Today....I was put to test. ("Emergency" blog)

Today I am writing an "EMERGENCY" blog.

I woke up to my daily morning routine- using the bathroom, washing my face, brushing my teeth. I tried to flush the toilet- no response. I tried to wash my hands, no water flew from the faucet, consequently I could not brush my teeth or wash my face.

I was certainly not entertained by the idea. In fact, it was too strange and foreign an idea. I live in a condo building and generally water maintenance or repairs are pre-announced at least a week in advance.

However, emergencies cannot be prepared for in advance. The main water pipe broke and the main floor inside and outside the building was flooded overnight. The City of Mississauga shut off water supply to our building. There is no guarantee that water will be running again by the end of the day. However, I do like to point out that IMMEDIATE action was taken to repair the damage (thankfully).

I could not help but compare my building main water pipe breaking, to the village outside of Kisumu, whose water pipe was also broken. Mine will most likely be fixed within a day, theirs has been broken for longer than it should be.

Being put to test as I was this morning certainly made the impact on how I empathise now with the dilemma of lacking access to water. In the process of flooding, my mind was also flooded with questions that resurfaced:

How dependent are we on water for our everyday needs? How long can WE (here) survive without water running for a day? What action does our government take to resolve our water shortage? What actions do we take to fix the problem or what options do we have available to compensate for the shortage in tap water? Why are we so priviledged, and cannot imagine our lives lasting without water supply for longer than a day, when others are living in this particular scenario for years? Day after day after day...

I wonder how much clean water was wasted in the process of the flooding? How many people could have made better use of it in places where clean water is a rare luxury?

What's your input on this? Have you been in such a situation? Can we only empathise with the issue better when we experience it first hand? I would really like to hear your thoughts...

Who rules? Whose rules?

Writing this blog, it suddenly dawned upon me how important it is that we ask the "right" questions. When we were discussing the case study of the village outside of Kisumu with a broken water pipe- due to the construction of either a beverage plant or gas plant nearby- being the only source of clean water running in the village, we attempted to figure out what these villagers should do to resolve their water crisis. Do they walk the long miles to the plant to fill up from a highly chlorinated tap? Very far and inconvenient. Do they seek low-cost/ no-cost technologies to clean the dirty water available at a closer distance? Requires time and these technologies might not be effective in exterminating all bacteria in the water. Do they mobilize and demand the plant to fix their pipe? How willing are they to mobilize becomes the question. Or do they just accept their fate and wait for external organizations to provide them with any form aid? There is no sustainable improvement where there is lack of agency.

What type of governing or action is deemed the best approach in this particular scenario then? 

Ronnie Lipschutz defines governance through the following necessary questions: "Who rules? Whose rules? What kind of rules? At what level? In what form? Who decides? On what basis?" (quoted in Ken Conca's Governing Water, 381)

For a small rural community, it seems very unlikely that those who are making the rules for them are sympathetic to their concerns. Are they even aware the pipe is broken? Do they care? Would a few letters from the villagers incite them to act? Will they take on the responsibility to fix it? Highly unlikely (I realize the dangers of making a predetermined judgment- but this has been the case more often that not). 

As an alternative then, would activism count as tyranny of the minority? If the villagers mobilize to demand that justice be served and the "plant" fix the water pipe it broke, what would the outcome be? Will the pipe be fixed? Will the "plant" ignore their plight? Will the government/plant relationship lead to silencing the villagers? Will this be a sustainable solution to access to water? Here it is more difficult to judge. 

Mobilization can also take a different turn, depending on the willingness and capacity of the local community. An endogenous solution would be creating a locally governed low-cost water cleaning system, where the villagers themselves decide the form of governing, create the rules and rule. This can be compared to the participatory budgeting system in Latin America, where local councils governed by local community members, are created to address projects of highest urgency and submit proposals for funding. The locals can determine a form of horizontal organization, voluntary or paid, that allows rotation of responsibilities in ensuring the system is maintained.

There are various obstacles and risk involved with any of the proposed solutions, especially as I propose them while being distant from the reality of those villagers. The only way to find out however, is through a trial and error mechanism. It seems only fair to try, rather than to accept the detrimental impacts of socializing the risk and responsibility that came with the “plant”. Who rules? Whose rules? 

Water as a human right. Absolute or not?

Scenario 1: Water is a commodity. If we consider water to be a commodity, then every human being has the right to compete over its control, to remove it from the public realm and privatize it, to place it in the market and then to yield profit from its sales. It is logical from a business perspective to lay hands on a scarce resource such as this, and at times of height in demand (which are sure to come), adjust the prices to generate the highest possible returns. Virtual water falls under this category. Large agroexporters such as those exporting asparagus all-year round in Peru's Inca Valley,[1] drain water reserves of an already dry land, at an astounding rate and export their products mostly to the developed world. Thanks to the current trade policies and SAPs implemented in the recent past, these agrobusinesses pay fewer taxes on water and use it recklessly. This has become what the "right" to access to water means in our hyper-capitalist world. The question remains then: what of the people who cannot afford increasing prices of water? Where in the picture of competition do they fit in?

Scenario 2: Water is a human right. "Absolute or not?" becomes the question. Since this is the more utopian alternative and unfortunately not the current state of reality, it instigates many questions. Should everyone get free access to water, and the costs of servicing the water be subsidized by taxes? Should it be completely in the public sphere and governments be responsible to secure it? How can consumption habits be controlled? Should there be a cap on how much water every individual may consume? Should households pay for the "over"-consumption? Should there be increased taxes for water consumption by businesses (much like a carbon footprint)? 

Much ambivalence exists within international institutions and “regimes” on what a "right" to water consists of and where to draw the boundary between its perception as an absolute right, such as the right to life (so that it comes free of cost) or a right to buy it out from the public realm and transform it into a commodity. Ken Conca, in Governing Water, is critical of the legitimacy of these institutions, their exclusivity, and the convergence of similar mindsets within the circles of experts running them. Evidently, the bipolarity here emerges from the competing interests of trade vs. human rights (institutions like the WTO representing an amalgam of powerful state interests and corporations vs. NGOs, human rights activists, states at a threshold with water resources etc).  

It wasn't until recently (July 28, 2010) that the UN passed the Human Right to Water and Sanitation resolution, thanks to the efforts of the global water justice movement, to finally acknowledge water as an absolute right.[2] There was an overwhelming support of states (122 in favour). However, this resolution falls short on ensuring a ratification system and challenging the sovereignty of countries and how they choose to privatize their water resources. Not to mention that this resolution still has a handful of powerful opponents who abstained (including Canada). I strongly believe that redefining "water" within epistemic communities involved in global governance as an “absolute right” is crucial if we are to acknowledge the “human-face” of the water crisis with an emphasis on the “human” rather than the “profit”.  To end on a positive note for a change, I would like to remind that the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. 

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[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/sep/15/peru-asparagus-british-wells

[2] http://www.canadians.org/publications/subscribe/enews/2010/Aug1.html