I am writing you on behalf of UNSGAB, the UN Secretary General's Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation.
Tasked to advance the global water and sanitation agenda, our Board is very concerned about the improvement of water management that will be required to make the necessary increase of food production possible. We believe that the international community should pay more attention to the essential contribution of water to food production throughout its value chain. It is part of our advocacy work. There are too many reports on food security that ignore or underestimate the water-related constraints and opportunities. For example, last September, our Chair highlighted the need for FAO to include water considerations in its Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure[1].
In this context, your future report on Water and Food Security may be very useful. This is why we have read the zero draft dated 1st October that you posted online for comments[2].
In this zero draft, there is unfortunately a draft recommendation with which our Board disagrees totally. This is the last recommendation numbered 12 that aims at "expanding the right to water to water for ecosystems reserves and water for subsistence production".
Further to a Board discussion on the matter, we request that this recommendation is not included in your final report.
As our Board did not discuss the other recommendations, this message is limited to this draft recommendation #12.
In your draft text, this recommendation #12 is not justified with any convincing arguments. Some of the arguments you use are even biased. For example, when the paragraph 3.6.2 mentions that the General Comment 15 to the ICESCR on the Right to water "suggests that States parties should ensure that there is adequate access to water for subsistence farming", this is factually true but, as presented, it makes the reader believe that this statement is a consequence of the Human right to water. However, this is not the case.
It must be noted that the draft text uses repeatedly the wording "right to water” or "human right to water" which hides the fact that the human right that was recognised in international law in
2010 is not a generic "human right to water" but a very specific "human right to safe drinking water and sanitation" (HRSDWS) that has no direct linkage with water for agriculture.
Water resources should not be confused with safe drinking water. Water only becomes safe when it has been purified for human consumption or its natural quality has been controlled to be exempt from any contamination. This is not the water that is needed and used in far larger volumes by farmers and ecosystems. Globally, the volume of ‘drinking water’ that is used by human beings is 20 times smaller than the volume of ‘water’ used for agriculture. This means that a generic "human right to water" would be very different from the "human right to safe drinking water and sanitation" (HRSDWS).
It is estimated that today, about half of the world population (more than 3 billion people) do not have its "human right to safe drinking water" satisfied3 and as a result has a harder or more dangerous life than the other half. We note with satisfaction that you refer to the important issue of water safety in sections 1.1.2 and 1.3.3 of your draft report. However, we suggest that the text of section 1.3.3 is made even more precise by taking advantage of the recent findings disclosed by the 2014 report of the WHO-UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme4: more than 1.8 billion people use contaminated water! It would be also useful to delete the word "safe" from the sentence that introduces the Figure 4 ( "Figure 4 shows the delivery of safe drinking water in nine regions across the world.") since this figure 4 provides data on access to improved water sources which may or may not be safe.
Out of respect for these billions of people who must have their needs for safe drinking water satisfied urgently and to avoid delay in the implementation of their human rights, we ask you not to confuse governments and the international community by opening debates on potential amendments of their existing rights established under international law.
The requirement of individual farmers to have the raw water that is necessary for growing their subsistence food is a completely different issue. Its satisfaction depends mainly on local rainfall and on their allocation of other accessible water resources. These are not the main drivers of the satisfaction of the HRSDWS. For all these reasons, the effective satisfaction of the water needs of individual farmers for subsistence production should be ensured through legal frameworks that must not be mixed with the legal framework of the HRSDWS.
Water for ecosystems is a third issue that also requires different regulations. If ecosystems need water of "good quality", this quality is very different from the one that is necessary for the water to be safe for people. These two different quality requirements should not be confused.
For all these reasons and to avoid adding confusions that might be detrimental to the satisfaction of the different water needs of people, farmers and ecosystems as well as of the human rights of people, we ask you not to include in your final report the last draft recommendation #12 that aims at "expanding the right to water to water for ecosystems reserves and water for subsistence production".
This would also require that you make adjustments to the narrative on this question in earlier parts of your report.
Gerard Payen, Member of UNSGAB
[1] We note that your draft report states the same in its paragraph 3.5.1
UNSGABGerard Payen