The Human Right to Water: Justice . . . or Sham?

The Legal, Philosophical, and Theological Background of the New Human Right to Water

Fiechter-Widemann

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781498294072
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Law Theory & Practice
• Index: Law

Water is a matter of life and death. Advanced technology and engineering enable humans to gain better access to it. Nonetheless, the conditions and effort required to reach this goal remain colossal in many countries. Building a lasting infrastructure for adequate treatment before and after use is costly. Therefore, the author believes that a radical change of thinkingamong people around the world, from the domestic to the large-scale users, becomes a priority. Even if the United Nations entitles all people to justice for water, more responsible and ethical use of it by all interested parties is more important than the spreading of promises, which, in practice,may turn out to be a sham. Only a better understanding that access to water rests on the efforts of everyone, without exception, will reduce overuse, waste, and pollution of the indispensable resource.This volume, while written from a theological, philosophical, and legal perspective (focusing on John Calvin, John Rawls, and Paul Ricoeur), demonstrates that water cannot be merelyunderstood as a human right, but also has to be dealt with from an economic point of view as well as under the authority of the Golden Rule.

Part I

Water Inequality

A Global Challenge for Humanity

Introduction

There is no doubt that the last quarter of the twentieth century was a time for rethinking how human beings live. The warnings sounded by Hans Jonas1 and the Club of Rome,2 as well as the UN Declarations briefly mentioned earlier, helped open discussion, including the discussion about water.

Since this discourse has become a global one, I felt that understanding what globalization means should be a priority.

Though the chapter I am now dedicating to this concept should be considered as something of a digression, I feel that the time spent on it will not be wasted. It should provide a better understanding of why civil society, including the churches, wants to make its voice heard on a worldwide platform as a globalized civil society.3

It is true that we who are both Christians and world citizens are used to letting “water specialists” manage this vital resource. Perhaps we now need to share this responsibility, in our own way. But how?

I note that for me, the 2005 Ecumenical Declaration on Water As a Human Right and a Public Good is one possible answer to this question. It is a call to be aware that potable water is a high-priority challenge for humanity.

In Part II I will come back to this important document which, I will say right away, contains both an ethical focus pertaining to mankind’s relationship to water, and an operational focus pertaining to methods for meeting humanity’s water needs.

Now we will take a look at how globalization came into our lives.

1. Jonas, Le principe responsabilité.

2. Meadows, et al., The Limits to Growth.

3. Al Jayyousi, “Water as a Human Right,” 121–31.

Chapter I

The Concept of “Globality”

The Intellectual Space Reshaped by Globalization

Should the concept of globalization give cause for fear, or hope?

Everyone knows that globalization began a very long time ago, with commercial exchanges between Europe and Asia in the sixteenth century.

The concept was relegated to the back burner during the atrocities of the two World Wars, but again came to the fore, especially economically, at the end of the 1990s. It drew special attention when Thomas L. Friedman’s famous slogan proclaimed in 2005, “The world is flat.”4

It now has an impressive number of definitions. Miroslav Jovanovic, a UN economist and professor in Geneva, has counted more than six hundred.5

It is impossible to discuss the human right to water without referring to this concept, since the potable water question does not touch solely on local issues but also on the whole world, which has become more interdependent.

It is not my purpose here to find the best definition of the concept, or to describe globalization’s advantages and disadvantages. On the other hand, I would like to note that in 2014, more and more philosophers are trying to move beyond the narrow scope of the economy to envision a human world that is more interconnected, not only in a technological sense but also mentally.

That is how a former Harvard professor, economist Pankaj Ghemawat, came to begin travels in Asia in 2011, in particular visiting Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines. There he discovered the importance of getting past prejudice and opening oneself to the culture and beliefs of populations other than those in America and Europe. He reached the conclusion that we need to give up the “caveman” mentality and work to create more empathy among the people of our planet.

The key to banishing the caveman mentality [ . . . ] is to build empathy or [ . . . ] improve people so that they improve the world. [ . . . ] We just need to reduce by half the ratio of people who do not care about helping foreigners to those who do.6

Is it not significant that we can read in the work of Ghemawat,7 a man of Indian heritage but American by adoption, about this philosophical notion of “care” that is so much in fashion these days and as we shall see later was already anticipated, in a way, by Emmanuel Lévinas and Paul Ricœur?

Another important work along these lines that attempts to “humanize” globalization is one by Mireille Delmas-Marty,8 published in 2013, to which we will come back a number of times.

The Intrusive and Paradoxical Concept of “Globality”

How could we fail to be surprised at seeing how many familiar concepts have been labeled “global” since the end of the twentieth century? The phenomenon has become so common that it passes almost unnoticed.

And yet . . . there is more and more talk of global poverty, global justice, global democracy, and global responsibility.

It was actually the fact of the “global” poverty concept’s appearance on the international political scene in the 1990s that made me wonder about the origin of this strange concept, this pair of mismatched morphemes that do not seem to grate on anyone’s ears.

I believe I have found one of the potential keys to answering this question.

So, swept along on the wave started by the slogan “think globally, act locally” (attributed to French theologian Jacques Ellul), I too began to “dare to think” globally, referring to Immanuel Kant and his famous “sapere aude.”9

“Globality”: The Winds of Neoliberalism

One pla...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Synopsis
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• General Introduction
• Part I: Water Inequality
• Part II: Normative Solutions to Water Inequality
• Part III: A Changing Water Ethic
• Section I: Is Natural Law a Justifiable Cause or Basis for the New Human Right to Water?
• Section II: Motives for Actions that Are in Conformity with Duty, Good, and Useful for Universal Access to Potable Water
• Part IV: Justice and Responsibility
• Part V: The Theological Structure of Potable Water’s Challenges
• Part VI: Strategies for Mitigating Water Poverty