Study 3: Ecodestruction and the Right to Food: The Cases of Water ...

Starving the Future Study 3
B. Violations of the Right to Food through the Destruction of
Water Resources
Water quality is challenged by heavy pollution and contamination of ground water and rivers. In almost
all regions, fresh water supplies are already threatened and overexploited. Human beings need fresh
water as drinking water to survive, as resource to cook their food but also to produce their food
(irrigation). These are the basic and vital services provided by the ecosystem freshwater in relation to
the nutrition. As struggling for people ´s right to feed themselves implied to intervene for the access to
and control of food producing resources, it is not rare to find a water component in FIAN interventions.
Land and water as resources are intimately linked. Frequently, peasants who have been evicted from
their land have simultaneously lost their access to freshwater either because people have to become
dwellers in the poorest urban areas where there is no access to drinking water or because they have to
rely on public water distribution systems (these situations are indeed often linked with a shift from a
situation of a self-reliant community access to water to a dependent and paying access to water). In
other cases, large industrial projects like hydroplants or dams for irrigation of big estates or water supply
for the surrounding urban areas are implemented at the cost of small producers and the marginalized
rural population. Finally, the analysis of FIAN Interventions shows that people do lose access to their
water supply because they cannot use it any longer due to attacks on the water quality. States failure to
stop severe pollution through chemicals dumped or leaked into the rivers on which the local population
depends for fishing, drinking water and irritation, the right to feed themselves of the concerned people is
violated. The case of gold mining is an illustration of the link between destruction of freshwater
ecosystems and violations of the right to adequate food.
1. Pollution by gold mining: Profit for the few ... but at the expense of people
and their environment.
Gold has been a symbol for wealth and power – at least in the western world. Many wars, conquests,
crimes and human rights violations have been due to appropriation and accumulation. 24 Today, gold for
the international market allows to draw enormous profits. But gold mining does not prove to be in favour
of the local population which has been living in the extraction area. First of all, many small peasants and
other vulnerable rural groups are forcibly evicted from their land. They lose their means of subsistence
(including land and water), which enabled them to feed themselves. The private company equipped with
an extraction licence for the area rarely offer adequate compensation to the people for the loss of their
livelihoods. More often, pressure and harassment are preferred to negotiation and consultation. Second,
this mining activity is highly polluting. In addition to the loss of topsoils due to the extraction itself, gold
extraction need chemicals like cyanide or mercury. The use of those is paraded as an “efficient and
competitive” way to extract the ore – but freshwater systems are particularly affected by dumpings and
inadequate storage of contaminants and waste. Technologies based on the use of cyanide and mercury
have make it profitable to extract gold even in areas of low quality ore, which has led to levelling whole
mountains and destroying entire landscapes. Figures for the year 1992 indicate that some 650 million
tons of waste were generated for the production of only 2,170 tons of gold. 25
Waste is sometimes simply dumped in rivers and lakes, infiltrates through soils into groundwater
aquifers. Waste is often stored under inadequate conditions. Of course, these techniques are mostly
used by large mining companies. However, small-scale miners are also attracted by this method of
extracting gold even in difficult or poor mining areas. Currently a worrying trend is to be observed, i.e. a
boom in mining and a diminution of standards for human rights and ecology. Encouraged by the World
Bank, several African countries have “liberalized” or want to weaken their mining codes and legislation
in favour of foreign investors. The deregulation is frequently at the expense of human rights and
ecosystems, among them freshwater.
FIAN International 121
June 2002