Water jugs in the community water center in Grassy Narrows, Canada. April 13, 2016. © 2016 Human Rights Watch

By Marcos Orellana
WASHINGTON DC, Apr 4 2019 (IPS)

While residents across Prince Rupert, British Columbia are once again able to get safe drinking water from their taps, the boil-water advisory lifted there in late January should not be forgotten. Canada is a freshwater-rich country, but the time for complacency on essential water issues has long passed. Most people living in Canada have access to safe water. But drinking water advisories in the country about unsafe water have been concentrated in First Nation communities.

As of December 31,  there were six “boil-water advisories” and three “do not consume advisories” affecting eight First Nations Indigenous communities in British Columbia.

The Prince Rupert boil-advisory responded to an increase in the levels of cryptosporidium and giardia, two parasites that cause intestinal health problems. The contamination is thought to have been brought on by the combination of a severe drought in British Columbia during the summer and a large storm surge that soon followed.

Similar environmental and health problems can be expected to recur.  According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the onslaught of extreme weather patterns caused by intensifying climate change will only continue. The water crisis in Prince Rupert lasted for nearly six weeks and left 12,000 people without drinking water, according to CBC News. It has overwhelmingly affected Indigenous communities.

Tom Kertes, a volunteer organizer with Community for Clean Water–a grassroots organization in Prince Rupert  —  told CBC, “The city almost treated it like an inconvenience. Clean water is not about convenience or inconvenience. It’s about life and death and access to clean water is a human right.”

In June 2016, Human Rights Watch published a 92-page report that found that the Canadian government had failed to meet a range of international human rights obligations toward First Nations  people and communities in Ontario by failing to remedy the severe water crisis.

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A child in Grassy Narrows First Nation, Ontario, Canada brushes her teeth with bottled water. Water on First Nations reserves is contaminated, inadequately treated or hard to access. April 14, 2016. © 2016 Human Rights Watch

We found that the water crisis in First Nations communities in Ontario has persisted for decades. A primary contributor to the problem is the legal discrimination that exists related to the regulation and protection of drinking water for First Nations reserves.

Access to water is a human right under international law, and Canada’s Constitution Act of 1982 provides for “essential public services of reasonable quality.” This means that the authorities have an obligation—as well as a moral imperative—to uphold this right.

Provincial and territorial regulations governing safe drinking water and sanitation, which operate to protect the health of most Canadian residents, do not extend to First Nations reserves. Other factors compounding the problem include insufficient and unpredictable funding, tainted source water, and lack of capacity and support for water system operators. As a result, water on many First Nations reserves is not safe.

In 1976, Canada became a party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In 2016, the UN Committee that monitors compliance with the treaty expressed concern about “the restricted access to safe drinking water and to sanitation by the First Nations as well as the lack of water regulations for the First Nations living on reserves.”

The Canadian government has taken measures to address the water crisis in First Nations reserves. In 2018, the Federal government began direct engagement with the Assembly of First Nations to repeal and replace flawed drinking water legislation passed in 2013. Funding to address the problems has increased since our Ontario report was issued, with the 2018 budget including an additional $173 million. In Ontario, 26 advisories were lifted in 14 communities as of mid-2018.

But as of February 4, 2019, there were 62 long-term drinking advisories throughout Canada. The Neskantaga First Nation in Northern Ontario, for example, has had a water boil advisory in place for the last 23 years.

Access to water is a human right under international law, and  Canada’s Constitution Act of 1982 provides for “essential public services of reasonable quality.” This means that the authorities have an obligation—as well as a moral imperative—to uphold this right. It also empowers people to demand that their governments take concrete and deliberate steps to ensure access to safe and affordable water for the population.

Canada still needs to do more to secure the right to water for all of its people and to  live up to its commitments to First Nations communities.

The right to safe drinking water is indispensable to a healthy life.  Putting out a water advisory alerts residents to the problem, but doesn’t do anything to solve it. The federal government should be working closely with First Nation communities to ensure that money allotted for water improvement is used efficiently and that sustainable solutions are created. The provincial government can help by engaging indigenous communities and advocating for their right to clean water.

The Canadian government still has a lot of work to do, but it is critically important for the health of indigenous people to get the job done.

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Internally displaced villagers herd livestock in Kenya’s Turkana County. © 2014 Brent Stirton/Reportage by Getty Images for Human Rights Watch

By Marcos Orellana
WASHINGTON, DC, Sep 12 2017 (IPS)

When people ask me what rising sea levels and hurricanes have to do with human rights, I tell them about my work trip to the Maldives back in 2008. At the time, the small island nation was undertaking democratic reforms and leading the diplomatic efforts at the UN to portray the human face of climate change. Vivid in my memory is an image of a man piling up sand bags to keep the rising sea from taking his house. Vivid also are the faces of elderly islanders, wracked with despair and disbelief, after huge storm surges had forced people to relocate. 

Stories of lives upturned are certainly tragic, but they also help explain why rising seas and extreme weather are linked to human rights.

There are many examples of this. In Kenya, increased temperatures and unpredictable rainy seasons threaten Indigenous people’s food and water supplies. In Bangladesh, natural disasters – notably flooding  – fuel poverty, which in turn leads to more child brides as families try to marry off their daughters before they lose their land to rising rivers. And in Brazil, climate change may hasten the spread of mosquito-borne illnesses, like the Zika virus, which is especially harmful to women and girls.

So it is not just islanders in some remote corner of the world who stand to lose with climate change. Images of the devastation wrought on Houston and in Florida clearly show that the global climate system connects us all. Rich or poor, east or west, north or south, we all share one atmosphere.

In a worrying sign of where the US administration is on the issue, it recently chose to announce it is axing the post of climate change envoy at the very moment that Hurricane Harvey was wreaking havoc across Texas and as hundreds of people in South Asia were dying in unprecedented monsoon rains.
Nevertheless, for the Maldives and other small islands the stakes are particularly high: they risk losing everything if the world does not meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement and prevent sea levels from rising further.

“The rising seas, extreme weather events or changes to agriculture… threaten our way of life and in some cases, our very existence,” warned Fiji’s Prime Minister, Frank Bainimarama, in Bonn last May as he prepared to assume the presidency of the forthcoming global climate summit, to be held this November.

It will be the first time a small-island nation takes on this role, and as a country particularly susceptible to climate change, Fiji is well-positioned to champion its climate vision. A fresh approach is particularly important at a time when populism and ignorance are clouding rational decision-making in the United States, the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China. In a worrying sign of where the US administration is on the issue, it recently chose to announce it is axing the post of climate change envoy at the very moment that Hurricane Harvey was wreaking havoc across Texas and as hundreds of people in South Asia were dying in unprecedented monsoon rains.

Fiji’s leader says he wants to maintain the momentum of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which explicitly calls on governments tackling climate change to respect their human rights obligations. But Baininarama has been utterly silent on this so far.

So why is Bainimarama dragging his feet on human rights? Possibly because prior to winning elections three years ago, Bainimarama seized power in a 2006 coup d’etat, and cynically justified his subsequent use of military rule by saying it was necessary to restore democracy and curtail corruption. While there has been less outright intimidation and more space for public debate since 2014, the government has shown little political will to prosecute cases of torture and other ill-treatment.

Boys fishing in Lake Turkana. © 2014 Brent Stirton/Reportage by Getty Images for Human Rights Watch

There are some positive signs. For example, Fiji’s lead climate negotiator spoke movingly in May about how Fijians honor their buried ancestors as part of the land, explaining how rising seas affect a complex web of cultural rights and practices.

Fiji should use its leverage as presidency to secure respect for rights in the fight against climate change. And other nations should be prepared to follow its lead.

In June, the UN Human Rights Council warned that “climate change poses an existential threat for some countries” and “has already had an adverse impact on the full and effective enjoyment of human rights‎.” The people of islands like the Maldives and Fiji – as well as the millions more affected globally, everywhere from Houston to Hyderabad – are only too aware of this.

The statements and views mentioned in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of IPS..

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