King’s Water Member Alex Loftus, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Geography, has been invited by the University of Greenwich’s Public Services International Research Unit to speak as part of a series on “The human right to water and sanitation: Progress in theory and practice”.
On Monday 13 June, Alex will join Professor Léo Heller, Special Rapporteur to the United Nations on the Human Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation, in exploring questions such as:
- How should we conceptualise the human right to water and sanitation?
- What individual and organisational factors are conducive to the realisation of the human right to water and sanitation?
- What policies and institutions enable the realisation of the human right to water and sanitation?
- What knowledge gaps should be addressed more urgently?
Speakers include:
Professor Léo Heller, Special Rapporteur to the United Nations on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation
The human rights to water and sanitation: taking stock, looking ahead
An overview of the normative content of the human rights to water and sanitation will be presented, exploring its relationship with the global development agendas of the MDGs and SDGs. Key issues for the application of a human rights approach will also be examined (e.g. types of water and sanitation services, affordability of services, gender-related issues, and international development cooperation).
Professor Adriana Allen, The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College London
‘Everyday infrastructural planning’ in the urban global south
For most urban and peri-urban poor, the sources of uncertainty underpinning water and sanitation services are endless: uncertainty about cost, about being evicted, about ever becoming connected to networked systems. I argue that across the urban global south, the future is not one of networked systems but rather one of ‘infrastructural archipelagos’ that need to be thoroughly understood to bridge the growing gap between everyday and large infrastructural planning practices.
Dr Kate Bayliss, SOAS, University of London
Financialisation and the Human Right to Water
This paper first explores the expansion of private financial capital into water ownership. Second, the paper considers the way in which water delivery has become dominated by financial concerns with an emphasis on cost recovery water pricing. The paper shows how these two elements of financialisation threaten to undermine the notion that water must be affordable.
Dr Alex Loftus, Department of Geography, King’s College London
Within, against and beyond the human right to water
In this presentation I will consider struggles over the right to water alongside broader struggles over the commons. Acknowledging critiques of the right to water I will seek to understand the ways in which social movements might move within, against and beyond a more narrow framing of that right, thereby working to re-appropriate the commons.
Professor Andreas Bieler, School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham
Fighting for Public Water: The first successful European Citizens’ Initiative ‘Water and Sanitation are a Human Right’
Between 2012 and 2013 the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) ‘Water and Sanitation are a Human Right’ collected close to 1.9 million signatures across the European Union (EU), forcing the Commission into an official position on the role of water in the EU and wider world. This paper analyses the reasons for the ECI’s success and assesses its impact on EU policy-making.
The event will be held Monday 13 June 2016 from 11am-6pm in Room 103 of Hamilton House of the Greenwich Campus. Lunch will be provided. To register please email BusinessEvents@greenwich.ac.uk with: your full name, organisation, any special dietary requirements, contact number, and seminar title. For more information, please contact Emanuele Lobina e.lobina@gre.ac.uk.