Human Rights and the Environment: A Synopsis and Some Predictions

Georgetown International Environmental Law Review, Spring 2004 by Hill, Barry E, Wolfson, Steve, Targ, Nicholas

Vitruvius was providing specific instructions on the selection of springs to provide houses with safe drinking water, and he linked directly the physical well-being and health of humans with the water that they used to survive and prosper. His discussion of the importance of having clean water was most telling when he simply concluded by implication: "look at the physique of the people who used the water and if they look healthy, the drinking water was clean and should be used." Conversely, if the humans did not look healthy, do not use the water. These are simple but effective instructions. Thus, if a population does not have clean and safe drinking water, its health will invariably be threatened. Inadequate supplies of clean and safe drinking water make hygiene difficult and, most assuredly, increase the risk of infectious disease in poor communities in those large megalopolises.

More than two thousand years after Vitruvius made these observations, the imperative of access to clean and safe drinking water, in both rural and urban settings, goes unmet for an estimated 1.1 billion people (approximately one in six), according to the World Health Organization (WHO).13 The United Nations estimates that "[u]nsafe water and sanitation cause. . . 80 per cent of all diseases in the developing world."14 Indeed, Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-General, has observed that, "No single measure would do more to reduce disease and save lives in the developing world than bringing safe water and adequate sanitation to all."15

Port-au-Prince, Haiti, serves as an excellent example of the adverse impact to the health of the populace in areas of the developing world where clean water is not readily available. One author recently wrote that:

Clean water is only one of the life-threatening problems facing Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, where the life expectancy is 51 years old and 80 percent of people live below the poverty line. Sixty percent of Haiti's 8 million people do not have safe drinking water, according to the government statistics, and most do not have access to basic medical care. Dirty water, which can cause skin ailments, dysentery and lead to dehydration, is everywhere. The child mortality rate is about 110 per 1,000, more than 13 times the U.S. rate, and more than 10 percent of infant deaths are attributable to dehydration, according to government statistics. More than 90 percent of the people here are illiterate, according to government officials. Most Haitians live in a cesspool of poverty.16

Moreover, the lack of access to clean and safe drinking water often harms the most vulnerable. Over forty percent of this burden falls on children under the age of five, although they make up only about ten percent of the world's population.17 In Mexico, for example, according to reports from both the Ministry of Health and Environment and the Pan-American Health Organization, "70 percent of the 11 million inhabitants who don't have access to potable water live in rural areas. In these areas, almost all of the wells and the other bodies of water which provided drinking water are contaminated."18 And, "[a]ccording to the reports, the lack of drinking water in rural areas translates into water and sanitation problems for the cities."19