…Continued

At the 2012 Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development, then Environment Minister Peter Kent conceded that the human right to water not only exists, but that it is integral to the right to an adequate standard of living under the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.

Catarina de Albuquerque, the UN's special rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, wrote specifically about fracking and its relationship to the human right to water during her visit to the United States in 2011. De Albuquerque's U.S. report notes the concerns raised about the impacts of fracking on water and recommends that countries need to take ?a holistic consideration of the right to water by factoring it into policies having an impact on water quality, ranging from agriculture to chemical use in products to energy production activities.?

In order to fulfill Canada?s obligation to uphold the human right to water and sanitation, governments at all levels must put a stop to fracking. The risk that fracking poses to water, public health, and climate change is one that governments cannot afford.

For more information visit www.canadians.org/fracking.
Emma Lui's blog

http://canadians.org/blog/why-communities-across-canada-are-calling-freeze-fracking