The human right to water is recognized by the United Nations in a series of General Assembly and Human Rights Council resolutions and international conferences. The escalating global water crisis challenges the enjoyment of the human right to water that is inseparably linked with other human rights, including the right to life, the right to the highest attainable standard of health, and the right to adequate food.
Nowadays, over 2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water, out of which almost half cannot access even basic drinking water services, with water scarcity severely impacting Sub-Saharan African and Middle Eastern countries. Climate change, population growth, urbanization, and intensification of industry and agriculture constitute some of the prime factors that challenge the sustainability of aquatic ecosystems, enhancing water insecurity and accelerating competition over available water flows.
Almost half of the global population lives in 153 countries that host at the minimum one of the world’s 286 transboundary rivers and lake basins and 592 transboundary aquifer systems. Notably, transboundary waters account for 60 percent of the global freshwater flows, necessitating integrated management of transboundary water resources for the realization of the human right to safe drinking water.
The Human Right to Water at the International Level
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The human right to safe drinking water as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living that guarantees the right to life and other human rights has been explicitly recognized in General Comment No. 15 on “The Right to Water” of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 2002. General Comment No. 15 defines the right to water as the right of everyone to sufficient, safe, acceptable, and physically accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic uses. Prior international conferences and resolutions unquestionably paved the way for the adoption of General Comment No. 15 on “The Right to Water.”
Prime among them is the 1977 Action Plan of the Mar del Plata UN Water Conference that for the first time recognized water as a right, highlighting that “all peoples, whatever their stage of development and social and economic conditions, have the right to have access to drinking water in quantities and of a quality equal to their basic needs.” Also, notably, tdrinking wateron the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women of 1979 requests women’s adequate living conditions particularly in relation to water supply, while the Convention on the rights of the child of 1989 asks for children’s access to clean drinking water within the framework of combatting disease and malnutrition.
Additionally, the 1992 International Conference on Water and the Environment in Dublin, and the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), known as the Rio Summit, clearly recognized the basic right of all human beings to have access to clean drinking water at an affordable price. In December 1999, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution A/Res/54/175 on “The Right to Development” affirming that the right to clean water is fundamental human right whose promotion constitutes a moral imperative at national and international levels.
The draft guidelines prepared in 2005 by the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights of the UN Economic and Social Council on the “Realization of the right to drinking water and sanitation” provided a toolkit for governments, international agencies, and civil society working in the water sector to realize the right to drinking water. Since 2006, a series of Human Rights Council Decisions and six UN General Assembly Resolutions on the “Human Rights to safe drinking and sanitation” have been adopted.
Prime among them is UN General Assembly resolution 64/292 of 2010 that acknowledges the right to safe and clean drinking water as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights, and UN General Assembly resolution 74/141 of 2019 that calls upon states not only to ensure progressive realization of the human right to safe drinking water for all, eliminating inequalities in access on the grounds of race, gender, and disability, but also to implement the Sustainable Development Goals and Targets, including Goal 6 on ensuring the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation.
Status of the Human Right to Water: Regional Challenges, Obligations, and the Way Forward
Despite international water law development, almost 1.2 billion people globally lack access to basic water services, 367 million use unimproved resources, and 122 million drink surface waters. Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East constitute regions with chronic water scarcity. Climate change, rapid population growth, and urbanization, along with obsolete water infrastructure and water overconsumption by the agricultural sector, constitute common denominators of the water scarcity in both regions. Two thirds of the freshwater resources are transboundary; in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, transboundary basins cover 64 and 58 percent of the land area, respectively.
Transboundary cooperation is thus critical for the improvement of water quality, the equitable use of water resources among riparian states, and joint water governance arrangements. The latter necessitate the involvement, except of the relevant state stakeholders, of civil society organizations and indigenous communities to support integrated management of transboundary surface and groundwater resources. Transboundary cooperation and equitable use of shared resources are obligations that fall within the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Convention for the protection and use of transboundary rivers and international lakes of 1992. The protection of the aquatic ecosystem and prevention of significant harm constitute additional obligations of the UNECE convention that provides a comprehensive framework for the protection and sustainable management of transboundary surface and underground waters.
It is often common to see riparian states’ efforts that center on enhancing river basin water quality and the overall health of a river’s ecosystem to be undermined by other state(s) that opt to discharge untreated wastewater into the river, thus severely polluting freshwater ecosystems. It is therefore imperative for Sub-Saharan Africa and Middle East countries to sign and ratify the UNECE Convention that adopts a holistic rather than piecemeal approach emphasizing integrated water management and highlighting the importance of societies, economies, and ecosystems. A circular economy approach to water resources management can prove multiply beneficial for the reduction of irrational water consumption, particularly in the agricultural sector, the reuse and recycling of water and wastewater, and for the recovery of materials, including minerals, from water and wastewater to enhance resilience to climate change.
Water-saving technologies by households and agricultural businesses, desalination, the restructuring and rehabilitation of water networks, and the improvement of wastewater infrastructure can contribute to the conservation of limited water resources and guarantee the human right to water. Not least of all, international organizations like UNICEF and financial institutions like the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development should accelerate the provision of technical expertise, the release of financial resources, and enhanced capacity-building and technology transfer to assist countries under water scarcity in providing clean, accessible, and affordable drinking water to their populations.
Managing Water Scarcity: The Case of Jordan
Jordan is a country located at the heart of the Middle East that faces absolute water scarcity, as its per capita share of renewable water resources is less than 100 cubic meters annually, with expectations to fall to 90 cubic meters annually by 2025. Simply put, Jordan is dramatically below the 500 cubic meters threshold of “absolute water scarcity,” as determined by the “Falkenmark indicator” or else the “water stress index.”
Population growth and the influx of Syrian refugees have heavily stressed the water supply and services throughout Jordan highlighting the necessity for integrated management of water resources, multi-level governance, a more efficient distribution network and storage facilities, improvement of the existing tariff and subsidy system, and community engagement.
(a) Overcoming water challenges in agriculture: Almost 50 percent of the kingdom’s water demand is directed to the agricultural sector, which represents a mere 4.2 percent of GDP, showcasing the need to accelerate the adoption of water-efficient technologies. Hydroponic farming has the possibility to save at least half of the water used in traditional tillage with drip irrigation and is currently employed in pilot hydroponic farm units, particularly in the Jordan Valley.
Despite the high investment costs, hydroponics not only contributes to water consumption reduction and conservation but also enhances community engagement and empowerment, providing employment opportunities to women, the youth, and other vulnerable members of the population.
The pilot projects fall within the technology transfer by the Netherlands to assist Jordan in increasing land-use efficiency, reducing water consumption, and enhancing water conservation, practically attesting the letter and spirit of consecutive UN General Assembly resolutions on the human right to water.
Concurrently, Jordan aims at accelerating sustainable development practices in agriculture, most notably the use of treated wastewater for irrigation purposes. The kingdom reportedly treats 90 percent of its annual wastewater production at 32 wastewater treatment plants highly complying with national irrigation and industrial reuse regulations.
(b) Water pricing and multi-level governance: Investment in water infrastructure has been undermined by the high level of non-revenue water combined with illegal connections and water theft. Jordan aims to confine non-revenue water from its current level of approximately 50 percent to 25 percent of water supplied to urban systems nationally by 2040. The situation is worsened by the fact that water is transported through long distances to reach end-users with more than 50 percent of it being leaked from pipes or not being paid by consumers. In addition, water is loftily subsidized, and end-user tariffs are determined below the cost of operations, forcing water suppliers to run long-term budget deficits.
The sustainable reduction of non-revenue water, the enhancement of service delivery, and the improvement of financial sustainability of Jordan’s water sector entail the rehabilitation of water transportation infrastructure throughout the kingdom, community engagement, and modernization of water supply systems. The Jordan Water Sector Efficiency project financed by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Global Concessional Financing Facility of the World Bank falls under this category, aiming at the reduction of non-revenue water.
It is evident that multi-dimensional issues, such as managing water scarcity, require multi-level governance; in other words, coordination and collaboration across various levels of government, from local to global, and across different sectors and stakeholders engaging civil society, companies, and the state. A meaningful step towards this direction was a social media campaign aimed at raising public awareness on Jordan’s water scarcity with the support of USAID that not only led to the disconnection of thousands of illegal well drillings by state authorities at all levels of society, including among Jordan’s business and political elites, but also to the encouragement of citizens to build tanks to collect rainwater.
An additional positive step toward the same direction was the cooperation of state agencies with UNICEF that culminated with the construction of cost-effective water and wastewater networks in the Azraq and Za’atari refugee camps, confirming that the human right to water is universal and practically guaranteed for people living in refugee camps.
(c) Looking towards expensive water options: As urban expansion intensifies and groundwater resources decline, Jordan is forced to look towards expensive sources of water, such as reuse of treated wastewater, and construction of desalination facilities. International financing is key to the execution of high-budget projects aiming at the development of new water resources that will enhance the water allowances per capita.
The Aqaba-Amman Water Desalination and Conveyance Project is a multi-billion-dollar scheme that is expected to desalinate water from the Red Sea at the Gulf of Aqaba in the kingdom’s south as of 2028. The desalinated water is expected to be transported via a 420-kilometer pipeline to Amman in the North, supplying 300 million cubic meters of water annually, and covering the water demand of almost 4 million people. An environmental impact assessment of the project, as an obligation from the aspect of customary international law that is also embodied in Principle 17 of the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, was conducted by the European Investment Bank at Jordan’s request to assess its likely harm to the environment before any authorization is granted.
The environmental impact assessment has given the green light to the project, highlighting measures that should be taken throughout the project’s lifecycle for the protection of the Red Sea. Prime among them is the recommendation not to eject any of the chemicals used in salination process back to the sea. To this end, a wastewater treatment plant will be installed within the desalination plant.
Overall, improved drinking water services heavily rely on the construction of new and the improvement of existing water and wastewater infrastructures. Ongoing projects include construction of wastewater treatment plants in major cities throughout the country and improvements to the Amman water supply network and the Zara Ma’in water treatment plant. Notably, the Zara Ma’in water treatment plant conveys 38 million cubic meters annually of treated water received from three main sources originally flowing to the Dead Sea while maintaining a continuous water supply to almost 1.7 million people.
(d) Transboundary Cooperation: Jordan is highly dependent on transboundary surface water and groundwater resources. The Jordan River Basin is an international water resource shared by five riparian countries necessitating cross border cooperation for the equitable utilization of shared water resources. Cooperation is, however, impeded by the strained political relations of most riparian countries. It is also noteworthy that none of the riparian countries are signatories to the UNECE Convention for the protection and use of transboundary rivers and international lakes, despite its global opening to non-UNECE states. Jordan is a lower riparian that acquires 40 percent of its water from the Jordan River and its Yarmouk tributary, but due to a series of dams and hydrology projects on the Jordan River’s upper section, the downstream section suffers in parts from agricultural runoff and sewage.
The only legally binding agreement under international law that provides the basis for transboundary water cooperation over the Jordan River is the 1994 Treaty of Peace between Jordan and Israel. The Treaty of Peace distinctly addresses the subject of the two countries’ water scarcity and water allocation from the Yarmouk and Jordan Rivers. Article 6 and Annex II of the Treaty provide the basis for the execution of water-related projects and sustainable use of shared resources. As foreseen in the Treaty of Peace, except for specified annual water allocations from the Jordan and Yarmouk Rivers, Israel is obligated to supply Jordan with 50 million cubic meters of drinkable water annually, not from the two rivers, but from alternative resources.
The Treaty of Peace has practically established interstate cooperation for the identification of solutions to water shortages through regular consultations of the Joint Water Committee, a cooperative institutional body provided by the Treaty. It is in the context of the Joint Water Committee’s proceedings and consultations that both countries reached an agreement in 2021, according to which Israel would sell Jordan 45 million cubic meters of water annually at a discount price, with an option for the kingdom to purchase additional water depending on the Yarmouk River’s status.
The Treaty of Peace also provides the foundation upon which Jordan and Israel coordinate to identify practical solutions to their water scarcity, including alternative methods of supplying water. It is within this treaty provision that Jordan, Israel, and the UAE signed a Declaration of Intent for the execution of the Prosperity Blue-Prosperity Green Project that foresees the supply of 600 megawatts of solar energy to Israel from a UAE-funded plant in Jordan in exchange for 200 million cubic meters of desalinated water from Israel. The Prosperity Blue-Prosperity Green Project will enhance regional water sustainability and security through transboundary cooperation schemes. It has admittedly all the ingredients that showcase the dividends of regional peace.
Overall, as a resource for freshwater, the Jordan River basin is vital for Jordan and Israel. Shared water resources from the same river basin have necessitated cooperative management between the two countries for their equitable utilization and the avoidance of significant harm to the river’s ecosystem. The establishment of a basin governance structure in the downstream section of the Jordan River for its joint rehabilitation including pollution control and wastewater treatment falls within the priorities of Jordan and Israel.
A Jordan River basin-wide integrated management of water resources, however, has not been possible to date due to the tense relations of most riparian states with Israel. Despite geopolitical tensions, the quantification and attainment of water rights as specified in the Jordan-Israel Treaty of Peace has been significant for the enjoyment of the human right to water for the two countries’ respective populations.
Conclusion
The primary responsibility of all countries lies in ensuring the full realization of the human right to water individually and through international and regional cooperation mechanisms. Water can turn from a source of crisis to an instrument of cooperation, waging peaceful co-existence and coordination.
Chronic water scarcity problems entail long-term solutions enabling local communities, international organizations, civil society, and the private sector to engage in proactive and supportive measures and policies that can ensure sustainable, equitable, and non-discriminatory access to safe drinking water. Because as Ban Ki-Moon, former UN Secretary-General, once said: “Water is health. Water is dignity. Water is a human right. There is nothing more fundamental to our very existence”.
