An interesting article from a couple of days ago asks the question - Should Water Be Legislated as a Human Right? Here is an excerpt from the article:
The U.N. says that close to 880 million people - mostly in the developing world - lack adequate access to clean water. By 2030, close to 4 billion people could be living in areas suffering severe water stress, mostly in South Asia and China.
A study commissioned by the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP), released in March, said the global market for water supply, sanitation and water efficiency is worth over 250 billion dollars - and is likely to grow to nearly 660 billion dollars by 2020.
And another excerpt from the article as well:
Many municipalities worldwide are reversing the privatisation of their water services. The City of Paris, for example, is bringing its water services into the public sphere for the first time ever.
"We are also successfully introducing the notion of water as a public trust in political jurisdictions, asserting public control over this vital resource," Barlow said. However, she noted, "we must be ever vigilant as new forms of private control are being advanced: water markets, water banking, water trading and water speculation are all on the horizon for those who would impose a market model of water allocation in the place of the public trust doctrine."
I share some of these thoughts, mainly as a way to break the silence of this blog, share some photos, and do some thinking surrounding water. Having grown up literally surrounded by lakes, rivers, streams (you name it) sometimes it is easy to take these things for granted. For example, here is an article from today's New York Times, River Basin Fight Pits Atlanta Against Neighbors about the long raging battle between the States of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida over the issue of water use.
Back in Upstate, New York it has been an incredibly rainy summer with the lakes brimming full. As readers of this blog may already know - perhaps, sometime later this summer (or perhaps who knows when) the last two undeveloped Finger Lakes of Hemlock and Canadice will more than likely be sold to the State of New York from the City of Rochester for millions of dollars.
Water! Sometime soonish, I hope to have a full-blown off the wall review and critique of everything having to do with this, in some form or another (as if you weren't already sick enough of this topic). But, don't hold your breath too long, I'm extremely curious as to other folks thoughts surrounding this subject as well, so please feel free to leave a thoughtful comment.
Drink up!
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