The Human Right to Water Extends to Ecosystems

Healthy ecosystems, abundant biodiversity, and suitable legal frameworks are critical to ensuring the long-term preservation of precious freshwater.

Human rights to water and sanitation have long been established. However, according to a new UN assessment on advances on drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene, nearly 30% of people still lack clean drinking water, and more than 60% lack properly managed sanitation.

Water supply for human consumption is complicated; yet, water is a natural renewable resource that does not emerge from a tap and does not finish at the toilet: the sources of our water become the recipients of our effluent.These water sources are being safeguarded and protected in new ways.The relevance of a safe, clean, healthy, and sustainable environment in allowing essential human rights, such as the rights to life, health, food, and water, is highlighted in a recent UN report. It recognises that the loss of vital ecosystem services, such as drinking water and biodiversity, jeopardises those rights, for example, by lowering agricultural and fishery outputs, negatively impacting health, or eliminating natural filters from the water cycle.

Human right to water and sanitation

It is a legal requirement that everyone has access to safe drinking water and sanitation. The right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation was “recognised” as a human right on July 28, 2010, as being “essential” for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights. 3. The Human Rights Council approved Resolution 15/9 in October 2010, in which it said “that The right to safe drinking water and sanitation is intrinsically linked to the right to a decent standard of living. connected to the right to the best bodily and mental health possible, as well as the right to life and human dignity.” Despite the fact that the two rights are linked,

• Everyone, without exception, has the right to sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible, and inexpensive water for personal and home use under the human right to drinking water.
•  Everyone in all aspects of life, without discrimination, has the right to physical and inexpensive access to sanitation that is safe, hygienic, secure, socially and culturally acceptable, and affords privacy and dignity.

The Protocol on Water and Health

The Protocol on Water and Health is jointly secretariat by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) Regional Office for Europe. In London in 1999, the UNECE–WHO Regional Office for Europe Protocol on Water and Health was signed, and it went into effect in 2005. The Protocol now has 26 Parties and 36 Signatories from around Europe, as well as a number of countries actively working within its framework as of February 2019.

The Protocol’s major goal is to preserve human health and well-being by improving water management, including water ecosystem protection, and preventing, controlling, and reducing water-related diseases.The Protocol is a one-of-a-kind international agreement designed to ensure that everyone has access to safe drinking water and proper sanitation, as well as to successfully protect water utilised as a source of drinking water.

The Protocol establishes a solid foundation for putting human rights to water and sanitation into practise. The Protocol is unique in that it contains both an inter-state regulatory and a human rights component.

Right to water

The human right to water is dependent on the actions of national courts because there is no international organisation that can enforce it. The foundation for this has been built by the constitutionalisation of economic, social, and cultural rights (ESCR) in one of two ways: as “directive principles,” which are aims that are typically non-justiciable, or as specifically protected and enforceable through the courts.

South Africa

The right to water is established in the South African constitution and implemented by ordinary legislation. This is evidence of a minor change of the “subsidiary legislation model,” the second method of constitutionalization. This indicates that a major percentage of the content and implementation of the right is handled through a regular domestic act with some constitutional authority.

India

A water usage issue emerged because the state of Haryana was using the Jamuna River for irrigation while the citizens of Delhi required it for drinking. Household use of water trumped commercial use, and the court ordered that Haryana must allow adequate water to reach Delhi for consumption and domestic use.

Subhash Kumar v. State of Bihar

The case of Subhash Kumar v. State of Bihar, in which a discharge of sludge from washeries into the Bokaro River was challenged through public interest litigation, is also noteworthy. The courts determined that the right to life, as guaranteed by Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, included the right to drink clean water. The lawsuit was dismissed on the facts, with the court ruling that the petition was submitted not in the public interest but for the petitioner’s personal gain, and that continuing the case would be an abuse of process.

Conclusion

Given that access to water is a source of concern and potential conflict across borders in the Middle East, South Asia, the Eastern Mediterranean, and parts of North America, among other places, some non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and academics argue that the right to water has a transnational or extraterritorial dimension. They claim that because water resources naturally overlap and traverse boundaries, governments have a legal obligation to act in a way that does not jeopardise other states’ enjoyment of human rights. The formal recognition of this legal requirement may help to mitigate the harmful consequences of the worldwide “water shortage” (as a future threat and one negative result of human overpopulation).