Abstract
Water pollution, whether from point sources (e.g. Deepwater Horizon oil spill) or nonpoint sources (e.g. quotidian stormwater runoff), constitutes one of the most pressing issues of global ecological health faced today. Inadequate access to safe and sanitary supply of fresh water causes over 3 % of all human deaths worldwide—and is the leading cause of death among children under 5 years—while freshwater animal species face an extinction rate five times that of terrestrial animals. Although developing nations bear the brunt of insufficient access to clean water, problems of accessibility are less likely to impact the developed and postindustrial world unless they affect agricultural production (e.g. droughts that crippled Midwestern US farmers in 2012) or recreation (e.g. the closure of unsustainable golf courses). With growing climate change and the ongoing proliferation of neoliberalism, issues of water pollution and water scarcity are increasingly likely to collide. This chapter considers do-it-yourself (DIY) innovations and the activist movements that are representative of the efforts to combat nonpoint source water pollution and water scarcity, and the ways in which the logics of neoliberalism undercut those efforts through the criminalization and marginalization of healthy water-use habits. This chapter describes the connected issues of drought in the Global North and water pollution in the Global South and explores the myriad ways in which the privatization of water, the removal of community-based controls on water supplies, and the criminalization of sustainable water practices and technologies jeopardize not only water access but also global water quality itself. Finally, this chapter looks to emerging human rights discourses of water that highlight the interconnectedness of issues of water access and water pollution, noting that green criminology can potentially turn to the human rights perspective in order to gain a more holistic understanding of global water issues.
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Notes
- 1.
A cursory search of The New York Times archive suggests that over 1000 articles relating directly to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill have appeared in that publication alone between April 2010 and July 2014. Similarly, a search for terms relating to the Elk River chemical spill shows over 100 articles published in The New York Times alone in the 7 months between the disaster and this writing. Note, however, that some residents of Charleston have indicated that the Elk River chemical spill did not receive sufficient media attention. Osnos (2014:47) reports “In Charleston, people told me that their ordeal had received less national coverage than the latest virus on a cruise liner”. For an analysis of media coverage of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, see McClanahan et al. (In Press), Paulson et al. (In Press).
- 2.
As discussed further below, some pollution concerns are closely related to access concerns, as in the Elk River case; because the river supplied local residents with their water, pollution was understood to directly impact access. In the cases of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and the Exxon Valdez spill, however, pollution remained the primary concern, seemingly because significantly large populations did not rely directly on the affected bodies of water for their daily water needs (although local economies and individuals do rely on them for recreational, agricultural and industrial use).
- 3.
It should be noted that while concerns over water access had previously waned in the region of the USA recently affected by drought, the western states had, during their initial settlement and development, significant conflicts relating to water access. These conflicts, though, were for the most part settled by the early twentieth century. For a general discussion of those earlier conflicts, see Reisner (1993), Piper (2006).
- 4.
This simple summarizing phrase—access to clean water—captures the issue with binary conceptualizations of issues of access and pollution: access is only meaningful if it is access to unpolluted water, and pollution has the most recognized impact when it hinders access. While the latter may point to problematic issues of anthropocentrism (see generally Halsey and White 1998) and a tendency to ignore harms suffered by animals other than humans, it nonetheless holds true that humans will care the most about pollution events that hinder access to water that is materially or economically necessary to human health and development.
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McClanahan, B. (2016). Pollution, Access, and Binary Division: Water Activism and a Human Right to Water. In: Wyatt, T. (eds) Hazardous Waste and Pollution. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18081-6_5
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