Press Releases: Right To Water

Media Statement: “Yesterday, California governor Jerry Brown signed A.B. 685, which gives the basic human right to water and sanitation to all Californians. We are proud that the governor has signed this legislation, following the lead of the United Nations, states like Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, and communities like Detroit, which have already affirmed the human right to water. AB 685, however, was truly the first citizen-led effort in a U.S. state to recognize this basic right.

Press release: While the UN officially recognized water as a human right in July 2010, lack of access to clean water and sanitation is not a far-flung problem, according to national consumer group Food & Water Watch, which today released the report Our Right to Water: A People’s Guide to Implementing the United Nations’ Recognition of the Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation In the United States.

“We can’t take our access to safe and affordable drinking water and sanitation for granted—even here in the United States,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. “Between a lack of federal spending to maintain our infrastructure to the rash of city sell-offs of water services to private water companies, to the risks that fracking poses to our drinking water supplies—more than ever, we need to make sure Washington is protecting our human right to water.”

Press Release: Today, national consumer organization Food & Water Watch announced a new program to scrutinize the largely unchallenged claims that market-based schemes like pollution trading, water markets, privatization and commodification of common resources will help reduce pollution and manage our water resources.

Media Statement: “It is both sad and ironic that on World Water Day, an occasion in which we celebrate grassroots efforts to uphold and protect water as a human right, that we’d also see several powerful nations undermine this movement. At the Rio+20 negotiations currently taking place at the United Nations, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel have called for weakening or taking away the human right to water and sanitation.

Media Statement: “The 6th World Water Forum this week, despite lagging attendance and Sarkozy reneging on his promise to attend, has still been an opportunity for multinational water corporations to solidify their plans to further privatize nature at Rio+20. Thanks to Canada’s successful effort to weaken language in the forum’s ministerial document regarding the human right to water, and as demonstrated by the banking industry’s plans to integrate water trading into futures markets and to create derivative water-based financial instruments, the privatization of water has accelerated dramatically, creating a setback for right to water as resolved by the UN.

Media Statement: “Yesterday’s ministerial statement, while shrouded in happy language about the right to water, was a step backwards for water justice and the UN process that has begun to enforce the human right to water. The forum document, like the forum itself, is illegitimate because it presupposes that corporations have a role in democratic water governance, when nothing could be further from the truth. The entire event itself is a corporate tradeshow parading as a multilateral forum.

Press Release: New analysis by national consumer advocacy group Food & Water Watch finds that Illinois’s largest private water utilities are earning profits of as much as $18 million dollars a year, while raising rates for consumers by as much as 23 percent

The Council of Canadians and Food and Water Watch commend the Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation for stressing the urgent need for States to increase funding for the fulfillment of the human right to water and sanitation with a particular emphasis on meeting obligations towards the most marginalized and un-served segments of society in her report to the General Assembly today.

Press Release: Entrusting water utility operation to private enterprises is an inadequate method of realizing the human right to water, finds analysis released today by the advocacy organization Food & Water Watch.