Analiz ve Sentez -21. Yüzyıl

Water Politics. Justice and the Right to Water

• 13.11.2022
• Yazar:Dursun Yıldız
• (0) Yorum
• 3163

Water Politics
Justice and the Right to Water

Dursun Yıldız

Director,HPA

13 November 2022

The right to clean water has been adopted by the United Nations as a basic human right. Yet how such universal calls for a right to water are understood, negotiated, experienced, and struggled over remains a key challenge. 

Realizing the right to water involves re-organizing and re-thinking ways of relating to water, but also requires engaging with the wider transformations needed to make this world more sustainable and just.” -

The right to water remains elusive for a great number of people around the world. Despite decades of efforts by activists, policy-makers, and committed scholars, access to water remains deeply contested and unevenly distributed. The world faces a growing water crisis. This is not just about water availability, but about distribution: who gets what and how water is used. 

The right to safe and sufficient drinking water for all is one of the main issues and struggles of our time. Unequal power relations at local, national, and transnational scales, combined with policies and intervention practices that are often highly adverse for the vulnerable, make those with water abundance tend to squander leaving the others to face ever greater injustice

The right to water for all has been invoked many times over the past decade or so. Yet, very little has been achieved to achieve more equitable access to water despite resounding declarations of assorted national and international public and private organizations. Water shortages in the world bring death, social injustice, political instability, and economic stagnation. Therefore water politics matters.