Mercy Global Concern - 2004

The twelfth Commission on Sustainable Development

Briefing paper Number 2 - May 2004

The twelfth Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD-12) held at the United Nations New York Headquarters, April 19 - 30, 2004 focused on water, sanitation, and human settlement. Member nations gathered to discuss the progress and specific "best practices" that have been undertaken since the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation was agreed upon in 2002, and to critique why many nations have not been able to accomplish the Millennium Development Goals according to the timeline proposed.

Currently one billion people still lack access to clean drinking water, and 31 countries endure water scarcity. It is estimated that by the year 2025 two-thirds of the world's population will face water shortages. Billion people are still without adequate sanitation, and it is estimated that billion people live in slums.
CSD-12 will present its review of these conditions at the end of this session in preparation for CSD-13 in 2005. In response to these findings CSD-13 will convene to set appropriate policies.

This year the nine Major Groups (NGOs, Women, Indigenous Peoples, Farmers and Fisherfolk, Labor, Trade Unions, Youth, Business and Industry, Science and Technology) were given the opportunity to speak in the main sessions. Each delivered a 5 minute statement calling attention to their specific concerns, and was permitted to make 3 minute interventions throughout the sessions where panels of experts on water, sanitation, and human settlement gave input. The Indigenous Peoples, Women, and Youth were among the most vocal, underlying the urgency of the global situation and individual government's responsibility to assure the rights of their citizens to these basic necessities. These interventions were pointed and powerful.
The women from the Women's Group spoke with composed authority on behalf of:

"Our sisters, who walk the long distances over rough terrain to collect water, fuel, and fodder---day after day; who carry heavy loads on their heads and shoulders; who do all the work in the households: washing, cooking, cleaning, purchasing; who produce food on the land, collect products from the forest, catch fish from the waters; who sell their goods in the villages and towns, and earn the incomes that sustain their families; who share their knowledge and wisdom with their daughters and sons, generation after generation; who care for the healthy and the sick, the young and the old; who sustain disasters, face conflicts, and rebuild their communities.
" Our Sisters that are being abused and raped, when they are searching for water, or a safe place to defecate. Their daughters cannot attend school at times that they menstruate...Our sisters that bear the heavy burden of the HIV/AIDS pandemic more than anyone else-carrying loads of water to the sick often at the expense of income-generating activities.

" It is their life-giving resources that become destroyed, polluted, impoverished, privatized, unaffordable, un-accessible. Their voices that are not heard yet, their perspectives that are not guiding our water and sanitation agenda yet, their decision-making seats that are not open to them yet.
" We are women from all corners of the world, we are indigenous women, rural women, women living in urban slums, in conflict areas, and on land that has been flooded or dried up."

The women added to their desire that the MDGs be reached, and the JPOI be implemented their emphatic plea for a peaceful, healthy planet.
Within many Indigenous cultures, women are the traditional caretakers of water. The statement made by the Indigenous Peoples at CSD-12 reflected their reverent relationship to "Our Mother Earth."

"We reaffirm our relationship to Mother Earth and responsibility to future generations to raise our voices in solidarity to speak for the protection of water. We acknowledge that water connects and regulates Mother Earth as the sacred mat of life, which is the ocean. Protection of the ocean is fundamental as the ocean is where life begins and ends. We also understand how the air, the clouds, land cover, trees, and the heat of the sun along with freshwater systems connect to oceans and the oceans to the freshwaters. This is the cycle of life.

Our relationship with our lands, territories, and water is the fundamental physical, cultural and spiritual basis for our existence. This relationship to our Mother Earth requires us to conserve our freshwaters and oceans for the survival of present and future generations. We assert our role as caretakers with rights and responsibilities to defend and ensure the protection, availability and purity of water.

We recognize, honor and respect water as sacred and the sustainer of all life. Water is the source of life, it is far more than a human right, it is a right for all of nature, all plants and animals."

" Reaching the targets and goals for water and its linkages to sanitation and human settlements truly are the prerequisites for future discussions addressing other target areas such as poverty eradication, protection of the environment, economic and sustainable development and building healthy communities."

" We fully understand that only the guarantee for the world to have a continuous supply of freshwater (will) ensure the integrity of nature and ecosystems from which water comes. Many of our struggles around our rights to our ancestral territories were and are struggles to ensure that the sources of our waters are protected, that the water continues to flow as it should and its purity is maintained. This is one of the key reasons why Indigenous Peoples in all parts of the world are against large dams and why we are stopping the entry of extractive industries, such as logging, mineral, oil and gas extraction in our lands."

" Integrated Water Resource Management mechanisms are an effective tool to begin assessments (on the state of Earth's waters), as well as coastal area and river basin management mechanisms. A healthy water system, including ground water and aquifer systems is a necessity for alleviating poverty and inspiring economic development...

The regard of water mainly as an economic good, and no longer a basic human right, is what underpins programs on water privatization and full-cost recovery which is undoubtedly increasing mass poverty instead of reducing it."

"We are highly critical of the role of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the water industry in promoting such concepts and programs and imposing public sector reform which has led to the privatization of water."

"The world needs to reevaluate its relationship to the sacred nature of water. To many of our Indigenous Peoples, the nature of water represents peace. There is a need to develop education curricula about the sacredness of water and the linkage to peace."

The Earth Values Caucus, which came into existence in 2001 with the intention of infusing "ecological values into the United Nations agenda, documents, and processes" of WSSD, met several times during CSD-12. Amidst all the debate on how to provide water, sanitation, and housing to the billions of humans who lack these basics, the Earth Values Caucus insists with the Indigenous Peoples that Earth and the way Earth organizes herself into self-sustaining, dynamic ecosystems is fundamental to the health and well being of all Earth's derivative creatures. Human bodies are 70% water; all water on the planet is interconnected. The circulatory systems of humans, and all creatures are extensions of the oceans, rivers, streams, and aquifers. The health of Earth's bodies of water determines the health of every biological system that water animates.

The Earth Values Caucus discussed the concept of bioregions, which are the natural versus artificial, political demarcations of territories, e.g. river basins and watersheds. There is a higher authority than the political nation with its particular government, economic and social arrangement; it is the feeling of the EVC that this realization would serve us now and future generations and we should seek to manage our activities according to Earth's wisdom which has operated successfully for over 13 billion years to "create, maintain and support a viable planet." The Earth Values Caucus articulates an ecological ethic, highlighting 6 principles, which it calls "Earth's Code of Conduct." Its members are committed to exploring and taking guidance from Earth's intrinsic ability to develop a whole, diverse and complex community sustainably.

During the two weeks of meetings the private sector held a "Partnership Fair" and a "Learning Center" where innovative projects dealing with water, sanitation and human settlement were showcased. Many side events also took place. Maude Barlow, Canadian activist and author of Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World's Water, spoke in on a panel sponsored by the Women's Group. "Earth is running out of fresh water," she said soberly. "Already 70% of the water in the Unites States, Canada, and Europe is owned by private corporations," (taking economic advantage of scarcity) "and there are processes in place to lock in private holds on water access. Water belongs to Earth, to all species." It is a right not a need to be delivered by the private sector for profit, she went on to say, and "you can't trade or sell a right. Water is also a public trust, one of the Global Commons to be shared and protected by all." We must work vigilantly until we have "a water secure world based on conservation and equity."

Governments in developing countries are often unable to deliver water and sanitation services to their people because of debts owed to the North, so they bring in private corporations. Developing countries experience this as a form of colonialization. Maude called for the cancellation of these enslaving debts and suggested the Tobin Tax as a means of funding.
On the same panel a woman from Senegal spoke of Africans who live on $1.00 a day, where as much as 60 cents can go for water. "What can you do with the rest? There's not enough for food so you go back to the waterhole, polluted and dying up. We must reverse privatization; it should be seen as a crime. There are people in the world with no right to water, and those who don't have the right to die."

The outcome of the CSD-12 can be found on the United Nations website:
www.un.org/esa/sustdev/csd12

Mary Bilderback rsm