Water Declaration.


WHEREAS

-      As we approach the third millennium, millions in Latin America, especially women and children, are deprived from drinking water and its supply systems.

-      Communities are forced to make massive efforts to fetch water, which frequently is scarce and poor in terms of quality, exposing them to health risks and illnesses.

-      The region’s ground water bodies and river basins undergo serious environmental impacts that threaten their conservation and sustainable use, triggered by conflicts related to deforestation, monoculture farming activities and contamination. 

-      Water contamination is widely spread in the region, since there seems to be no unpolluted stream, lake or aquifer; is distressing to confirm that less than half of Latin America’s urban populations are connected to water sanitation systems, and that waste waters are almost completely poured into water bodies without any proper treatment, particularly near large urban areas, posing a serious hazard to the populations health.    

-      The main water contamination sources come from domestic and industrial waste water drainage. Mining exploitation affects several rivers and coastal zones. Another source of contamination comes from the use of large quantities of chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Aquifers are contaminated by landfills liquid waste, domestic black waters, oil spills and soil runoff from farming lands.  

-      The waters deterioration and contamination in the region occur along with severe disasters induced by the environmental devastation and the global warming effects. Invaluable ecosystems and large forest areas have disappeared. Hurricanes and floods have obliterated entire countries, leaving millions in absolute misery, homeless and exposed to severe outbreaks.

-      The growing external debt and the subsequent payment of that debt’s services have exhausted the public funds oriented to upgrade the water infrastructure and water environmental management. The water supply systems’ expansion has almost completely ceased, and subsequently, the water availability per person is lower and lower. The poorest people in rural and urban areas are settled on watersheds and on the river basin’s highlands which induces changes in both, the water cycle and the water quality.

-      There are no comprehensive policies for the water sources environmental management. Uneven distribution rates as a result of the public water’s concessions for industrial farming purposes, as well as licenses approved for using water bodies as recipients of pollutants; imply that the water deterioration and contamination is undertaken by the collectivity, in the absence of regulations oriented to hold the productive processes responsible for the environmental deterioration caused.    

The necessary mechanisms for the water systems control and management are absent, and the adequate procedures for the resolution of water related conflicts have not been established. The weak legal safeguards are not commonly exercised against the negative and harmful ecological practices caused by the waste waters from large industries and the urban effluents. There are no common strategies to solve or mitigate the critical conflicts on the water systems that impede their conservation and sustainable use.

 
ACKNOWLEDGING

-      Water is nature’s essential element. Is the biosphere’s creator and the earth’s sculptress. Our planet Earth is planet water indeed. Therefore, the fundamental right to life supposes the exercise of the fundamental right to water.

-      The cause of the unfair water scarcity that affects millions in Latin America is not its natural scarcity, but the sum of inadequate water basin’s management policies as well as the water’s uneven distribution. Although the freshwater available in the hydrosphere is minimum, the existing total volume is enough to satisfy humanity’s current and future requirements, as long as the water resources are preserved and the contamination levels controlled.

-      The necessity to formulate specific norms destined to control the environmental quality, the effluents emissions, the productive and technological processes and their products, as well as to update the existing norms. The legal instruments should be enforced along with the governmental and non governmental institutional strengthening committed to the water’s environmental management. Alongside the enactment of regulatory norms; economic and overview measures must be enforced in order to stimulate the conservation and sustainable use of water.    

-      The governments and peoples of Latin America must promote a social water culture. Unfortunately, most of the region’s inhabitants lack a respectful culture towards nature, especially water. It becomes a priority to encourage a different perception on water as a simple resource, to acknowledge it as a living element intimately intertwined with human life and the biosphere.   

-      The governments and peoples of Latin America ought to consolidate an adequate scientific and technological basis on their water systems. Currently, the lack of an extensive and thorough investigation on the region’s water bodies and water systems is one of the most serious hurdles for an environmental management of water.   

-      The governments and peoples of Latin America must implement a comprehensive and diversified water policy, guaranteeing the broadest participation of all social sectors involved in tasks related to conservation, management, control and administration of the region’s water bodies and water systems. 

-      The social participation as a fundamental action for the effective water systems protection.

 
INVOKING:

The principles of coexistence, respect to human dignity, solidarity among peoples, the holiness of life forms and an environmental responsibility consecrated in all Political Constitutions and Laws of the region’s countries, in the Common Law as well as in the dispositions stated in Treaties, Covenants and International Declarations ratified by the Sovereign States and social organizations, Ngo’s and the citizenship in safeguarding the humanity’s common heritage and benefit of current and future generations; The principles stated in the following International Law’s instruments:

    * The Convention on Hydroelectric Power Projects Development that may affect more than one State (Geneva, 1923), art. 4.

    * The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), arts. 25 and 30.
   
    * The American Convention on Human Rights.
   
    * The United Nations Chart.
   
    * The International Pact on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights (1967), arts. 5, 11 and 12.
   
    * The United Nations Chart on the States Economic Rights and Duties, arts. 3 and 30.
   
    * The European Water Chart (Strasburg, 1968).
   
    * The Convention on the Prevention of the Contamination of the Seas (London, México, Moscow, 1972).
   
    * International Convention on the Prevention of vessels pollution (London, 1973).
   
    * Mar Del Plata Declaration, UNO’s Conference on Water, 1977.
   
    * Convention on the eradication of all forms of discrimination against women (1979)
   
    * African Chart on Human and Peoples rights (1981).
   
    * United Nations Convention of the Law of the Seas (Geneva, 1982), arts. 192 through 237.
   
    * The World Chart on Nature (1982).
   
    * The San Salvador Protocol (1988), art. 11.
   
    * The Hague’s Declaration on Environment (1989).
   
    * Convention on Children’s rights (1989).
   
    * IWO’s Covenant No. 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Rights, 1989
   
    * Reports on the United Nations International Rights Commission (1st through 6th).
   
    * Helsinki’s guidelines on International Rivers Water Uses.
   
    * The European Community’s Chart on Environmental Rights and Duties (December, 1990).
   
    * United Nations Principles on Elder People, General Assembly’s resolution 46/91, December 16th 1991.
   
    * The Rio de Janeiro Declaration on Environment and Development (1992).
   
    * Agenda 21st, UNO’s conference on environment and development, 1992.
   
    * The principles consecrated in the Stockholm Declaration (1972).
   
    * The Dublin Declaration on Water. 
   
    * The Alma Ata Declaration, International Conference on Health’s Primary Attention, 1978
   
    * The Habitat Agenda, the United Nations Conference on Habitat, Istanbul, 1996.
   
    * The Rome’s Declaration on World’s Food Sovereignty, 1996.

* The American Human Rights Convention. The San Jose Pact, Costa Rica, 1969

·         General Observation No. 15: The right to water (articles 11th and 12th from the International Pact on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights)

·         The General Observation No. 6: The elders economic, social and cultural rights (1992),

·         The Declaration of Paris (1998) and the Declarations of Rotterdam (1983) and Amsterdam (1993), the International Water Tribunal’s Declaration; and the conclusions stated at the Conferences of Mar del Plata (1977), New Delhi (1990) and Noordwijk (1994). 

 
WE DECLARE:

First. The right to water is a fundamental right, inherent to life and human dignity. The Latin American population is the beneficiary of the fundamental right to water in adequate quantity and quality. 

Second. All men and women in Latin America have the same rights of access and identical options to the benefits provided by the region’s water bodies and water systems.

Third. The region’s water is the common heritage of current and future generations in Latin America. Its conservation and sustainable use is a shared responsibility of the governments, the collectivities and the citizenship.

Fourth. The water protection and its supply is an environmental justice’s matter. All Latin-Americans, men and women, are entitled to an effective and immediate environmental justice, in order to guarantee the plain exercise of their fundamental and environmental rights.  

Fifth. Latin American populations have the right to participate in those projects, works or decisions that may affect them or that may affect the water bodies, as well as the local, national or even international water systems. The citizenship’s consultation ought to be a mandatory procedure in these cases.  

Sixth. Latin American populations have the right to be informed on the current status and trends of water bodies and water systems in the region. The right to be informed involves knowledge, scientific research on hydrographic basins, water bodies and associated ecosystems. 

Seventh. Latin American populations have the right to the proper investment of financial and institutional resources to guarantee the plain exercise of their fundamental right to water. In that same sense, they are entitled to the compensation and the ecological debt payment, in case of damages to the region’s water bodies and water systems.