Strengthening International Water Security: The European Union’s proposal

Abstract

The UN World Health Organization reports that 80% of diseases are waterborne. Bacterial, viral, and parasitic diseases like typhoid, cholera, amebiasis, poliomyelitis, hepatitis A, skin infection, and gastrointestinal are spread through polluted water. In 2013, the UN Water defined water security as “The capacity of a population to safeguard sustainable access to adequate quantities of acceptable quality water for sustaining livelihoods, human well‐being, and socio‐economic development, for ensuring protection against water‐borne pollution and water‐related disasters, and for preserving ecosystems in a climate of peace and political stability”. The notion is quite new, but it does not mean that international law does not include rules and principles relevant to water security. Compared to some other regions in the world, most people living in Europe already enjoy very good access to high‐quality drinking water, in part thanks to over 30 years of European Union legislation for ensuring drinking water quality. On February 2018, pressed by the successful result of the first European Citizens' Initiative “Right2Water,” the European Commission proposed to revise the European Union legislation for improving access to higher quality of drinking water and provide better information to citizens. Considering the latest scientific knowledge and recommendations of the World Health Organization, the proposal made by the Commission suggests improving water quality by adding new and emerging substances (such as legionella and chlorate) to the list of criteria for determining water safety. The new provisions require the member states to improve access for all people, especially for vulnerable and marginalized groups who currently have difficult access to drinking water, set up equipment for access to drinking water in public spaces, launch campaigns to inform citizens about the quality of their water, and encourage administrations and public buildings to provide access to drinking water. According to the European Union Commission, the new measures would reduce potential health risks associated with drinking water from 4% to below 1%. Based on the presumption that the right to safe water, and the related concept of water security, emerges as a prerequisite for the realization of other human rights, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the approach conducted by the European Commission and, compared it with a fragmented panorama in the International regulation. In this sense, it will be necessary to refer to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes, its Protocol on Water and Health, the General Comment No. 15 of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on the right to water, and the World Health Organization’s Water safety plan to identify and manage the risks that climate change poses to water security (quality and quantity) in the framework of international law obligations. Finally, in order to consider future scenarios and promote possible implementation, the new European Union approach is fully consistent with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In particular, the initiatives will make a meaningful contribution to reaching the Sustainable Development Goal 6 to “achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all,” along with the Paris Agreement objectives on climate change, thanks to safer, more efficient, and sustainable management of drinking water, reducing the CO2 footprint and unnecessary water loss.

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