In the U.S. and Canada, for the most part, we have strong, safe public water systems. But in much of the world, this is not the case. This doesn’t mean that in these countries bottled water is the solution, because it’s not. It means we need ever-increasing efforts to understand the root causes of the world’s drinking water crisis, and efforts to beat the crisis that are based in human rights, care for the environment, and the common good.

Worldwide, lack of access to water for drinking, bathing, and washing, along with lack of sanitation, continues to be the single most important cause of disease worldwide. Lack of clean drinking water leads to nearly 250 million cases of water-related disease each year. Estimates of water-related deaths vary from the World Health Organization’s estimate of 2.2 million deaths per year to the UN Development Programme’s 2002 estimate of five million, though some estimate as many as 12 million deaths per year.

Some of the causes of this crisis are natural, in that some places simply have conditions that make it very difficult to access the water. But almost across the board, difficult natural conditions are accompanied by conditions of poverty or lack of political will. And, as Annie mentions in the film, pollution and toxic waste is a significant contributor to unsafe water. Industrial and agricultural development that threatens and degrades water resources and watersheds also degrades people’s access to safe water. Turning public waterways into industrial cesspools and threatening underground aquifers with toxic and bacteriological contamination leads directly to considerable health risks, and forces communities to suffer with the health effects or pay the clean up costs. In many cases, the world’s poor are forced to choose between using unsafe water and purchasing water from safe sources – an impossible choice for those living on less than $2.00 a day.

There are many groups working on addressing this crisis; we believe that underlying any appropriate response is the need to assert the human right to water. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the founding document of the United Nations, does not affirm “right to water” as such – a fact that has generated heated debate about the existence of such a right. But the fact is that when the Universal Declaration was drafted in 1946, we could scarcely have imagined a world where water might be considered a marketable product.

Seeing the need to clarify this right, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights published General Comment 15 in 2002, stating “the human right to water entitles everyone to sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic uses.” General Comment 15 notes that the right to water has been recognized in a wide range of international documents and reaffirms the fundamental importance of the right, stating that: “the human right to water is indispensable for leading a life in human dignity. It is a prerequisite for the realization of other human rights.”