Is access to clean water a basic human right? 124 nations at the UN General Assembly thought so today and supported a resolution affirming this (and sanitation too.)
NZ was among 41 abstentions, with MFAT arguing it hadn’t had time to assess, wasn’t consensus on the issue.
Labour as government would almost certainly supported the resolution. Former Prime Minister Peter Fraser was an architect of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. With a world population of perhaps a billion then, the crucial importance of access to water wasn’t seen as ncessary. With 6 billion on the planet and growing, about a billion people already live without safe water. Little wonder as many people die each year of water-borne illness, most of them children, as the population of greater Auckland.
Ironic abstention when one in six New Zealanders doesn’t have tested safe water, when the Government has frozen assistance to small communities to make water safe for a year, and Rodney Hide’s bill to privatise council water supplies for 35 years is before us.
Can we say ‘National/ACT/Maori coalition abstain NZ from U.N resolution?’
Nact is setting up Auckland water for privatisation. Wellington is also had the business round table supporting water for profit with right wing Mayor Prendergast.
Nact has taken over the Canterbury water grab also. We will see what comes out of that.
Of course Nact don’t see water other than another as another community assett to be corpratised for profit.
People’s needs are not even secondary.
Don’t be so defeatist. Even National voters will have no part of any privatisation of water supplies. It would be a sure election loser. Your comment on 1 in 6 nzrs having an unsafe water supply must surely be laid then at the feet of the last Labour Government. Yes?
Richard
Would a change in standards of water supply be a part of it.
Helen Clark recognised this and facilitated funds to many areas of NZ to upgrade their publicly controlled water supply,
The West Coast for example is struggling to expedite their upgrade for local political reasons.
Because local action has not happened in some areas the govt may need to increase the grants as well as allow for the GST claw back.
Of course announcing privatisation would be p[oor politic. It is still moving on toward that.
Wellington waste water is all but privatised.
Wellington ratepayers did not wish to loose their council owned Electricity supply but it was managed to happen.
“one in six New Zealanders doesn’t have tested safe water”
Very few households on tank and bore water would meet the standard at no fault to anyone. Most are not tested and many tank users don’t like town water as they are used to their own supply and with no harmful effects.
Testing water does nothing for it.
Supporting aspirational resolutions does nothing without action…
What would be the Labour Party’s plan for achieving the main clause within the resolution, namely clean water and sanitation for all..?
There quite clear signs that our use has passed global water supplies capability to handle demand, many rivers in China do not flow to their mouths anymore and are cronically polluted, the Ganges is degrading at a staggering rate, climate change will exacerbate loss of water availablity to these 2.5 billion people, so unless the Labour Party supports millions of deaths until demand again meets supply I’d rather my government doesn’t sign unobtainable goals in UN documents, just so we can feel good and proactive in the first world…
True John W. And I don’t see thousands of water-borne diseases and deaths in the country areas that have tanks. In fact, I cannot recall even one.
Gooner, how would you know what caused a death or whether a disease was caused by tank water? What would your sources of information be?
I do know as reported in the paper that a child died locally through infected water. I do know that the people of Seddon in Marlborough are advised to boil their water. The subsidy for rectifying this situation was frozen in September 2009.
John W. Testing water does not make it safe, but it sure as hell tells us when it is not safe. Again, the same question as that for Gooner. What sources of information do you use to tell you that there are “no harmful effects?”
Sorry but I think NZ position was correct.
Clean water is a necessity of life, but it is meaningless to talk about it in terms of human rights.
Plenty of major cities around the world, the tap water is undrinkable. If I go to one, and free bottled water isn’t available, are my human rights being breached? Really?
We are in fact incredibly lucky in our country that clean, drinkable water comes down our mountain streams and out of our town supplies. Incredibly lucky.
Well it seems like the resolution was talking about access, which I take it means “reasonable access”.
It didn’t say free access did it?
So no, you’re human rights probably aren’t being breached.
Now, if someone tried to extort money from you for a bottle of water, or used violence to try and prevent you from accessing a bottle of water…then waddya reckon, would your human rights be breached?
Quite possibly…
“Plenty of major cities around the world, the tap water is undrinkable.” Oh really, name some of them! Then back it up with facts like how many people die from drinking the tap water. Or are you only talking about major cities in the 3rd world?
I’m pretty grossed out by the recycling of human waste to get water in some cities. There was an article that said that traces of drugs and other things can be found in their tap water because it isn’t removed when the waste is getting converted, yuck!
!
Who really cares about the U.N., oops sorry dear leader is there now so it must be importent
The U.N. is a joke, it only means something when (and only when) the USA backs it up
Mac1
I agree about testing telling you how your tank or bore water meets standards and what is actually in the water.
My point was not clear. Most tank and bore water is probably not included in the figures as being tested as safe but may be fine.
If you catch rain water it will contain particles no doubt but without other contamination is probably OK to drink just about anywhere in NZ.
Acid rain and heavy industrial air pollution is not a feature here yet.
Burn enough coal and your air pollution will rise.
If you are intersted is wider issues about water from a NZ scientist :-
To Climate Change and Beyond
“In Conversation” discusses the fruits of human folly.
If you think that climate change is the only big problem on the horizon then you haven’t really been listening. Dr. John Robinson is this week’s guests on “In Conversation with Noel Cheer” on Triangle/Stratos Television. Matter-of-fact, cautionary but not alarmist, John Robinson sets the facts before us.
While climate change is ‘flavour of the month’, we face a range of other potentially serious developments ranging from water and oil drying up to the melt-down of the ice-caps and the world economic order.
Triangle Television, Auckland: (UHF Channels 41, 42 and 52) Wednesday July 28, 7:00pm
Stratos Television, nationwide: Monday August 2 at 8:30pm
Stratos is found on the satellite platforms Sky Digital Channel 89 and Freeview Digital (but not HD) Channel 21.
Stratos is also found on Telstraclear Cable Channel 89 in Wellington, Kapiti and Christchurch and on the streaming video website ziln.co.nz
RRM, to be consistent National really ought never support anything out of the UN, and that may well be their policy, unless it’s a war.
On tank or bore water country people find out pretty soon if it’s crook and do something about it, a dose of the runs is usually the first sign. Clean out the tank, dig a new well you can do it a lot quicker than going thru 27 committes at council. Mind you, it takes a lot to make you sick, I refused to drink a mates tea because it was terrible, it turned out that his tank water had been strained through a dead possum that had been stuck in a downpipe for months. He was in rip-roaring good health.
I saw a very enlightening doco on Water Privatisation overseas. It sent chills up my spine. In the US there were many poor who could no longer afford to pay for water and they had been cut off. This was rural poor people or people in very small towns.
We can barely afford electricity in winter these days how will we afford to buy our water because it will shoot up in price there is no doubt about it. Privatisation means profit to the shareholders.
Then become a shareholder Carolyn.
That’s so simple Simon, we can all buy shares in privatised water supplies. To me, water is a common good; it doesn’t belong to anyone, it belongs to us all. The idea that people can own water – and then if you are well off enough, you can buy a share in it – is appalling. This is where Rodney Hide is going with his Local Govt bill allowing for 35 year ownership of water supplies. The bill also removes the oversight of health authorities. Canterbury DHB in submission to the bill explicitly warns that this is what happened in Walkerton Ontario where 7 people died and hundreds were left dead. It sparked the WHO to produce new minimum guidelines for drinking water quality whichthis govternment has now parked for three years. And in the House last Thursday, Bill English was defended sitting on $80m of residual funding from Labour’s scheme to help small communities upgrade supplies to provide safe drinking water.
He’d prefer it was all privatised.
Simon must be a bad capitalist if he doesn’t that corporates pay small shareholders a special kind of attention in the course of their business i.e. sweet ****-all.