A Feminist Agenda to Tackle the World’s Water Crisis

Direct Link to Full 60-Page UN Women 2023 Publication: from-commodity-to-common-good-a-feminist-agenda-to-tackle-the-worlds-water-crisis-en.pdf (unwomen.org)

WOMEN, WATER AND NATURE: A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO WATER USE AND WATER CONSERVATION No life form on this planet can survive without water. Life on Earth depends on our careful stewardship of this common good. Many of the world’s first inhabitants, and the keepers and protectors of water, often Indigenous women, have long considered water to be a sacred resource with a distinct bond to all life forms. Water, from this perspective, is not a thing to be possessed, but a living entity. It must be protected from environmental damage, waste and pollution and not exploited as a commodity or financial asset. With the global water crisis getting worse, not better, the time has come to heed the call for mainstreaming a new and radically different perspective focused on respect for the life-giving gifts that water provides and the imperative to return the gift through protection and conservation. The moral distinction between water as an extractive resource, often the current mainstream approach, and water as a sacred, common good, with its own independent and immutable right to exist and flourish, is arguably at the crux of the global water crisis. After all, a commodity can be purchased, owned, discarded and wasted. It lacks the right to exist or to be protected from extinction. Local and Indigenous women activists on the front lines of environmental justice, however, have long rejected this narrow viewpoint.

Извор: WUNRN – 10.11.2023