This innovative framework focuses on promoting effective stewardship of water resources in water-intensive industrial contexts where water consumption has the potential to lead to severe environmental and social impacts
The Pulte Institute Sustainability and Human Rights Initiative (SHRI) has been invited to host a Side Event at the UN 2023 Water Conference, the first UN convening dedicated solely to the topic of water in the past 50 years, to spotlight SHRI's innovative work within the space of business, human rights, and sustainability. The side event brings together NGO, academic, and private sector perspectives from around the globe to reflect on the role that water-intensive industries can play in realizing the human right to water and several pathways forward.
The presentation will briefly review the most pressing challenges associated with industrial water stewardship but will predominantly focus on solutions. Representatives from the Sanitary Workers Foundation for Training and Development (FUTRASAFODE - University Institute of Water) and the Instituto para el Diálogo Global y la Cultura del Encuentro (IDGCE) will discuss positive outcomes associated with their innovative training course on applied human rights for water operators. A cross-sectoral collaboration between the global mining company BHP and an interdisciplinary team of academics and practitioners at the University of Notre Dame will discuss a new, innovative framework that industry actors can use to proactively capture contextual human rights risk associated with potential projects as they make decisions about project design. The framework is especially pertinent for water-intensive sectors such as beverage, garment, mining, and agriculture.
The framework has been privately discussed with experts at peer institutions and received acclaim at World Water Week for its dynamic responsiveness to the challenges of designing human rights implementation in operational contexts, taking into account the evolutive and interdependent nature of the human right to water with all other related rights, such as the recently recognized human right to a healthy, safe, sustainable, and clean environment. As a result, the team was invited to present at the UN Social Forum in November, which focused on developing the OHCHR’s contribution to the UN 2023 Water Conference. The Side Event will use the training course discussion and the framework as a launching point for offering new perspectives and guidance on how water-intensive industries can contribute to sustainable industrial development through better implementation of the human right to water.
The presenters bring a diversity of perspectives, including that of a water stewardship lead at BHP, an international human rights expert and member of the UN Expert Group on the Right to Development, an expert on urban water insecurity in the Global South, an engineering hydrologist focused on human-water systems, the former director of Oxfam America, a youth researcher. The organizers of a partner network of Amazonian NGOs focused on stewardship of the Amazon and interfacing with businesses.