From Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, UN Special Rapporteur for the right to water and sanitation:
As the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, and as my mandate draws to a close on October 31st, I am releasing a policy brief on the state of Amazonian rivers and the human rights of the peoples and communities that depend on them.
The prevailing extractivist model is triggering an alarming crisis. It not only violates the human right to water and sanitation in the world’s most water-rich region—poisoning rivers, wetlands, fisheries, and food supplies through mining activities, massive oil spills, and agrochemicals from the aggressive expansion of export-oriented agriculture—but also disrupts riverine habitats with large dams that destroy the fisheries sustaining Indigenous peoples and riverbank communities. Furthermore, it drives massive deforestation that severely impacts the so-called “flying rivers”—upon which rainfall across much of the continent depends—accelerates climate change, drastically raises temperatures, and threatens to push forest ecosystems past a “point of no return,” potentially transforming much of the rainforest into dry savanna.
This warning is issued in the hope that governments and citizens—both within the Amazon region and across the globe—will respond.
We will publish this policy brief here on our website on Monday, and we invite all Blue Communities and other organisations and institutions to declare their support (online form will be available) and to share it.
