Is Access to Safe Water a Human Right?

The world thinks so and states so.

Article 31 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads:

Source - water-sprouts.blogspot.com

Everyone has the right to clean and accessible water, adequate for the health and well-being of the individual and family, and no one shall be deprived of such access or quality of water due to individual economic circumstance.

Detroit's Cuts Off Water Supply

City of Detroit's Water & Sewage Department has started shutting off water for households who have not paid their water bill. As many as 3000 in April 2014 and 4500 in May 2014 customers are affected and have no water supply to their homes.

The UN: This may be a Human Rights Violation

The UN has called out this action by the City of Detroit as a Human Rights violation. According to a UN spokesman shutting off water to people who cannot afford to pay is a human rights violation. Water can be shutoff for only those people who are able to pay but have not paid.

How did Access to Water become a Right?

Source - right2water.eu

As history shows, the rights of the global public have increased over time with the increases enshrined in laws and regulations.

John Locke
Source - en.wikipeddia.org

- In much of history, only a privileged few (royalty, leaders and very few others) were seen as deserving of rights; the view that everyone has some inalienable rights was held by an insignificant minority.

- John Locke (1632-1704) was probably the first person to publicly state that humans had some "natural" rights. In his day, his statement was interpreted as applying only to European men.

Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet)
Source - en.wikipedia.org

- In the 18th century, Voltaire began advocating for rights that primarily addressed "civil liberties". His arguments found support in European society that was starting to question traditional institutions, customs and morals because they had begun to recognize that much of progress could be attributed to the use of "reason" and "freedoms for individuals."

US Constitution
Source - news.yale.edu

- The US Constitution (adopted in 1789) and the addition of the Bill of Rights (1791) expanded and institutionalized the idea and universality of the concept of Human Rights. It was still, however, up to governments to decide how many right and to whom what "rights" were to be provided.

The Nurenberg Trials
Source - commons.wikipedia.org

- World War II and the atrocities by the Nazis on their own citizens took the issue of human rights away from individual governments and placed it in the hands of the international community. 

- On December 10, 1948, the U.N. General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).
Eventually the UN wrote Article 31 that makes Access to Safe Water a human right for every person regardless of where they live.

Why Water from Indigenous Sources?

In the very beginning, people lived next to water sources and when the water source could not sustain the number of humans, either the humans moved or something happened to the weak and the old that brought their numbers down.
Migration out of Africa

Human Migration from Africa
Source: phys.org

While no historical record exists of human migration out of Africa, scientists have tracked human migration by studying mtDNA and mutations of mtDNA.
It is thought likely that when water and food shortages occurred, humans learned from animal migrations and may have literally followed heard movements in search of water and food.
As the accompanying map shows, eventually, human migration populated all of the continents, except the inhospitable polar regions.
Migration Today

Growth in City Population
Source - newgeography.com

Each week about a million people move from the country into a city. Today about 50% of human population lives in cities.
By 2050, nearly 70% of the then human population will reside in cities. This will put enormous pressure on the services and supplies infrastructure of every city.
Water Supply to cities

Aqueduct
Source - pbs.org

Water Piping
Source - dreamstim.com

Pipelines, canals, aqueducts are all ways we have perfected to bring water from far distances to a city. But as cities grow, every one of these water transportation choices will need expansion or replacement with cost, time and environmental impact considerations.
This is where the idea of a water refinery comes in
Water Refineries for Cities
Air currents move air (and the water contained in the air) to every place on Earth. Various forms of precipitation (like rain, snow, dew etc) then extract the water from the air and deposit it on land. Nature's invention is known as the Water Cycle.
The man-made facility that extracts moisture from air is a water refinery. With such a refinery available, there will be less dependence on the historical infrastructure that includes pipelines, aqueducts, canals, to name a few. This indigenous water supply, from a virtually limitless source, is the most likely way for cities to meet the water needs of its inhabitants.

How Much Water is Enough Water?

Water for Cooking
Source - ecowatercalgary.ca

We need water for many reasons:

Water for Drinking
Source - the guardian.com

Bathing and Sanitation
Source - depositphotos.com

How much for drinking? How long must a showers be? How much is needed to cook meals? 

Water for Food
Source - houselogic.com

How much for growing things? 
Minimum Amount
The consensus amount is 20 liters (5 gallons) of safe drinking water per person per day. This amount is the minimum felt necessary but does not meet the criteria of being sufficient.

Over 850 million people around the world, mostly in 27 developing countries, do not get even this much safe water. Their average is about 5 liters per person per day.

How Much Does Water Cost Around the World?

Water prices differ in cities all over the world:

Legend
Yellow    Water + Wastewater Fixed Cost
Maroon   Water Variable Cost
Orange    Wastewater Variable Cost
Green      Sales Tax

Water Prices Around the World
Source - globalwaterintel.com

Water Prices in selected developed countries:

Country	Dollars per M3
Germany	$1.91
Denmark	$1.64
Belgium	$1.54
Netherlands	$1.25
France	$1.23
UK and Northern Ireland	$1.18
Italy	$0.76
Finland	$0.69
Ireland	$0.63
Sweden	$0.58
Spain	$0.57
USA	$0.51
Australia	$0.50
South Africa	$0.47
Canada	$0.40

Source - everylittledrop.com

Country Water Footprint

Source: http://everylittledrop.com.au/our-global-water-footprint

The water footprint of a nation refers to the total amount of water that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the inhabitants of the nation. The total water footprint of a country includes two components: the part of the footprint that falls inside the country (internal water footprint) and the part of the footprint that presses on other countries in the world (external water footprint).

The following table compares the national water footprints of various countries:

Country	Average water footprint m3 / capita / year	Part of footprint falling outside  of the country
USA	2483	19%
Greece	2389	35%
Spain	2325	36%
France	1875	37%
Australia	1393	18%
Brazil	1381	8%
UK	1245	70%
GLOBAL AVERAGE	1243	-
Japan	1153	64%
India	980	2%
South Africa	931	22%
Bangladesh	896	3%
Haiti	848	1%
China	702	7%
Ethiopia	675	1%

2014 World Water Day - Why & Because!

Source - unwater.org

March 22 2014
is World Water Day simply because not everyone in the world has enough ready and unfettered access to safe water 365/24.
The Ones Without Access to Safe Water
Nearly 800 million people do not have easy access to safe water

1. Approximately, One out of every 9 people on the planet, do not have easy access to safe water

• Half the rural population in 27 developing countries, most of them in Asia and Africa, does not have easy and convenient access to safe water

1. Approximately 3.5 billion people are projected to suffer from limitations of access to safe water
2. On average, it takes an individual (usually a woman, a young girl or a child) 6 hours to fetch minimal amounts of necessary safe water. This time could be put to better use, under certain circumstances, if these individuals did not need to spend this time on fetching safe water, e.g.: 

• Global food production could increase by about 25%
• Children could spend over 400 million more hours in a school
• ,... ... ... ...

The Ones who End Up Using Unsafe Water
Unsafe water is responsible for disease and death:

1. As many as 1.5 million deaths (mostly children) result from unsafe water. This is approximately 1 person (child) dying every 20 seconds
2. Untold resources are used to save from illnesses caused by dirty water 

The Ones Who Do Not Have Adequate Sanitation
Roughly 2.5 billion people suffer from lack of sanitation

Water Demand
Demand for safe water is expected to increase from current levels by 44% by 2050 for production of electricity, agriculture, domestic use and industrial manufacturing.

The problem is well known; The remedy does not exist!

How Much Water Can We Get From The Air We Breathe?

The first question I am asked is about whether there really is water present in the air that surrounds us and the air we breathe. The second question is about how much water might be in the air around us. Here are some examples of extracting water from the air using the process we call condensation:

Billboard in Lima: Produces about 100 liters per day
Atmospheric Water Generators: At least 10 gallons a day

Cities Suffering from Scarcity:

There is simply a lot of water vapor in the air that surrounds us and that we breathe! Now, if only we could find a way to make it possible for people everywhere to ingenuously satisfy their local safe water needs!

The Many Images Of Water Scarcity

Collecting Water

A primary face of scarcity is that of manually collecting water.

Source - thewaterproject.org

Source - peakwater.org

Source - rainharvest.co.za

Source - meerkat21.wordpress.com

Implicit in these images is the scare of water being unclean i.e. contaminated in some horrible way - the implication being sickness, illness and disease that will hit the people drinking this water.

Water Collection Takes Effort

Source - watertanksystem.blogspot.com

Another set of images mainly show

Source - mx.noticias.yahoo.com

the effort being required and being spent in the collection of water

Source - geographyblog.eu

which, hopefully, is safe for drinking e.g. walking long distances; a community-intensive task, a one-man unbelievable option, etc. 

Too Many People At The Same Source

Source - australianrain.blogspot.com

Scource - worldpulse.com

Source - newindianexpress.com

Images that show very large number of people involved in gathering water for a singe source imply scarcity e.g. a multitude of people encircling a single source (a well or tanker) of water, or a long line of people, each waiting for her/his turn to fill up a container with water.

Empty Water Sources

Source - balramranasingh.blogspot.com

Source - rttc.org

Low levels of water in water reservoirs or empty containers imply scarcity.

Parched Landscapes

Source - worldwildlife.org

Source - insideclimatenews.org

Land that shows the signs of having dried up and becoming cracked.

Rivers of Freshwater in the air = The Water Internet for Everyone Everywhere?

Latest research by NOAA is clearly revealing that there are Rivers in the atmosphere in numbers and sizes, much like the rivers on land masses.
Rivers in the sky

River that caused Flooding on 16 Feb, 2004
Source - noaanews.noaa.gov

Rivers, whether in the sky or on a land ground mass, produce the same results:
- they cause floods
- they physically change their location over time
- the flow in them varies
- they contain safe drinking water (aka freshwater)
Differences between these rivers are significant:
- We cannot pollute rivers in the sky
- We don't currently know how to dam the rivers in the sky, but are learning how to extract freshwater from the sky rivers on a piecemeal basis.

River causing flood in UK in 2009
Source - newscientist.com

- Rivers on ground hold, carry and deliver liquid water, while rivers in the atmosphere transport water vapor.
Global Rivers in the Air

Two Major Flows of Water Vapor in the Air
Source - baynature.org

Air currents flow, generally speaking, on very standard and predictable paths.

The questions of our day: How can we extract the water vapor that the rivers in the air carry everywhere and hold in some places while discharging in others? Can we make the water laden atmosphere for our local water needs everywhere, what the wireless Internet has become for global communications?
Now, that's a goal worthy of us, in this 21st century!

A 2-Tablespoon Freshwater Tap every 12 feet!

Seeing IS Believing except when the subject is freshwater. We usually conclude that there is no water when we cannot spot any where we are looking.
Water in Air Is nearly all in Vapor Form

The moisture in the air is essentially in vapor form and our naked eyes cannot see any gas or vapor.
Clouds are visible to us because of the liquid water droplets that are dispersed in the air that makes up the cloud.
Fog is another example of us being able to see the moisture in air because some of this water exists in liquid form.
An Air-Moisture Map

Water Vapor in the Air Around Us
Source - wateronline.com

NOAA/ESPL have mapped the moisture in the air we breathe i.e. in the air at sea level.
The average water content of this air - the air all around us and the air we breathe - varies from a low of approx 2.4 grams per cubic meter to a high of approx. 24 grams per cubic meter. The maximum amount can even exceed 26 grams per cubic meter but this concentration exists in only a very few places.
Water Amounts in Air

Tablespoon of water
Source - theguardian.com

Using the conversion (1 cubic centimeter (cc) of water weighs 1 gram) the moisture in 1 cubic meter of air varies from approx one-sixth of a tablespoon to over One-and-a-half tablespoons.
Thus, approx. 16 cubic meters (565 cubic feet) of air contain a cup (16 teaspoons) of water. Or, the air in an average sized room 8.5 feet high, 12 feet wide and 12 feet long contains a bit more than 2 tablespoons of safe water! 

All that remains to be accomplished is to capture this water for local use. Isn't this a challenge worth overcoming?

Why FreshWater? Because Our Body Cannot Store Water!

We simply must drink water and water alone
Source - wrd.org

We all know so well the unique feeling of satisfaction that overwhelms us after drinking a glass that contains only water.
This need to drink 'only water' is a need that is not completely met by the water our body successfully extracts from any other source, even each breath we take or from every food we eat.
Homeostasis - Water as Carrier
Homeostasis is our name for the balance that the human body must maintain (within a fairly narrow range) of many resources - nutrients, minerals and a long list of chemical compounds, including water - for each cell in our body to function as it is supposed to.

Water Homeostasis
Source - bbc.co.uk

Anything we do, even breathe a single breath changes the balance of one or more of these resources in the body.
Restoring the balance by redistributing available supplies of the resource in the body, is the job of our organs and bloodstream.
The transportation vehicle for redistributing the unbalanced resource falls on water.
The water in our body in, thus, simply in continuous motion. Maybe, that's why our body consists (around 65%) of water!
Water Storage in Living Bodies

Camel: Ship of the desert
Source - npr.org

It has been incorrectly assumed that camels have humps because the humps store water supplies. In fact, the humps contain fat and no unusual deposits of just water.
The camel has the ability to drink water in huge amounts (30 liters in 15 minutes, by some estimates) and the ability to increase the water circulating in its bloodstream and the ability to hold water for a longer time than humans can, in their stomachs.

Birds fly long distances without drinking
Source - telegraph.co.uk 

A camel's homeostasis system allows a lot more time, than in a human, to excrete excess water from the camel's body.
Many birds migrate regularly over very large distances and it was assumed that they had a unique ability to reduce their water replenishment need.
Recent research has shown, however, that a bird's need does not change by the distance it travels, but bird's have the ability to literally 'eat' their own organs by extracting the water contained in organs to meet their replenishment need.
Once they get a drink of just water, their organs grow back to a normal size.

Healthy Blood Cells
Source - abpischools.org.uk

Impact or Water Scarcity on Cells

Unhealthy Blood Cells
Source - abpischools.org.uk 

Our bloodstream contains a large amount of water.
If the water in the bloodstream reduces enough, each healthy blood cell starts leeching water to the bloodstream and starts functioning not as the body expects it to. Our health deteriorates.
Occasionally, the unbalance of water in our bodies gets to such an extent that the body prompts the sensation of "thirst" that we can only satisfy by drinking a glass, or more, containing only water.
Relative Approximate Intakes of Water
(Source - http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au)

• Infants  0–12 months   – 0.8 liters per day

• children 1–  3 years      – 1.0 liters per day
• children 4–  8 years      – 1.2 liters per day

• girls      9–13 years      – 1.4 liters per day
• girls      14–18 years    – 1.6 liters per day

• boys     9–13 years      – 1.6 liters per day
• boys     14–18 years    – 1.9 liters per day
• women  over 18 years  – 2.1 liters per day
• men      over 18 years  – 2.6 liters per day

WHY WATER? Because Our "Living" Body Is A Water Machine!

The human body is, as are bodies of all "living" species, essentially a machine with one unique feature - water is one of the necessary ingredients that make up our bodies and water is necessary for our bodies to work properly.
What's A Machine?

Source - tophdcars.com

Source - t-mobile.com

What comes to mind when we think of machines? Usually, a series of objects uniquely connected to each other that together accomplish a desired and useful task e.g. a machine we call "car" produces movement in a specified direction and the machine we call "cell phone" transmits our voice all over the globe and captures only those voices that we want to hear. The car and cell phone are just two examples of machines made by humans.

Resources for Artificial Machines

Source - telegraph.co.uk

Electricity Icon- Reddy Kilowatt
Source - creativepro.com

Artificial machines, like the car and cell phone, require at least three natural resources:

- water is necessary to make each and every artificial machine

- one natural resource (at a minimum) in its natural form or in an artificial form, makes up the physical body of every artificial machine

- at least one other resource, that we call "fuel", is necessary for the machine to operate: The car requires gasoline (petrol) while cell phones require electricity. 

All resources, except water, are typically used up (do not exist in their original form) after the artificial machine has completed the task it was designed to do.

Water is used up only in the sense that it still exists in its original form but is contaminated in some way and can only be used again after the contamination is removed.

The Human Body - A Natural "living" Machine

On average: 72% is water
Source - dorchesterhealth.org

Natural "Living" machines are exactly like artificial machines in three ways: 

- Both kinds of machines cannot exist in the absence of water: artificial machines require water in their manufacturing process, while the human embryo can only exist in an aqueous solution

- Both kinds of machines do not transform water, at its molecular level, while they use it
- Both kinds of machines do contaminate the water they use in some way to make used water unusable.

Natural "Living" machines differ from artificial machines in two ways:

- Water continues to be a necessary ingredient that makes up physical bodies of natural "living" machines, but is not a necessary ingredient of artificial machine bodies.

- Water is a necessary ingredient for both natural Living" machines to function and properly do all the tasks that it is designed to do. Water is not a necessary resource for artificial machines to operate.

Life as we know and define it, is not possible in the absence of water. This is the first and fundamental reason why safe water must be locally available in abundant quantity.

Safe Water Delivery Using Artificial Porous Materials

We can have an endless, but not infinite, supply of safe drinking water if we could only extract the water in the air we breathe. 
Wiping Air with a Sponge or an Eraser

Source - redbookmag.com

This extraction of water can be visualized as a gizmo that acts like a sponge or a chalkboard eraser when we move it in the air where we need to extract safe water.
This gizmo would "clean" the air around us of water molecules, with the same motion that we use to wipe a blackboard clean of chalk!
Later, once the gizmo fills up with extracted water, we could squeeze out (literally speaking) this water.
Luckily, materials that may be very suitable for just such an action already exist.
MOFs - Metal-Organic Frameworks

Source - ucla.edu

Source - labroots.com

MOFs are structures consisting of organic molecules and metal ions. The organic molecules hold metal ions in a 3-D grid pattern that is porous to another, a third, material.
The structures can have virtually any 3-D configuration - the configuration essentially depends upon the organic molecules and the metal ions that comprise the structure.
As we may also expect, the combination of organic molecules and metal ions define what materials will be absorbed by a specific structure.
Cavity size, number of cavities and absorption rates can also all be controlled.
Water Absorption
Chemistry of organic molecules can, in the presence of moisture and under different ambient temperatures, get compromised but a list of water-stable combinations have been developed. The focus, however, has been on using MOFs for energy applications like hydrogen and other gas absorption, storage and release.
All that remains is to focus this research on water absorption, storage and release! 
A local supply of safe drinking water using a MOF that extracts moisture from the air we breathe can be a reality in our very near future!