On 22 October EWP participated in the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) Committee on World Food Security. Bhawana Sharma, EWP’s steering committee alternate for Asia, represented the coalition at a side-event titled ‘Water for Life – Bridging the Gap between the Right to Water and the Right to Food’. Bhawana shared insights from her work as the convenor of FANSA’s Nepal Chapter and executive director of Environment & Public Health Organization (ENPHO), highlighting the links between water contamination and malnutrition before making the case for sustainable sanitation to recover soil for local, climate-resilient agriculture.
Bhawana also outlined recommendations from the Leave No One Behind policy brief: “Deaths and illnesses linked to inadequate water, sanitation, and hygiene services disproportionately affect those in the lowest economic quintiles […] This is why we at EWP urge all stakeholders to prioritise our ‘Leave No One Behind’ agenda. Equitable, inclusive solutions are essential to breaking these cycles of poverty and ensuring safe water and sanitation for all.”
The side-event was organised by the United Nations Office of Special Procedures with the UN special rapporteurs on food and water rights, member states, and civil society – including the Civil Society and Indigenous People’s Mechanism (CSIPM), EWP, the World Council of Churches Ecumenical Water Network, and Vía Campesina. Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to water and sanitation, recalled highlights from his recent report on ‘the water/food nexus’, which argues that the food and water crises are primarily crises of governance – not scarcity. The report outlines how land/water grabbing and monoculture farming destroy social fabrics and indigenous knowledge, while the use of pesticides and industrial fertilisers results in the overexploitation and contamination of groundwater flux systems.
“It is more vital than ever for governments to take the lead in developing new governance approaches to address this interconnected crisis,” said Arrojo-Agudo. “Current food systems are based on the myth that production can grow indefinitely and blind faith in markets to distribute food. Redirecting this public funding to support the agroecological and water transition will enable healthier, more sustainable, equitable, and efficient food systems.”