Ottawa-based Council of Canadians water campaigner Meera Karunananthan and Mexico City-based Blue Planet Project organizer Claudia Campero Arena are attending the Fourth Hemispheric Network Assembly for La Red Vida (Vigilancia Interamericana para la Defensa y Derecho al Agua/ Inter-American Network for the Defense of the Right to Water), which is taking place October 14-18 in Mexico City.
As noted on the Assembly’s Facebook page (in Spanish), “Our Assembly will take place in the context of a growing progress of the privatization policies of water management imposed on governments by the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and the imperative to ensure availability and access to water and food from a holistic look at our territories. The crisis is compounded by the consequences of climate change on life on the planet and the quantity and quality of water, expressed as droughts and floods affecting our peoples and communities.”
Among its goals, the Assembly seeks to “build the work plan of the Network for the next two years”, “strengthen the work of the Coalition of Mexican Organizations for the Right to Water (COMDA)”, and “contribute to the analysis of Mexican organizations working to achieve the realization of the right to water and sanitation in Mexico”.
Tomorrow (October 17), there will be a public forum on “The Human Right to Water and Sanitation in Constitutions: Progress and Challenges in Latin America”.
On October 19, after the Assembly concludes, they (along with members of Red Mexicana de Afectados por la Mineria/ Mexican Network of People Affected by Mining) will visit the site of the Caballo Blanco mine – proposed by the Vancouver-based mining company Goldgroup – about 65 kilometres north-east of Veracruz, Mexico’s largest port city (about 425 kilometres south-east of Mexico City). Reportedly, the mine would require 3000 metres of water a day, approximately 1.12 million cubic metres of water per year. There also concerns about how the highly toxic wastewater from the mine would be discharged – and the proximity of the mine to the Laguna Verde Nuclear Power Plant, the largest nuclear power plant in Mexico.
