Debate: Access to water is both a human right and a development challenge.
According to Science magazine, more than 4 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water. This figure is considerably higher than the UN’s estimate of more than 2 billion people lacking safely managed drinking water services. In light of this situation, the United Nations declared access to water a fundamental right and incorporated it into the Sustainable Development Goals, which governments are expected to achieve within the next five years. However, the organisation has already admitted that the goals are ‘off track’. This issue was discussed at a forum organised by 20minutos in collaboration with Acciona, titled ‘Access to water as a pillar of development’.
Participants included Laercio Santos (Innovation Manager at acciona.org), Mª Mar Rivero (Head of Water and Sanitation at ONGAWA), Pablo Alcalde (Head of the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Department at Acción Contra el Hambre) and Pedro Arrojo (UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation). The round table was moderated by Héctor M. Garrido, Editor-in-Chief of 20minutos. They discussed the barriers to accessing water and the measures that must be implemented to guarantee this right.
Participants agreed that the most significant advance in achieving universal access to water was its recognition as a human right by the UN. “This implies that governments at the national level are responsible for ensuring that everyone has access to safe drinking water,” says Rivero. However, the panellists admit that there is still a long way to go before the sixth Sustainable Development Goal of the 2030 Agenda — universal and equitable access to safe drinking water and sanitation for all — is achieved. “We are nowhere near there yet. We are a long way off because the current pace is absolutely insufficient”, stresses Arrojo. Nevertheless, he adds, “we must strive to achieve it.”
Barriers to guaranteeing access
The experts argue that access problems go beyond the absence of water in certain areas. They point to factors such as heavy metal contamination, high costs, armed conflict and climate change. “In indigenous villages in Brazil, 80% of people are contaminated with mercury”, says Santos. “In Peru, the government acknowledged that 33% of the population is poisoned daily by metals, largely from mining”, adds the UN rapporteur.
Rivero, meanwhile, says that some families have access to a water point close to home but cannot afford the fee. This is the case in Tunisia, where “34% of wells have been closed due to people not having the money to pay the electricity bill”, Arrojo explains. “In some communities, access to water accounts for 40% of their income”, adds Alcalde.
With regard to climate change, Arrojo reminds us that this does not mean the planet will ‘dry up’. “It will rain less frequently and there will be greater climate variability. There will be a greater risk of both drought and flooding”, he says. ‘The problem will not be a lack of water, but poor territorial and urban hydrological planning”, he adds. For this reason, he believes that Spain cannot continue to allow aquifers to be overexploited and illegal wells to be dug. “This makes us more vulnerable in the event of the next drought.”
This issue is exacerbated by armed conflicts, as water sources cannot always be controlled in certain areas. In Colombia, for example, access to and control of water also means controlling the population. “There are places where landmines are at the access points to the springs”, explains Alcalde.
Ongoing projects
In the face of these difficulties, experts are working in their respective sectors to improve access to water. “We have implemented solar pumping in self-consumption systems to reduce electricity bills for communities of 500 families, which can sometimes amount to 1,000 euros a month just for pumping,” says the head of acciona.org, referring to projects implemented in remote areas of Peru and Chile.
The money saved through these mechanisms is set aside for system maintenance. However, this is not the organisation’s only initiative. “We are developing household-level technologies to address the issue of heavy metals in the Amazon”, adds Santos, who confirms that acciona.org is trying to replicate the projects in different areas. However, the first step is always to ‘listen’ to the communities and understand their particular situation.
The head of Action Against Hunger agrees with Santos. “Technologically, there is no problem. We have a range of alternatives for water supply,” says Alcalde. “In the Sahel, we work with groundwater; in Latin America, with gravity networks; and in Syria, with solar systems. All of these options are accessible to the communities,” he adds.
The head of ONGAWA also agrees with her colleagues. “It is a mistake to reduce access problems to a lack of infrastructure”, says Rivero, who advocates a holistic approach to the challenge that takes into account water, sanitation and hygiene. “More than 800 million people defecate in the open because they lack basic sanitation facilities”, he says. He adds that this is closely linked to gender equality. “We cannot talk about equity if there is no system in a household that allows women to manage their hygiene in a dignified way.”
Finally, the experts explain that, to achieve the goal of guaranteeing access to water, collaboration between governments, organisations and companies is necessary. ‘There has to be legislation, public policies and enforcement”, stresses Rivero. “Governments must be consistent with the commitments they made at the UN”, she says.
Laercio Santos adds that technology is fundamental to projects, but it is more important to involve the community in them.
Acciona.org’s mission has always been to serve communities by providing them with electricity and access to water and sanitation services. The organisation aims to provide communities with a technical partner who can offer maintenance services. In recent years, acciona.org has transitioned from providing access to water to developing regenerative ecosystem infrastructures.
“Technology is a fundamental component in all water and sanitation projects,” says Laercio Santos. He explains that these projects can range from simple infrastructure work to more complex systems, such as solar pumping. “While there is always a technological component, the most important part of any project is what comes before: finding a way to involve the community”, says the expert.
In this sense, a holistic approach to project development and tripartite collaboration between companies, foundations and governments is particularly important. “The organisations on the ground are fundamental to the implementation of a social project”, he says. However, he also points out that these projects cannot be carried out without the state. “Together with the UN, we can exert pressure, but it is governments who have to act”, he says.
Pedro Arrojo says:
“We have to make peace with our rivers and ecosystems and promote democratic water governance.”
The Blue Planet is facing a water crisis, and Pedro Arrojo argues that we must prioritise two challenges in order to address it. Firstly, the UN rapporteur believes that we must ‘make peace with our rivers and ecosystems’ because the lives of millions of people without access to drinking water depend on them. This means restoring their sustainability and ensuring they are in good condition. Secondly, Arrojo believes that water governance must be promoted as a common good that is accessible to all but cannot be appropriated by anyone.
Arrojo believes that water should not be treated as a commodity. “Water and sanitation services must be managed as public services of general interest, free from profit-making, with a transparent, participatory approach that leaves no one behind,” he says. To achieve this, he believes it is necessary to establish ethical priorities. “First, water for life; second, water for the common interest of society; and third, water for economic development”, he says, before arguing that the value of water needed by a family to live with dignity cannot be compared to the value of water used to irrigate avocados for export.
Mª Mar Rivero adds:
“We must focus not only on access, but also on the integrated management of water resources.”
The first step towards achieving the UN target is ensuring access to water. However, that is not all. “We must focus not only on access, but also on the integrated management of water resources, from source to completion of the water cycle,” says Mª Mar Rivero. In order to achieve this, it is essential to guarantee that there is sufficient water available that is of good quality, accessible and culturally acceptable.
For this reason, her organisation, which has been working in rural communities in Africa and Latin America for more than 30 years, tries to raise public awareness of water issues. “A management approach that considers all costs and acknowledges that not everyone can pay the same tariff is fundamental”, Rivero stresses.
He also believes that the rural world is being left to its own devices, which is why he is calling for the authorities to pay more attention to the issue. “Governments must support hydrological planning by addressing the needs of these communities”, he says. He also says that communities are often blamed for what happens, but in his opinion this should not be the case. “Communities are not isolated. There are laws, a municipality and a government”, he says.
Pablo Alcalde adds:
“People are now rights holders; they should not have to rely on state welfare or charity.”
Following the recognition of the right to drinking water and sanitation, Pablo Alcalde believes that it is now time to exercise this right and support the communities that need it most. “Everyone is entitled to this right; people should not have to rely on charity or state assistance,” says the head of Action Against Hunger. He adds that by understanding people, sustainable models can be built within an ecosystem that human beings need to survive.
Alcalde also points out that his organisation has different approaches to addressing the problem of universal access to water. “One is emergency response and protecting lives, but then you have to understand which capacities need to be developed in the communities where we work”, he says. The next step is to transform those systems and strengthen duty bearers so that the right can be realised. The organisation works closely with communities to help them achieve the 100 litres of water per person per day recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO) for basic consumption and hygiene needs.
