New Jersey enacted into legislation the Global Warming Response Act, becoming the third state to enact law that will require a reduction in green house gas emissions, after California and Hawaii. All three laws require the state to reduce its emissions to below 1990 levels by 2020. ENS reports that eight other states are debating similar legislation: Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin.

It took the tremendous efforts of community, faith-based, and union activists winning passage of minimum wage laws in six states for Congress to debate the federal minimum wage. How many states must pass this type of legislation for Congress to enact strict green house gas reductions targets? These emission reduction targets are critical in addressing the climate change crisis. The impacts wrought by climate change have begun and will severely impact water resources.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will publish a technical paper in November on water and climate change. Mitigating climate change with efforts like New Jersey's is essential -- 2 billion people know it. According to former Vice President Al Gore, more than 2 billion people participated in the LIVE EARTH concerts this past weekend. How many will it take? And how many more to enact legislation to enforce the right to water to ensure that even with climate change, everyone has access to safe, sufficient, affordable water for their daily needs? How many?

The United Nations Enviornment Program (UNEP) released a new report to honor World Environment Day on June 5, about the impact of climate change on ice and snow and what that means for our everyday life.

What does melting ice have to do with water? How about in China, where "highland glaciers are shrinking each year by an amount equivalent to all the water in the Yellow River. The Chinese Academy of Sciences says that 7 percent of the country’s glaciers are vanishing annually. By 2050, as many as 64 percent of China’s glaciers will have disappeared. An estimated 300 million people live in China’s arid west and depend on water from glaciers for their survival."

The reports released early in the spring on climate change from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC), especially the 2nd Report Policy Summary (the full report will be published later this year) on impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability confirms what we know -- that the poor are the least able to "adapt" and the most likely to be affected.

In Africa, "by 2020, between 75 and 250 million people are projected to be exposed to an increase of water stress due to climate change. If coupled with increased demand, this will adversely affect livelihoods and exacerbate water-related problems."

The IPPC has released a draft of its technical study on water and climate change to governments for comment. It is due out to the public in December. In North America, "warming in western mountains is projected to cause decreased snowpack, more winter flooding, and reduced summer flows, exacerbating competition for over-allocated water resources."

Water for fisheries and agriculture -- which poor people depend upon for survival -- will also be highly compromised. In the face of what we know will be increased competition for this vital and scarce resource, making sure the human right to water is fully implemented is even more important.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights will report to the U.N. Human Rights Council this September on its study into the right to water. If the "debate" about whether there is a right to water or not -- and what it is -- comes out in favor of a strong right, the implementation will be the next hurdle.

This year, UUSC program partner Mass Global Action is gearing up a campaign for a human right to water in the greater Metro Boston area. In the face of what can be overwhelming statistics and incomprehensible impending disaster, groups are taking up the challenge to make something real happen.

Joseph Santos-Lyons, the UUA director of campus ministry and field organizing, recently took part in a UUSC fact-finding trip to Ecuador.

Who speaks for you when you're down? Who helps you see the depth and the connection of problems where you live? Who do you trust to tell you the truth?

I've always been an organizer who works primarily from communities of which I am a part: age groups from youth to now mid 30-somethings, identity groups such as mixed-race children and families, and affinity groups like my baseball card collecting friends. The passion and the dedication that comes from organizing in one's own context has been a lifeblood for me.

I've spent two full days now with leaders from Mi Cometa, the Guayaquil, Ecuador community organization that organizes for the welfare of an impoverished neighborhood. I'm learning a lot about their mission and programs, and meeting some of their staff. Many of them started with Mi Cometa over 15 years ago as children in their various educational and empowerment programs. Their current general secretary was one of these young people, and that to me is truly amazing.

The ownership, the power of voice and of right relationship, and the accountability is remarkably different with leaders who come from the community. These have been principles I've been trying to live more fully in my life, often with a lot of difficulty. Still, there are ways for people like me, I believe, and sometimes it just starts with a commitment to place.

Joseph Santos-Lyons, the UUA Director of Campus Ministry and Field Organizing, recently took part in a UUSC fact-finding trip to Ecuador.

UUSC is supporting a legal and organizing project around the human right to water. One of the manifestations of the violation of this human right is the contamination of the public water system in poor and people of color communities. Guayaquil, Ecuador, had one such incident that affected eight public schools.

More than 150 children were diagnosed with Hepatitis A over the period of several months from a number of schools. The outbreak was caught early on by school doctors, and information was shared with the authorities and the water company (Bechtel), yet no action was taken and the schools were blamed for poor sanitary conditions.

Mi Cometa, a community group and UUSC program partner, and their public watch partner the Public Observatory Network, kept organizing from the first outbreak in 2005 into today. The debate has been very public, mentioned in the papers, radio, and television. The effects of the outbreak are still being dealt with: children are reporting chronic physical and mental health effects. This trauma, and the lack of a meaningful immediate government response, is fueling more social action around the human right to water.

We visited one of the schools with the largest outbreak, and met both children and their parents. Mi Cometa invited the children to draw pictures of their experience with Hep A, and parents talked about what political action they could take. The energy was really high!

UUSC member and expert volunteer Rob Robinson is putting his Unitarian Universalist principles in practice. Rob has been volunteering as a key expert for the right to water program beginning last fall. His interest? Indigenous people's right to water, gold mining, and Guatemala.

Rob organized two colleagues, bought water sampling test kits and equipment, and joined me (UUSC's environmental justice program manager) in Sipakapa, San Marcos, Guatemala, on a fact-finding mission April 16-22. Rob tested the water quality below the GoldCorp gold mine, and trained local community members in water quality testing, so they may monitor the impact of the mine on water resources. The term "Right to Water CSI" comes to mind!

The Sipakapenses have a case before the International Labor Organization, the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, and the constitutional court of Guatemala on the illegal process which led to the granting of the mining permit in their territory. Colectivo Madre Selva arranged the trip and oriented the delegation. The delegation met with staff members from the Commission for Peace and Ecology, who will conduct ongoing water quality monitoring along with the Sipakapense people.

UUSC commemorates World Water Day with the publication of a resource tool for individuals, groups, and organizations advancing the right to water: the Right to Water bibliography.

The bibliography is published in electronic format, so that it can be updated periodically. This research tool provides technical information on the right to water. It comes at an important time: The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights announced a request for information on the right to water to guide its important study. The deadline for this phase of the study is April 15.

Too hasty? Or not soon enough? The U.N. study will have an impact on how the right to water is implemented, and it will guide governments on how the "water apartheid" will be overcome. UUSC program partners will submit communications to the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Each year, $100 billion is spent on bottled water around the world; $11.3 billion would ensure that everyone has access to water.

What about the right to water in the United States? Yes! magazine makes no bones about its views on human rights in the United States: We need them. The tragedy of poor Gulf Coast response in the wake of Katrina is just one example.

UUSC partner MassGlobalAction will soon announce a new project -- called "The Color of Water" -- that will investigate the water justice disparity in the Greater Boston area. They hope to partner with UUSC, its members and supporters, and other allies like Clean Water Action. They want our help. Let's make the right to water real, around the globe and here at home.

The convocation of nations in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 resulted in many actions by governments and citizens to protect our environment. One of them was the celebration of World Water Day.

A part of the U.N. Water for Life Decade, the World Water Day 2007 theme is "Coping with Water Scarcity." The theme recognizes what is becoming more and more clear: Water scarcity is a reality for many on our planet, and will become more prevalent as climate change takes its course.

The reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a compilation of scientific studies from around the world, points to the human causes of climate change. Beacon Press' newest publication, With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change, by scientist Fred Pearce (author of When the Rivers Run Dry), sets out the dangers we collectively face.

The UNDP report card on human development published in November, "Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty, and the Global Water Crisis," calls us to action because the "water crisis" -- even given climate change -- is human made.

The UNDP says that the "water apartheid" that we have collectively allowed to come into being in our societies will be overcome by implementing the right to water. The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights posted a request for information to guide its upcoming study on the right to water.

Boston-area events in honor of World Water Day include this free film series.

The theme for this year’s World Water Day is “Coping with Water Scarcity.” In his message for World Water Day, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon captures the frightening picture of what the world faces: “Today, about 700 million in 43 countries suffer from water scarcity and by 2025, this figure could increase to more than 3 billion people." The UNDP Human Development Report 2006 also enlightens us to fact that: “Some 1.1 billion people in the developing world do not have access to a minimal amount of clean water”.

The Secretary General calls for “integrated and sustainable approach to water resources management," “international cooperation," and “making good on the global water and sanitation agenda” embodied in the Millennium Development Goals. In his closing words, he proposes a way forward, by "strengthening institutional capacity and governance at all levels, promoting more technology transfer, mobilizing more financial resources, and scaling up good practices and lessons learned.”

The Secretary General avoided or forgot to say expressly that for the world to cope with water scarcity and meet the needs of those millions who bear the brunt of water scarcity, governments and the international community must recognize and promote the right to water as proposed in General Comment No. 15.

It could be argued that when the actions proposed by the Secretary General are taken, the right to water by implication would be achieved. But what is implied is not always what is expressed. After all, a scarce resource is a valuable resource and water is "blue gold," which corporations and governments are recognizing more as an economic good to be exploited for profit than as a human entitlement.

On this World Water Day, I join the Secretary General in calling for “stronger partnerships" and “more concerted action” but instead for a clear and express recognition by the international community and governments of the human right to water. Such recognition would quicken achieving water for all at the end of the U.N. International Decade for Action.

Harvard professor John Ruggie, special rapporteur for the U.N. Secretary General, has released the report, “Business and Human Rights: Mapping International Standards of Responsibility and Accountability for Corporate Acts,” announced the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility.

Professor Ruggie's introduction states, "History demonstrates that without adequate institutional underpinnings markets will fail to deliver their full benefits and may even become socially unsustainable." The report seems to find governments responsible for not implementing human rights regulations consistently and, therefore, leaving a gap for business to violate human rights.

But the report stops short of recommendations. Instead, it points to its findings as an "essential first step" in mapping the existing legal framework and again asks for an extension in time to further develop the themes. The report gives important information about trends in human rights law and corporate abuses.

Have a close read and see what you think.

This update is from UUSC member and expert volunteer Rob Robinson of Colorado, who is working with UUSC on the right to water and mining.

The new Marlin gold mine in Guatemala is suspected as a huge rip-off for the local Mayan indigenous people and the nation. There is badly skewed wealth distribution, and the mining company, Glamis Gold Ltd. (recently acquired by Goldcorp Inc.), is risking the environment and the community's access to water.

I made an estimate of potential Glamis profits from publicly available data on Glamis and World Bank websites. Glamis will pocket $1.5 billion from the project, leaving the locals and Guatemala with $203 million, or just 12 percent of wealth, coming out of the Marlin ore deposit. In any industrialized country, the wealth gained is shared out much more equitably with the local community. How can countries like Guatemala improve the standard of living for their people if they don't even get the same deal as industrial countries?

When the gold is mined and sold, it's gone. The local people will have been cheated out of a golden opportunity to rise above poverty by developing education, infrastructure, and more.

On the environmental side, Glamis is using cyanide chemicals. Cyanide is an exceptionally toxic chemical and, when accidentally spilled, causes massive environmental damage. Some of the world's most damaging industrial accidents have been cyanide spills. In most countries, mining companies are expected to put up a reclamation bond in the event of such disasters, but not Glamis for the Marlin mine.

The second environmental issue is the potential for acidic toxic metal discharges. The Marlin ore deposit has sulfide minerals. When exposed to water and air, these minerals can react to form sulfuric acid that leaches toxic metals into waterways killing aquatic life and poisoning the people who rely on the water. Modern mines in industrial nations are required to control or treat these discharges. Glamis won't release its data on the potential for acidic toxic metal discharge from Marlin, and there are no controls/constraints imposed on the project.

Nearby villages depend on these streams for their water supply. There is no developed water supply. Even though mining consumes large quantities of water, Glamis maintains there will be no impacts on water quantities. Really?

The local people have protested these issues. Glamis responded with denial and even violence -- one protester was killed by authorities. The World Bank's International Finance Corporation gave Glamis a loan to start up the Marlin mine, and has attempted mediation with the local communities. As a result, Glamis offered trivial grants to local villages for education and infrastructure.

The issues above have not been resolved, and the local people have asked for help from human rights organizations and the Catholic Church. These organizations hired experts to look into the issues. The experts state that the issues are real; however, Glamis continues to stonewall.