The Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo and Judge Ricardo Lorenzetti analyzed the global challenges posed by the right to water. The discussion took place in a virtual forum of experts on public policy and sustainable development, organized by the Institute for Global Dialogue and Culture of the Meeting (IDGCE , together with the Panamanian Ecclesial Network (REPAM).
In the first debate carried out virtually on June 18 via Zoom, Vattimo assured that “the water issue is the problem in which almost all the social problems of our time come together. When you talk about the water problem in the Amazon basin, for example, is it just a problem of organization or public investment? ”. He also added that, “When the matter of access to clean water is discussed by the powers that prevent its equitable distribution to all peoples, especially within countries, including the wealthy, this is as a call for global transformation “.
Meanwhile, Lorenzetti highlighted “the participation of social and institutional actors, and within institutions, the judiciaries” on the issue of water care. “It is relevant to focus on the issue of implementation, because there are many rights, basically the human right to drinking water, but few levels of application,” he said, adding that “if someone in 200 years from now, as happened with the Code from Hammurabi, discovered a stone and read the laws that were in that code, seeing how people lived 200 years ago, that someone would find many big mistakes, because our laws and constitutions describe many rights, but there’s a huge gap between rights and their actual applicability. ”
In his presentation, Lorenzetti also highlighted that “the generation before ours used water at no cost. We are already paying for it and the following generations will pay much more to use water, so if there are property rights over water, we are going to have many people excluded from the market and therefore from access to water. ” He also stressed that, “It is very important how water is legally classified, in cases where the human right to drinking water is being compromised. We have sustained, and this has been already included in the Argentine Civil Code and in many rulings, that it is a common good. ”
“This has been very evident to me, that is, they are judicial, legal problems,” agreed Vattimo, adding that “the point is that without an initiative, a global one, to defend the right to clean water for all, it is difficult to solve or imagine the issue evolving ”.
Lorenzetti also emphasized the care of nature in general, and highlighted the United Nations program called One Health Approach since “the health of nature and human health are inextricably linked”.
“From the right to water to the right to hope” is a cycle of virtual forums that proposes “the deepening of the challenges on the right to water, sustainable development and the participation of communities to care for our common home,” according to Luis Liberman, director of the IDGCE and organizer of the cycle, along with Gabriela Sacco, executive director, and Cardinal Claudio Hummes, president of the Panamanian Ecclesial Network.
The cycle seeks to apply the lines of action that emerged in the Synod for the Amazon and is the previous step to a seminar that the institutions are organizing for February 2021 in the Vatican. The next forum will be “Education and integral ecology in the construction of a sustainable and inclusive future”, and it will take place on July 2, at 10 am in Argentina. The second virtual meeting “aims to work on the ecological, human and ethical dimension underlying decision-making, particularly with regard to resources such as water – and the role and value of education in the construction of a sustainable, inclusive and respectful future on human rights ”.
