The Human Right to Water under the Water Law? Yes. But look also at its elucidation.

If there is anything I forgot to upload into this website from the last World Water Week then it is my own presentation and pictures. So here it is. The title of my presentation is the above headline. I argue that the Human Right to Water may be able to correct structural loopholes in the current legal framework for water resources management in Indonesia. There are, however, prerequisites which must be fulfilled for such role to take place, and these are (i) building linkages between the Human Right to Water into the current judicial and legislative system and (ii) developing existing institutions, in terms of capacity, resources and mandate in order to incorporate human rights claims.

I have a draft paper to support my arguments which I decide not to share as it is still in the form of, well, a draft paper. But if you are interested, do email me at movanet(at)gmail.com I await for your feedback and comments.

H.T. Dr. Riant Nugroho for the pics

The World Water Week which ended last September 11th urge participants of the upcoming meeting of MDG High Level Plenary Meeting to pay more attention to water issues. According to the Stockholm Statement: “…water needs more attention: policy, investment and management. Continuing to neglect it is a recipe for disaster, and the failure of all MDGs.”

Read the full statement here.

Just to add some more tips:

1. Don’t forget to bring converters!

2. Use Kindle to read (and skip all the print papers)

3. Make sure everything is fully charged

4. Hassle first, fun later. Meaning: go through security check then find your coffee

UNEP recently released a publication titled “The Greening of Water Law”. The book contain elements to consider for integrating environmental concerns into national and international water law. Read/download here.

H.T to: Bo Magsig

UNDIP e-Journal published a paper about Semarang water utility.  Here’s some interesting facts on the paper:

• In order to obtain the water connection people have to pay installment cost Rp 700.000 (75 US $) and it is equal with minimum wage per month for labor in Semarang.
• According to the State Auditing Agency, PDAM Semarang had a loss of Rp. 21 billion from customer arrears and mismanagement.
• Around 10.000 water connections are suspended for 2 months (Suara Merdeka, 03/20/2007) and will not be activated unless customer paid their debt.

Read more.

Wikislation is the term I used to describe bottom-up law making process using wiki. This has been implemented in one of Philipine’s region. Recently, Brazil came with the more sophiticated Wikislation idea through its website, e-democracia. 

The Techrepublic explains:

The program is a kind of crowdsourcing for legislative purpose. In particular, the e-Democracia website attracts and draws together the diffuse participation of individual citizens and minority groups. The main goal is to permit easier access to the decision-making process by citizens who are not associated with strong interest groups or corporations that usually lobby for access to the center of power in Brasilia where the national government is located.

e-Democracia is driven by a belief that the lawmaking process can benefit from the convergence of political representation and citizen participation in a virtuous cycle in which one model strengthens the other. The backbone of the initiative is its website (www.edemocracia.gov.br), which provides multiple participatory mechanisms with which citizens can:
• Share information about a problem that needs to be addressed by law;
• Identify and discuss possible solutions to the problem; and
• Draft the bill itself.

I argued in my 2006 article that crowdsourcing legislation will benefit from reduced information asymmetry and reduced cost for information interpretation. The concept and methodology for ‘wikislation’ is still far from perfect. But the tools are here. I consider that spending our legislative resources on bottom-up IT will also decrease the cost of deliberation and eventually, the cost of promulgation. To get a complete picture on the concept of wikislation, read and download my 2006 article titled “How Legislative Process Works in the Period of e-democracy”.

An interesting article from Ching Leong at NUS SPP: “Rights and Price: A Pair of Red
Herrings in Water”. She contends:

If water is perceived as a human right, it should be freely available to one and all. But clean water comes at a cost and unless that cost is paid for, it is difficult to ensure universal access.

Before making any comment, have a look at WWC’s FAQ on the right to water here:

10- Does the human right to water mean that water should  be free?
The right to water does not mean that water has to be delivered for free, but it must be affordable, as well as safe, accessible and sufficient.  However, through the acceptance of a right to water, there is explicit recognition that water is a social and cultural good, as well as an economic good. This point was confirmed in CESCR's General Comment 15. Any payment for water services must be based on the principle of equity, ensuring that these services, whether privately or publicly provided, are affordable to all, including socially disadvantaged groups.

Again, before making any comment, have a look at Ms. Leong’s closing statement on her article:

Water in short should be priced as an economic virtue. At the same time, it should be free to those who cannot pay because of a moral imperative that is sometimes captured by the declaration that it is a human right. There is no reason that public policy cannot fulfill both roles because, in this happy instance at least, the imperatives from economics and morality are not in contradiction.

To me, that sounds like a human right after all. A cross subsidy is in place, those who cannot afford should have it for free. So that’s what human right to water is all about. It seems that we’ve agreed on this all along!