Water: A divine gift, a common good and a human right

But let justice roll on like a river,
    righteousness like a never-failing stream!

Amos 5:24

Water, the element that represents life, is a gift from God for all the creatures that inhabit this earth.  It is where we come from, what we are mostly made of and something on which we depend to continue along our journey, which is why it cannot be a privilege for the few, subjugated to the profit of some, in detriment to the deaths of many.  It is a human right, which should be guaranteed to all.

Today in Brazil approximately 35 million people don’t have access to clean water.  And although this fact has been verified by the Trata Brasil Institute (Instituto Trata Brasil) for more than a decade, the situation still hasn’t changed.  When described in comparative terms this is even more frightening: it’s as if the entire population of 14 Brazilian states lived without an adequate supply of water.

Despite this, the 2023 edition of the Institute’s Sanitation Ranking, published since 2009, confirms that another 100 million Brazilians continue not to have access to a wastewater collection service.  In this case, in an even more serious comparison, it is as if the population of 22 of the 27 federal units in Brazil did not have a sewage system, and were exposed to countless health and social problems.

We note that, despite this situation, which has been going on for years, in 2020, the National Congress sought to open up pathways to water privatization, by approving the new sanitation legal framework, which could further fragment the water distribution service, and particularly the country’s sewage system.  Which is why, in a text published on World Water Day in 2022 (in Portuguese), CESE outlined the threats that the new legislation represents for the Right to Water as a common good.

The struggles of the social movements and faith-based organizations for the Right to Water as a necessary condition for life on the planet and, thus a human right, take place at various times and in various arenas.

In the Cerrado, the cradle of Brazil’s waters, where CESE has worked to empower social movements in their struggles, water is a vital part of the existence of traditional peoples and communities, either for fishing, to cultivate their small fields or for the continuation of ancestral rites.  And although their ways of life are guaranteed under the 1988 Constitution, they face constant attempts to violate their right to the waters, particularly when they are expelled from their territories or when the springs that sustain them are poisoned by agribusiness or mining.

In dialogue with the struggles for Justice for Water, Father Elias Wolff, member of the Ecumenical Water Network (Rede Ecumênica das Águas: REDA), noted that water is an essential element for our subsistence, to maintain and strengthen our link with the divine, “It has a spiritual dimension within the rituals of various religions. In Christianity it is known as the “source of eternal life” in a metaphor for a dignified and just life.”

For Reverend Bianca Daébs, CESE’s Advisor for Ecumenism and Inter-religious Dialogue, in order to empower the struggles for decent access to water, these movements need to be supported in all the spheres of organized civil society, with an emphasis on the social movements and faith-based organizations. “It is extremely important to expand our understanding of water as a common good, strengthening our demands for public policies for access to clean water for all.”

For the Ecumenical Coordination of Service (Coordenadoria Ecumênica de Serviço: CESE), celebrating World Water Day is part of its prophetic mission to denounce the ill-use and neglect of the waters as a crime and a sin which profoundly damage the environment, causing the collapse, not only of human life, but of all our socio-biodiversity.  Each achievement that enables access to water as a divine gift, common good and human right, is an encouraging result on our pathway to Rights, Justice and Peace.