In a move which will surely fuel the controversy over what some have called the "water cartels" - private companies which are buying up water rights all over the planet - the United Nations in New York has jumped ahead of its Geneva counterpart to declare clean water and sanitation a basic human right.
The declaration shows the discrepancy in opinion within the UN, as dozens of abstaining nations said they preferred to wait for what they thought to be a more powerful resolution on the subject, which had been scheduled to later come out of the UN in Geneva.
BBC News - UN declares clean water a 'fundamental human right'
Confusion abounds, even in the developed world, as private property owners, newly concerned with water economics, find out that they are not necessarily entitled to even harvest rain water falling on property they own or control. In the US, the subject has the political Right pointing the finger at the Left, making "big government" accusations. The Left, meanwhile, points to the Right's promotion of age-old laws allowing for the sale of water rights separate from land itself, a deed feature fought for by business and investor interests for a generation.
In the developing world, the inability to harvest rainwater is often a matter of life and death. Activists have been fighting to have the UN declare water to be a human right specifically to create limitations on the water cartels, in places where this struggle is for life itself.
