WATER SCARCITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS

According to the World Health Organization, in 2014 there were more than 750
million people without adequate access to drinking water and more than 2.5 billion lacked
proper sanitation conditions.
In many countries, including Brazil, the disparities in water and sanitation services
are among the main battlefronts when projecting a fairer and more sustainable society,
according to 2015 UNESCO data. It is one of the central objectives of the Sustainable
Development Goals (2016-2030). These challenges adopt new extents in areas which
already have naturally low water availability, such as many African and some Middle-
-eastern and Asian countries. The equity principle therefore promises a world with greater
water security for all.
We live among increasing unsustainability in water consumption, and this rela-
tionship is marked by two aspects: on one side there has been a rise in climatic disasters
(droughts, floods), and on the other, pollution of water sources turns supply more and
more expensive. This pollution is consequence of the expansion of the economy and of
production practices that drive countries’ development, aside from natural resources
exploitation and the obstinacy for fossil fuel expansion, such as the fracking case for gas
extraction.
Today, more than a billion people–i.e. one in seven inhabitants–lack adequate
access to drinking water. Over 40% of the world population will live, in the short term,
in regions which are being increasingly affected by hydric stress. Hydrologists forecast
that, should this trend continue, freshwater will withstand a double pressure: population
growth, enhanced by intense consumption habits that will increase the demand for food
and energy, and the impact of climate change. Approximately 80% of the world suffers
severe threats regarding hydric security, according to IPCC indicators, concerning water
availability, demand, and pollution.
It should be noted that a significant part of the world population lacks proper
sanitation and 1/5 of aquatic systems that keep ecosystems functioning and feed a rising
population is threatened, drying out or becoming too polluted to take advantage of.
The fact is, agriculture water losses stopped being the most visible effect of droughts
affecting many countries and regions. The energy crisis and the threat of water scarcity
in great metropolis escalate and have become a reality.
It is also important to emphasize that the impacts of the deterioration of ecosystems
(caused by an urbanizing process without due sanitation actions taken, and subsequently
under-implementation of actions promoting proper access to drinking water and basic
sanitation) is reflected on a global water crisis.
Hence, as Pedro Arrojo Agudo (one of the creators of New Water Culture Foun-
dation - Fundación Nueva Cultura del Agua) notes, the deepest crisis is that of continental
aquatic ecosystems. This is added to a poverty linked to a development model which
promotes inequity and anti-governance, thus affecting the most vulnerable social strata.
Water is a vital natural source and its adequate management is thus a fundamental com-
ponent in environmental politics. When people do not have access to safe drinking water
or water as a production resource, their choices and freedoms are hindered by disease,
poverty, and vulnerability.
The need for managing conflicts arising from water use priorities has led to incor-
porating civil society actors within institutions; still there are numberless underprivileged
groups with restrained access to the resource in many societies.
It is precisely under this spotlight that it is important to analyze water governance,
comprising not only its management aspects, but the usage as a natural resource which
tackles sustainability from a social point of view as well. Therefore, engagement of new
social actors must be broadened, from its management to its use and appropriation.
For governance processes to materialize, we need to create suitable conditions,
such as inclusion, accountability, participation, transparency, predictability, and response
capacity. One of the greatest challenges regarding water governance is to ensure an open
and transparent approach, which is also inclusive and communicative, coherent and
integrative, equitable and ethical.
Given the complexity of the process and the difficulty to consolidate environmental
citizenship, limits are outlined by management logics still strongly technically-centered
and prioritizing water demand when controlling production. Access to information and
transparency of negotiation processes become a key matter in reducing power asymmetries
arising from negotiation arenas, when these exist and are considered in decision-taking
instances.
Correspondingly, transparency is strongly associated to “the right to know”; in
other words, individuals impacted by third-party actions have the right to be fully aware
of what risks they are exposed to, and the potential impacts on their health. The trans-
formation of governance practices and the inclusion of social actors in new negotiation
arenas have made the access to information a key matter, as well as serving as a power
factor when taking decisions.
The growing plurality of actors, by means of their legitimate participation potential,
strengthens management choices based on the assurance of access to information. It also
consolidates open channels for participation, which in turn are basic pre-conditions for
the institutionalization of social control.
The challenges of water resources governance are not only related to the creation
of negotiation arenas or to participation promotion, but also to the consolidation of such
arenas and to the promotion of symmetric negotiation conditions among the various
system actors.
Transparency takes place when information is public and readily available. New
governance practices reflect new information fluxes and the different ways of accessing
and spreading it by means of new technologies. Information access and knowledge have
become crucial in these practices as strategies influencing decision-taking. Governance
implies that access to information can reposition actors which will have higher impact
on negotiation and discussion processes. By displaying and disseminating data, it is pos-
sible to increase control over the actors responsible for the execution of programs and
expected results. Today, this has become possible thanks to the fact that many present
environmental problems are identified and treated with disclosed information.
Appreciation of participation and decentralization practices, as a transparency
means to strengthen and inform marginalized sectors, can reduce the knowledge asym-
metry and promote a fairer decision-taking, in agreement with the demands of all. This
maximizes the capacity of empowerment and strengthening of participation processes
and information democratization.
Public engagement allows people or groups of people to influence the result of
decisions that will affect them or they are interested in. It also promotes improvements
in the quality of water governance processes, enabling stakeholders to seize the problems
and thus to engage and cooperate toward alleviation or solution actions.
These brief solutions introduce this special volume that tackles Water Scarcity
and Human Rights under several perspectives and approaches, featuring water crisis,
hydrosocial scarcity, water as a human right, water security, conflicts and social protest,
user perception, and resilience in face of hydric stress.
By means of an analysis of the media coverage of the water crisis in São Paulo,
authors Laura Alves Martirani and Isabela Kojin Peres show the information building
process on this matter within the public sphere and the population’s access to the infor-
mation in their article “Water crisis in São Paulo: news coverage, public perception and the
right to information”.
Authors Érico Soriano, Luciana de Resende Londe, Leandro Torres Di Grego-
rio, Marcos Pellegrini Coutinho and Leonardo Bacellar Santos approach the water
crisis from the risk and disasters management point of view, considering the affected
people and associated damages in their article “Water crisis in São Paulo evaluated under
the disaster´s point of view”.
The article “Methodological proposal for redesigning informal communities – constructing
resilience in hydrological stress conditions” by authors Luiz Fernando Flores Cerqueira and
Luciene Pimentel da Silva, proposes a research-action methodology for the redesign of
informal settlements based on Low Environmental Impact Urban Development.
In attempt of debating about the rise of inequalities regarding access to water and
uneven distribution, the article “Human right perspective: inequality in access to water in a
rural community of the Brazilian Northeast” by authors Bernardo Aleixo, Sonaly Cristina
Rezende, Borges de Lima, João Luiz Pena, Gisela Zapata, and Léo Heller, performed
a case study in the Cristais – Ceará community, revealing quantity, physical accessibility,
and local economic factors.
Basing herself on a document analysis, author Pilar Carolina Villar discusses the
role of underground water and its management within the water crisis context and before
the need to secure the human right to water in the article “Groundwater and the right to
water in a context of crisis”.
The paper “Water security in the metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro: contributions
to the debate”, by author Bianca Borges Medeiros Santos, approaches water resources
management focusing on water security, including matters about the dependence on
the Paraíba do Sul river, the role of state administrative bodies and water management
instruments, and the maintenance of regional water security.
Based on political ecology and environmental justice, authors Robinson Torres-
-Salinas, Gerardo Azócar García, Noelia Carrasco Henríquez, Mauricio Zambrano-
-Bigiarini, Tatiana Costa and Bob Bolin present their article “Forestry development, water
scarcity, and the Mapuche protest for environmental justice in Chile” where they evaluate how
forestry development has generated social-spatial environmental degradation dynamics
and water scarcity in southern Chile.
The article “The arbitral tribunal as an alternative legal instrument for solving water
conflicts in Brazil” by authors Celso Maran de Oliveira, José Wamberto Zanquim Junior
and Isabela Battistello Espíndola, advocate in favor of the creation of a Water Arbitration
Court with the capacity to act in parallel to official court rulings, to further protect and
repair the environment.
Authors Maria Helena Del Grande, Carlos de Oliveira Galvão, Lívia Izabel
Bezerra de Miranda and Lemuel Dourado Guerra Sobrinho pinpoint causes of a water
injustice situation in Campina Grande, in the Brazilian semiarid, through monitoring
conditions of residential provision and the dwellers’ perception of the water rationing
impacts on their daily lives. Their article is called “The perception of users about the impacts
of water rationing on their household routines”.
“Water supply and hydrosocial scarcity in the Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan area” is the
title of the article by authors Ana Lucia Britto, Rosa Maria Formiga Johnsson and
Paulo Roberto Ferreira Carneiro, which analyzes the present situation concerning
water supply in the Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro in the light of the hydrosocial
scarcity concept, and of the human right to water beyond structural problems associated
with water and sanitation services management.
By means of field surveys, author Larissa Helena Ferreira Varela through her
article “Challenges to the human right to water and to the sustainability of services in Santa
Cruz, Cabo Verde”, studied the water consumers’ payment capacity in the city of Santa
Cruz, Cabo Verde, a country with high water stress and low in financial resources. The
aim was to evaluate how social-economic conditions affect the achievement of the human
right to water and to sustainability.
Closing this volume, Julia Guivant, presents the essay entitled “Ulrich Beck´s
Legacy” by special request of the Editor-in-Chief of Ambiente & Sociedade Journal,
where the researcher’s scientific contributions to contemporary social theory are exposed.

We wish you all a pleasant reading.

Pedro Roberto Jacobi

Editor-in-Chief, Ambiente & Sociedade Journal
Professor, Education School, University of São Paulo
Professor, Graduate Program in Environmental Science, University of São Paulo
Vanessa Lucena Empinotti
Associate Professor, Federal University of ABC
Executive Editor, Ambiente & Sociedade Journal

Luisa Schmidt
Professor, Social Sciences Institute, University of Lisboa
Member of Editorial Board, Ambiente & Sociedade Journal

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