parks and recreation centres are going thirsty.
Taking away the option to buy a bottle of water doesn’t increase a sports fans’ or festival goers’ access to water. If anything, based on UVM’s experience, it might actually be limiting it.
Let’s Take This Discussion Upstream
The ethical/philosophical position against the sale of water is clearly tied to a broader concern of harm. By buying a bottle of water, we become complicit in a problem bigger than our own water consumption. We become part of the upstream impact of bottled water.
But what are those upstream impacts? Are they the same for every bottle of bottled water? And are bottled water bans the best solution for addressing them? These questions lead us to the 4th and final blog in our series: Why We Can’t Stop Buying Water (But Need to Buy it Smarter).
But before we dive in, take a moment to look at the very first ingredient in that can of pop in your fridge or the hand lotion in your cabinet.
Chances are it says: water.
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Jessie Sitnick (Communications Director) and Dale Beugin (Research Director) are both staff of Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission.
