The Effects of Environmental Globalization on Water Resources: In Search of the Human Right to Water

Abstract

The logic started with the Industrial Revolution, which has reached its maximum expression with market globalization, is implacable on a global scale. We coexist with climate change, with the ozone layer hole, with biodiversity loss and a dwindling of energy resources, with difficulties to match social cycles to economic ones, with new pathologies associated with lifestyle and with the progressive decline in the urban environment. One of the sectors where more damaging effects take place is water resources, as this turning into a source of war, political and legal conflicts, since they are scarce, especially in those countries where access to water is not guaranteed. Thus, thanks to an eminently legal methodology and from the perspective of the new water culture, the main objective of such a study is to know the regulatory status of the right to water and to sanitation at an international level, as a driver for ecodevelopment and sustainable economy in cities. In light of the results, no legal and State-binding regulation may currently be found that guarantees universal access to water and sanitation on an equal footing and with no discrimination. As such, the moment has come to recognize the right to water as a basic human right for individual and social development and for urban economics, as an essential precondition for the development of other human rights. This is to be done with an international, cooperative and legally-binding action that will answer to wake-up call regarding the global effects of the modern economic growth on the environment in general, but especially on natural resources.