MWH - Research Paper - Full Topics 2020: Water Rights

Questions to Consider about Water Rights

• Is access to clean water a human right?
• What does climate change have to do with water rights?
• Do private corporations have the right to own and sell water from aquifers and lakes? Who owns the rights to groundwater or aquifers that are underground?
• Is it OK to have community water services provided by private, for-profit companies? Or should community water services only be provided by local governments as a public utility?
• How is the right to water related to the issues of racism and poverty? Where in the world are examples of this? Is these examples limited to developing countries? What about the United States?

Water Rights (Background)

"In September 2010, the U.N. Human Rights Council affirmed by consensus that the right to water and sanitation is derived from the right to an adequate standard of living, which is contained in several international human rights treaties."

"Did You Know?

• 2.6 billion people in the world lack access to adequate sanitation, including 1.2 billion people who have no facilities at all.
• Every 20 seconds, a child dies from a water-related disease – that’s 4,000 children every day.
• The majority of the illness in the world is caused by fecal matter. In fact, 50% of the hospital beds in the developing world are occupied by people suffering water-related diseases.
• People living in slums often pay 5-10 times more for water than those in rich areas of their own cities – and more than consumers pay in New York."

Source article from Amnesty International

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