El contenido específico del derecho humano al agua

Abstract

The social and environmental problems of today's world pose the challenge of changing the mentality in the face of the existing relationship between human beings and nature. This implies the need to think about an "updating" of what is formulated from the International Law of Human Rights (IHRL) as the "human right to water". A reality that demonstrates the need to update said content are the different scenarios of water scarcity in the world, caused not only by environmental deterioration, but also by deficiencies in the models for providing the water supply service. The multiple cases of remunicipalization of water and sanitation services that have occurred throughout the world in the last 20 years (just over 300 cases) are proof of this. These situations call into question the position that has been officially held by IHRL regarding the models for providing the water supply service, which has been, until recently, one of neutrality. The present text is directed towards the identification of the normative content of the human right to water as it has been defined from the IHRL, by recognizing it as a contribution of great value for human rights in general, emphasizing the interrelation and interdependence between the right human rights to water, the right to life and the ecological protection of nature as a source of the elements that make the realization of the right to life possible. Then it is passed to the elaboration of a conceptual framework to understand the elements of the normative content of the right in question; framework that allows these elements to be integrated into the theoretical plane to elaborate a foundation of the human right to water. Said framework will be based on the integration of certain elements: the first, biopower, which allows understanding power over water as a form of power over life. The second, the definition of biological life as autopoiesis, proposed by the biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, a definition that allows delimiting a sphere of autonomous processes of self-production of life, which in the human being is represented by the biological human. This theoretical framework is reinforced with the introduction of the bioethical principle of human vulnerability, understood here as biological vulnerability: the vulnerability of the biological human represented in the non-freedom of the human in the face of the processes that make his survival possible, as the foundation of bioethical rule of non-exploitation of that vulnerability by third parties. From the conceptual framework outlined above, the conclusion is deduced that the normative content of the human right to water, defined from the IHRL, is incomplete, and can be expanded and completed with the introduction of a clear position (and not ambiguous, as it has been until now). ) against the definition of the logic of action that should guide the management of water as a human right. In this context, the right in question is, above all, a right of nature, which allows it to be properly understood as a human right, in its interrelationships and interdependencies with other human rights and those of nature.