Dr. S. K. Singh
Dy. Manager (Law) in Punjab National Bank at Lucknow
“Man is a complex being: he makes deserts bloom and lake die”.
— Gill Stern
ABSTRACT
Water is one of the most precious, limited, threatened and unevenly distributed (in terms of geo-spatial dynamics) socio1-economic natural resources available on the planet Earth. It is fundamental for life, health and survival of living beings obviously including human being. The most seminal feature of water is that unlike most other natural resources, it does not have a substitute in its main uses. Water is used to fulfill many different needs and perform many different functions. These uses can be meticulously arranged into three broad priority-based categories-water for life, water for citizens and water for development. Thus, we may mark that water has been a decisive factor in the socio-economic development of a nation or region.
Introduction
It is to be noted that right to water has various conceptual linkages. In other words, water is a pre-requisite for the realization of other human rights. Thus, violation of human right to water will adversely affect the other conceptually linked human rights such as right to life, right to peace, right to development (commercial, agricultural or industrial activities), right to clean environment, right to health, right to education, right to housing, cultural rights etc. However, the human right to water and other incidental rights have been largely constrained in the regime of liberalization, privatization and globalization (LPG). Despite the common principle that state is the sole guardian of res-communis under the public trust doctrine there are certain factors which compel us to go for privatization such as moblizing financing for investment, need for technical expertise, increasing efficiency, improvement of service quality etc.
The history of water availability and use is so intricately tied up with the history of biological evolution that in the life of all societies one can always find the existence of some rules for sharing water. As time goes by conflicts over water uses and entitlements are becoming more serious. When we peruse the water laws of various countries it becomes evident that the basic issues, problems or confusions are omnipresent and these seem to be nowhere settled. One may vehemently argue that access to water comes under the domain of Nature’s “Replenish Capacity Principle” and consequently paying attention to water shortage is not tenable as the Earth is covered in 70% of water and alleged water crisis is influenced by “alarmist theory”. But, this argument can be back seated by the fact that there are certain “anthropogenic viruses” responsible for making water a threatened natural resource through chemical (arsenic or lead menace) or bacteriological contamination.
The magnitude of the problems can be understood by the fact that in the past century, the world’s population tripled while the global demand for water has increased six-fold. Further, more than a billion people lack safe drinking water and almost two and a half billion live without access to basic sanitation systems. An estimated 14 to 30 thousand people, mostly young and elderly, die every day from avoidable water- related diseases. If current trends persist, by 2025 two-third of the world’s population will be living with serious water shortages or almost no water at all.
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