#worldwaterday

Half a litre of clean water. I just got it from the fountain. I drink a few of these every day without even thinking about it.

But today, I'm thinking about it. It's World Water Day.

Last year, at this time, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the world that more people die from unsafe water than from all forms of violence, including war:

“These deaths are an affront to our common humanity, and undermine the efforts of many countries to achieve their development potential.”  

This year, the theme is focussed on urban challenges, which could not be more timely. Not only do the Third World's urban poor often lack access to drinkable water, but right now Japan is in a water crisis due first to the earthquake and tsunami, and now to radioactive contamination.

Other countries are rushing in to hydrate the Japanese, but the global nature of the water disaster is not as easy to quench.

But what can we do about it? For one thing, we can support international development efforts to improve water infrastructure. WaterAid, for example, works on an individual and family level to help vulnerable people access their own water. You can also make consumer choices that support your local water resources, by drinking tap water instead of bottled.

Politically, you can make yourself more aware of the dangers of water privatization. On July 28, 2010, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly agreed to a resolution declaring the human right to “safe and clean drinking water and sanitation.” Canada abstained.

Why? According to The Council of Canadians, the Canadian government had potential revenue to lose:

"The world’s water companies would like to see water regarded as a human need, enabling them to control and sell water to the highest bidder for profit. Because Canada manages the largest freshwater resources in the world, companies are lining up to pump, bottle and privatize our water for their profit. Despite the increasing threat to our water, the Canadian government has not updated its national water policy in over 15 years. Instead, governments over this period of time have continued to support free trade agreements that only further threaten our ability to safeguard our water for people and nature."

There are other issues too. When it comes to drinking water, Canada has some dirty little secrets. Our federal government is mandated to assist First Nations in ensuring safe drinking water in their communities. But there are some who fall off the radar.

A particularly egregious example is the plight of the Lubicon Cree. We have come to know more about this issue than the average Canadians through our work with Amnesty International.

"The Lubicon Cree live in the middle of the Alberta oil fields. Vast wealth has been taken from their land. In fact, the province’s share of this oil and gas wealth has been estimated to exceed $14 billion. Yet the Lubicon people live in conditions that would be unimaginable to most Canadians.
The Lubicon community of Little Buffalo has no running water and no sanitation system. Before the Alberta government permitted large-scale oil and gas development on their land, the Lubicon took their drinking water from the muskeg and the lakes and streams. They can no longer safely do so.
With ever more intensive forms of oil and gas development, including the beginning of oil sands extraction, there are increasing worries that even water deep below the ground may become unusable."

But I'll let the Lubicon youth tell you in their own words:



So while World Water Day focusses on cities, my thoughts are with a threatened people in my own country. Because when anyone, anywhere, is denied the right to safe water, everyone's human rights are at risk.

Cheers.

You gotta write... for your rights...

Today is United Nations Human Rights Day, the anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

To celebrate this day, Amnesty International invites activists worldwide to Write For Rights, and send letters to urge governments everywhere to stand by their commitment to uphold all of the rights enshrined in the Declaration.

Here in Canada, there are public writeathon events happening from coast to coast (to coast).

The action is fairly straightforward. Just visit amnesty.ca/writeathon to educate yourself about some of the violations of the Declaration happening around the world (including right here in Canada!), register online, and start writing.

You won't be alone. Canadian celebrities such as Margaret Atwood, Eric Peterson, Sarah Harmer, David Usher and Broken Social Scene are also taking part.



Write to demand freedom for Prisoners of Conscience. Write to demand equal rights for indigenous people. Write for women. Write for life.

Just write for what's right!

Blog Action Day 2010: Water, water, everywhere?

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It's raining today in Ottawa. It's a reminder of how lucky we are here in Canada, where lakes are said to outnumber people and where up to 20% of the world's fresh water reserves remain.

Today, bloggers all over the world are speaking out about access to fresh water for Blog Action Day 2010.

You'll see stories about all the things we need to do to guarantee fresh water to people in the third world and poverty and conflict zones. But all far away from home, right?

Wrong.

For the past several months, we have been working with Amnesty International Canada on strategies to rally public support for the Lubicon Cree, a band of indigenous people who are living without land rights, stewardship of their traditional resources, or even drinkable water. In Canada.

You often hear about human rights horrors committed in the name of cheap oil. But once again, these stories tend to happen far away. This, however, is happening in Alberta.



This is a preview. You can watch the 20-minute documentary here.

The Lubicon, you see, have the misfortune of having their ancestral lands sitting on top of Canada's oil sands — a massive, if "dirty", reserve of petroleum.

Says Amnesty:

"More than 2,600 oil and gas wells have been drilled on Lubicon Cree land in northern Alberta, Canada. This intensive development has taken place against the wishes of the Lubicon people and has led to tragic consequences for their society. Even more destructive forms of development – including oil sands extraction – are planned for the future.

International human rights bodies have long been critical of the poverty, widespread ill-health and culture loss that has resulted from the near total destruction of the Lubicon economy and way of life.."

And it's not just Amnesty who have given this issue, and Canada's human rights record, world attention on this issue. In 1990, the United Nations Human Rights Committee ruled that Canada had failed to protect the Lubicon Cree's rights by allowing the development of logging, oil and gas on the community's traditional hunting and trapping lands. (not that Canada is showing the UN much respect these days...)

So why don't the Lubicon just move, you might ask? Would you leave your homeland to someone who was planning to rip it apart?

The Lubicon situation is further complicated by the fact that they never signed a treaty with the British Crown. The sad truth is that when Canadian government commissioners negotiated Treaty 8 with other northern Alberta "Indians" in 1899 they travelled down the the Athabasca and Peace rivers and missed the "isolated community" who were not on the route.

In the many years since, there have been some federal government attempts to reconcile this mistake, but no mutually satisfactory deal has been reached. In the meantime, the Province of Alberta, which manages its own oil and gas development, continues to grant licences to global oil companies to exploit these "Crown Lands".

And how does this all relate back to Blog Action Day? It's something in the water.

In 1992, Lubicon Cree Rose Ominayak read this statement to the Alberta Commission of Review:

"Our children are sick from drinking water that oil has spilled in. They are sick from breathing the poisoned and polluted air the pulp mill has made. We are sick from eating animals, animals that are sick from disease from poisoned plants and water. Our children have nothing–they can’t breathe–even that has been taken. Their culture, the bush life, has been destroyed by development. When we were young we lived in the bush–it was a good life. Now, we have no traplines, nothing to hunt. There are no jobs, no money to live a decent life. We see ourselves, our men and our children falling into despair, hopelessness, low self-esteem and drinking. Families are broken like never before. Drinking and violence rise as our spirits fall."

So what can you do about this injustice? First of all, you need to get informed. Visit Amnesty's Justice for the Lubicon Cree site, or join the Facebook Page Speak up for the rights of the Lubicon Cree. Then, whether you are Canadian or not, you can take action by making your voice heard.

For their — and for all of our — futures.