The Universal Basic Water Project is a natural segue from recode’s current work, which provides social, financial and governance solutions to water re-use. We have established several programs and tools to meet the United Nation’s 2030 food and water goals while simultaneously achieving their Paris Energy Accord in a sustainable and equitable manner. As part of a 3-year effort funded by the Scherman Foundation, recode asked ourselves, “How do we equitably shift our cultural paradigm regarding the importance of water, to achieve the resilience that communities will need to thrive under a changing climate?” As we pondered this, Monica Lewis-Patrick of We the People of Detroit was teaching us about the lived experiences of communities disparately impacted by lack of access to water. It dawned on us that, through work on Universal Basic Water, we could address these two issues together: Universal Basic Water is a collection of approaches that guarantee the necessary amount of potable (i.e. safe to drink) water to everyone in the United States for the minimal purpose of ensuring personal and public health. Vision The Universal Basic Water Project will add an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that: Declares the people’s right to potable water; Defines a numerical value and timeline for delivering a quantity of potable water that is free to the consumer; Compels utilities, environmental quality regulators, and other governmental centers of power over water at the local, regional, and state level to meet their water delivery goals in an equitable way. AND, in practice, is a framework to: Practically address the minimal water needs to ensure the individual and public health of diverse populations in a culturally relevant way regardless of the pattern of development (e.g. rural, exurban, suburban, urban), natural conditions, or their identity, identity expression, or status. By adding a US Constitutional amendment, citizens, non-citizens, and tribal nations will all be guaranteed this new right. Campaign Background Dubbed by staff at the Michigan Science Center in a 2018 meeting, the “#20Liters Campaign” is our current working title for the public outreach campaign. Twenty liters of free potable water is based on the World Health Organization’s analysis[i] that 20 liters (5.3 gallons) of water is needed per person per day to “take care of basic hygiene needs and basic food hygiene” in an emergency. This does not include laundry and bathing. At this time, recode thinks that using a standard for emergencies is a reasonable bar and a good starting point for discussion on requiring the provision of free water – whether delivered by tap from a utility or drawn from a well or elsewhere[ii] . If we find through the convening process (see next section) that 20 liters per person per day isn’t enough, we’ll change the amount of water that should be specifically called out in the constitutional amendment and change the name of the campaign. Ideally, a much greater volume of water will be accessible at low- to no-cost to utility customers, and a work product directed to utilities and other key decision makers will be recommendations for implementing equitable and affordable water programs. For those on wells and surface water, a separate work product will compile recommendations for improving environmental quality to specifically address drinking water sources. For various land development patterns, a decision support tool will inform under what conditions onsite water reuse systems would be beneficial for deep water conservation and protection of “first-use” water sources in nature. Incorporating Lived Experience Recode intends to convene a national conversation on Universal Basic Water and water affordability in order to gather, organize, and implement the many ideas that will be needed to work at different scales in different patterns of development in different watersheds under different sociopolitical structures. Hearing the lived experience of people represented by We the People of Detroit caused recode to launch this effort. To solve the problem of not knowing what we don’t know, we will continue to intentionally create a space to incorporate the lived experiences of people from impacted communities[iii]. We often hear from others that there aren’t enough “qualified” people to consult on such technical issues. We think this may not be the case and that impacted community members with skills may not engage for other reasons, which we are working to overcome by developing one-on-one relationships through self-awareness and showing up to establish trust. On the other hand, recode has already started to hone our skills in intentionally incorporating the perspectives of non-technical people into our process[iv], which will be critical to the success of the #20Liters Campaign. We recognize our privilege as a White-led environmental organization and intend to use that privilege to bring impacted community members, legislators, decision-makers, technical professionals, non-governmental organizations, utilities, and others to arrive at the best possible solutions for a range of natural, social, and built environment conditions. Building Consensus Recode knows of two successful consensus models, one with a small group of up to 8 people that recode’s program manager volunteers for and another, the East Portland Action Plan, with 50 – 60 people sitting in meetings. We believe this success can be replicated in the Universal Basic Water Project process. Recode is committed to building consensus because, majority voting tends to sideline the priorities of those in the minority. Since we want to intentionally and strategically uplift the messages of impacted community members whose lived experiences often give them a different perspective than majority or mainstream community members, consensus causes us to continuing exploring options until we find ones that everyone agrees on. At first, consensus will be hard to reach and time-consuming. We expect there could be much misunderstanding about what we are doing, why we’re doing it, or how to achieve our goal of Universal Basic Water rights. Some stakeholders will likely be entrenched in a certain way of thinking informed by their own lived experience, which could make it difficult to understand and internalize others’ perspectives. Later, after we’ve spent some time learning from each other and have built […]
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