“The water that we extract from nature for various uses must be managed as a common good, a shared good that must be accessible to all, but not appropriated by anyone,” said Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation.
In his report, Arrojo-Agudo frames water as a shared, life-sustaining resource whose management should be the reponsibility of States. States, he added, should adopt a human rights-based approach to managing aquatic ecosystems and the water cycle instead of considering water as a commodity that should be managed according to the logic of the market.
“From a neoliberal perspective […] access, use and benefit from water depend on the ability of each individual to pay, while access to information and management are in the hands of the majority shareholders of the corporations in charge of these services. This not only contradicts the conception of water as a common good but is inconsistent with an approach to water management based on human rights.”