What Does Water Mean to You? World Water Day 2021

What does water mean to you?

As you’re taking a shower or filling up your water bottle, you probably don’t think much about water and its role in your life. But how we conceptualize and use water can affect who has access to water and how much of it is available.

Today is World Water Day, and this year’s theme is ‘Valuing Water.’ While water may seem neutral or unremarkable, it is critical to our lives and to society. This World Water Day, we’re considering the value of water and how our perspectives on water affect humanitarian issues around the globe. 

Water as a Resource

Water is everywhere. It covers over 70 percent of the Earth, and makes up 55-60 percent of your own body. Almost all of the water on Earth is in the oceans, where it carries nutrients and heat across the globe, regulates our climate, and serves as a habitat and means of transportation. Less than 3 percent of the water supply is fresh and free of salt, and most of that is unavailable: it’s frozen solid in glaciers and sea ice or buried deep underground. 

But the tiny fraction of freshwater that can be used is an essential component of life here on land. Plants take up water from the soil to grow, while rivers carve winding paths across the surface of the Earth, shaping the land and transporting minerals, fish, and boats alike. Water irrigates our fields and cools our power plants; we drink it, swim in it, and wash our hands with it. And, as Alexa notes in What You Wear Is A Humanitarian Issue. Here’s Why, water is even in the clothes on your back: the equivalent of two and a half years’ worth of drinking water for a single person goes into making one t-shirt. 

As a resource, water is generally thought of as renewable. Think of the water cycle you probably learned about back in elementary school: water evaporates into the atmosphere, condenses into clouds, then precipitates back down to Earth as rain or snow. The water that comes out of your shower goes down the drain, into the sewer, and eventually out into a nearby stream; the water that powers our dams merely has to flow over a set of turbines on its way downstream. When we use water, it seems to go right back into the environment—a magical, endless resource that keeps the world running.

Unfortunately, it’s not always that simple. While most water on the surface of the Earth is easily renewed, other water sources can’t be replenished so quickly. Certain rock types, known as aquifers, store water underground; this groundwater supplies a quarter of all freshwater used in the United States and makes up nearly a third of the world’s freshwater supply. In the United States, we use groundwater primarily for crop irrigation and public water systems. 

Rainwater that seeps down into the earth is the primary source of water for an aquifer, but the resupply process is a slow one. Slow enough, in fact, that human use can outstrip the rate at which the water is replenished, especially—though not exclusively—in desert regions like the American southwest. When groundwater is exploited in this way, it results in land subsidence: as water is removed and not replaced, the rock that once held it compacts to fill in the empty space, and the land above begins to sink. 

Subsidence puts cities at risk of flooding and infrastructure failure. Additionally, as aquifers dry up, we have to dig deeper and deeper to reach groundwater—resulting in increased costs, lower water quality, and less overall access to water. Mexico City and California’s San Joaquin Valley, for example, both face severe challenges due to unsustainable and inefficient groundwater use, including water shortages, canal failures, and damage to roads and buildings. 

Water is everywhere, but we don’t always have access to enough of it. Water is renewable, but when we use too much too quickly, it becomes scarce. When it becomes polluted, a whole host of ecological and humanitarian problems can arise, from oil spills that destroy ecosystems to health concerns from unsafe drinking water. And as the climate warms, we can expect to see heavier rainfall events, stronger storms, and rising seas—all of which will increase the likelihood of major flood events for those who live in low-lying areas, putting everyone from farmers to city-dwellers at risk. 

Water is a good and necessary resource, but too little or too much of it can prove dangerous for both humanity and the environment. 

Water as a Human Right

The United Nations recognizes access to water and sanitation as basic human rights. Water is an essential resource for humans, animals, plants, and the planet to thrive. When we talk about water as a human right, this concept means that clean, potable water must be freely accessible to all people on earth. Valuing water also means recognizing that not all water access is made equal. Today, more than 1 in 9 individuals lacks access to safe drinking water. Even more staggeringly, 2 billion people still lack access to safe sanitation, though they may have limited access to drinking water.

The water crisis is an increasingly global issue. Accelerating climate change limits access to inland fresh water, increases sea level rise, and produces severe droughts. These challenges will make it harder to guarantee safe water access for people across the planet living in different ecosystems. These effects will continue to worsen with time, making it essential to protect water access as a basic human right. 

A ‘human rights-based approach’ to protecting water emphasizes the interaction between rights and obligations for UN member states. This approach requires that states integrate respect for human rights into all of their plans for development. Furthermore, it requires that states prioritize all elements of the right to water. According to the UN definition, water should be sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible, and affordable. These elements are essential obligations for member states to uphold in their development policies. 

Water in the Sustainable Development Goals

As one of the UN strategies to protect water as a basic human right, water is an essential part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Clean water and sanitation is the sixth of the 15 SDGs adopted by UN member states in 2015. To learn about the other 14 and the motivation behind the SDGs, read more in Sydney’s article. 

“Sustainable Development Goal 6: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.”

There are several components of this objective. Increasing access to drinking water and sanitation is the first priority of the sixth SDG. Beyond increasing household water access, the UN encourages member states to be especially attentive to the role that water plays in the COVID-19 pandemic. Many healthcare facilities around the world lack consistent access to water and soap. These facilities tend to be located in states which are unable to overcome funding gaps to achieve their water and sanitation goals. Global partnerships offer the most promise to overcome these challenges.

Another important element of this goal is preparing for the future. While progress on expanding water access is encouraging, setbacks due to climate change are likely inevitable. This SDG further pressures states to address the impending climate refugee crisis that could lead to over 700 million people becoming displaced due to water scarcity by 2030 alone. 

An Intersectional View of the Water Crisis

To address the water crisis, activists must adopt an intersectional view of water as a human rights issue. The water crisis does not impact all people equally. Evidence demonstrates that the water crisis disproportionately impacts low-income people of color. Indigenous communities are at the intersection of these identities, and experience increased health disparities as a result of limited water access. To learn more about how the water crisis impacts indigenous communities, check out Eleanor’s recent article.

In addition to indigenous communities, the water crisis disproportionately affects women living in the Global South. Water is intricately tied to the lives of women, with limited water access leading to long-lasting consequences for their lives. Women use water in their households for cooking, cleaning, farming, and even healthcare. However, limited access to water can force women and young girls to spend hours each day walking to collect fresh water. School is not a reality for these women. Hours spent collecting safe water benefit the family, but force women to remain in a vicious cycle of poverty.

For women, indigenous communities, people of color, and low income individuals, the water crisis brings severe consequences. To develop sustainable and equitable solutions to the water crisis grounded in a human rights-based approach, these voices provide a critically important perspective. 

Water as an Economic Good

Water is undoubtedly valuable– and treating water as a commodity is one way to measure that value.

Beyond considering water as a human right, the UN has also declared water to be a commodity. In 1992, at the International Conference on Water and the Environment, the UN declared that, “water has an economic value in all its competing uses and should be recognized as an economic good.” 

Nearly thirty years later, with water scarcity an even more pressing issue, water was traded for the first time as a commodity in the futures market. Beginning in Dec. 2020, municipalities, investors, and other parties can buy and sell contracts for water in California. To explain this most simply, the new futures market is a financial tool for water users. It allows farmers, municipalities and other entities that use water to reduce their risk in buying water in the volatile California water market. No physical water is traded on the market.

The mechanics of the water futures market are a bit complicated– to learn more, read this article from the Pacific Institute. 

But should an invaluable, essential natural resource like water be controlled in any way by the financial markets?

Water is often considered to be a public good— one that, economically speaking, is non-excludable and non-rivalrous. Basically, everyone has access to a public good, and one person’s use of it doesn’t lessen another’s availability to that good. As a public good provided by a government to its citizens, water is similar to libraries or national security. 

If considered to be a private good, water is privately owned and must be purchased to be consumed. Private goods are scarce, and as a result, the seller of a private good can derive profits from the sale of that good. 

Water is definitely scarce– but should something so basic be privatized and subjected to the fluctuations of the market?

In The Water Dilemma: Can Privatization Aid the Government in Providing Water?, Valerie explored the privatization of water in Indonesia. In Jakarta, the government privatized water in an effort to improve water delivery to its citizens. However, this privatization didn’t achieve its intended goals– and ultimately, it failed to provide water to the citizens with the least access. 

So will the new California water futures market truly help farmers and local governments to better use water? Or is this the beginning of the end for water as a public good?

The Pacific Institute considers the potential of the new market. This financial tool could stimulate investment in more accurate weather modeling, benefiting agriculture and water management. However, the Pacific Institute notes that the market’s “benefits for the state’s water supply reliability itself seem quite limited.” Unfortunately, the true benefit of the market would be greater supply and reliability for the nation’s largest consumer of water. 

For now, smart management of water as a public good seems to be the best way forward. Water should be available and accessible to all citizens. 

Today on the podcast, Alexa, Grace and Emma discussed what they learned while writing this article and how they value water. Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.