Water is a common good for all, says UN expert

“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,” he explained. “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.”

The expert further argued for a human rights-based approach to water management by stressing that water is key to the way populations settle in territories, to social cohesion and to coexistence in human societies.

Arrojo-Agudo outlined three ethical priority levels for water usage to assist States in establishing norms and legislation around water management: “water for life,” or water essential to sustain life and human dignity, individually and collectively; “water in functions, uses and services of general interest,” or water uses considered to be of general interest by society; and “water economy,” or water used for productive activities, such as extractive industries and large-scale agriculture, that allow the improvement of peoples’ living standards.

He also stressed the importance of ‘subsidiarity’, involving local communities in the governance of water resources, particularly by recognizing water as a common good. “[This] requires involving and making that community responsible for its management,” the expert said, advocating for non-profit governance nested at the local level, at the basin level and even at transborder and global levels.

He further called for stronger international cooperation to protect water resources from the growing threats of climate change. 

In his report, Arrojo-Agudo offers a set of recommendations to States on how water and aquatic systems should be managed as acommon good. These include strategies that promote the use of water based on principles of non-deterioration, or avoiding toxic discharges into ecosystems that would lead to the deterioration of aquatic systems; restoration, which implies charging the costs of pollution to those who cause it; cost recovery, meaning matching fees for water and sanitation services to the actual cost of the service; and cost-effectiveness, or considering all possible options and adopting the most cost-effective one to achieve goals. The expert also advised using the human rights standards of non-discrimination, equal participation, transparency and accountability.