The European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) asked for a legal commitment that there would be no EU initiatives to liberalise water and sanitation services.
Our whole family signed the petition.
Now, there is an official answer:
(Press release 19 March 2014) The European Commission (EC) published a Communication today that gives its official response to the first successful European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) which called on the EC “to implement the human right to water and sanitation in European law.” In the Communication, the European Commission does recall the importance of the human right to water and sanitation and states the importance of water as a public good and fundamental value and that “water is not a commercial product”.
However, that’s as far as it goes.
“The reaction of the European Commission lacks any real ambition to respond appropriately to the expectations of 1.9 million people” says Jan Willem Goudriaan, vice-president of the ECI Right2Water. “I regret that there is no proposal for legislation recognising the human right to water.”
Unfortunately, the Commission’s Communication makes no commitment to explicitly exclude these services from trade negotiations such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
What do you think?
Yes I am very interesting on my family drinking water. Since 6 years we drink a good water who is certicated as on top in Europe
I agree with Shafig completely. Every body should be keen to drink clean water.
Water is one of the essential in every living beings. Approximately 60% of adults body weight is water. Blood plasma is constitute with 92% of water. Of course I am interested in drinking at lest 3-5 liters of purified water everyday to maintain my body weight and blood plasma level...
Dear Shafig,
Many thanks for your valuable contribution on the benefits of drinking water.
I note: water, air and soil are common goods but some brave people with good conscience want to privatise them in order to protect us…
Dear Ida,
Thanks for your lines.
Water scarcity is a global trouble: more than one milliard (billion) people cannot drink clear water and about tree milliards cannot get the water quantity necessary for their hygienic life. And many millions of ordinary people waste the valuable water at home and the brave capitalists waste it for making us lucky with their industrial production.
Dear All,
Yesterday, I started a thread which was immediately deleted by an editor.
Voilá the question:
What can we scientists do for having a better world?
A farmer went riding
Upon his gray mare;
Bumpety, bumpety, bump!
With his daughter behind him,
So rosy and fair;
Lumpety, lumpety, lump!
A raven cried "Croak!"
And they all tumbled down;
Bumpety, bumpety, bump!
The mare broke her knees,
And the farmer his crown;
Lumpety, lumpety, lump!
The mischievous raven
Flew laughing away;
Bumpety, bumpety, bump!
And vowed he would serve them
The same the next day;
Lumpety, lumpety, lump!
Yesterday, I had a question which has been deleted by a conscientious gardener of RG (= ResearchGarden where scientists are the flowers). I have presented the results of a poll on the most crucial troubles of the world which reflects the view of 34 millions of thinking people and I asked your opinion about it.
Now, I a bad boy must learn a lesson on the limits of our freedom of speech so I am asking you: what can we do for a better world?
What can we do for providing clean water to everybody?
It´s very easy. Our cells contain 80% water, our whole body about 70%. So, shall someone tell me its not important!
We live from and with water, it is one of the most important ingredients of life and not to be replaced. And good drinking water is beneficial for health.
So please don´t spoil it!
Dear Lijo,
I don´t think that we need rules to drink water. We need clear and healthy water to drink, especially in the poor countries.
Yes dear Hanno! it is right to provide healthy drinking water to all...and that itself is I would consider a rule. The above mentioned answers are not actually rules, but benefits of drinking healthy water. I am doing research to develop novel energy efficient technologies for providing drinking water from waste water or seawater, especially those who are living in arid regions or those who don't have enough drinking water.
Ironically, underdeveloped ("poorer") countries are more likely to have high-quality, clean water than developed ("richer") countries. This peculiar phenomenon can be explained by the fact that underdeveloped countries are less likely to pour contaminants on the ground and into their waterways. And underdeveloped countries have fewer machines, which means fewer pollutants are put into the air. So ground water remains largely in its pristine state in underdeveloped countries.
By contrast, the populations in developed counties are very busy contaminating both their ground water and their air. For this reason, I advocate the return of the horse and buggy and the scrapping of most vehicles.
So, in answer to the question for this thread, Yes, I have a great deal of interest in our drinking water.
Dear James,
You are right logically and regarding certain tendencies. However, I point out that it occurs often that highly developed countries build industrial factories in undeveloped countries because of the cheap materials , work of force or lack of environmental rules. Many of these factories pollute extremely the environment: water, soil and air. I think the best example may be the Union Carbide which caused the tragedy in Bhopal (India) in around 1981. Or let us see the use of some poisonous pesticides which are produced in developed countries and exported into developing ones.
The population growth in developing countries is really a continually polluting bomb.
I agree with you. If I could afford it, I would like to ride an Island pony.
Dear Andras,
Perhaps a more practical alternative to driving a vehicle is either riding a bicycle or walking. The difficulty with horses is that they are creatures requiring considerable care and adequate housing. So horses may not be feasible for many folks.
And I agree with you that completely predatory and questionable are those corporations that set up factories in underdeveloped countries and do not build into their factories adequate safeguards against pollution and disasters. That can be prevented by governments regulate who puts such things in a country.
Dear All,
I deal with crop protection and with the effects and side-effects of pesticides. There is a herbicide which was widely used in corn, the atrazine. Unfortunately, it has many side-effects e.g. contaminates ground, surface and drinking water and by the way it induces feminization in adult amphibians and may impact other vertebrates. According to the US EPA the acceptable level of atrazine concentration in drinking water is 3 ppb (parts per billion). These side-effects were described correctly by the researchers at University of California and proved that at 0.1 ppb of atrazine frogs grow female gonads and then complete feminization takes place. The producer of atrazine (Syngenta) founded the studies of another scientist at Texas Tech University who found that these changes developed only at the level of 25 ppb.
What do you think whose data may be nearer to the reality?
Here you can find some publications on this subject:
http://www.endocrineconnections.com/content/2/3/R15.full.pdf
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/10/4612.full
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/integration/research/newsalert/pdf/250na3.pdf
http://www.epa.gov/teach/chem_summ/Atrazine_summary.pdf
Is used atrazine in your agriculture?
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