Examining the Water Crisis and Climate Change

UUSC understands that there is a global water crisis, which is the product of shifting and competing political and economic interests, depletion from environmental contamination, climate change, over-extraction, and increasing human population. As a human-rights organization, UUSC recognizes the urgent need to respond. Climate justice is a central theme of UUSC's Environmental Justice work.

Got Water? is a campaign to ensure sustainable access to safe, sufficient, affordable water to every person by enshrining the human right to water into law — internationally, nationally, statewide, and locally. Learn more about our campaign.

More people are losing their access to clean, affordable water in the United States and in other nations, and too often, the victims are people in low-income communities, women, and racial and ethnic minorities.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released a technical paper on the links between climate change and impacts on water resources. Similarly, the U.N. Human Rights Council has taken up the topic of climate change and human rights.

The U.N. Development Program's 2007/2008 human development report, Fighting climate change: Human solidarity in a divided world, outlines the impacts and the principles that should inform a just climate change policy. It includes programs to mitigate global greenhouse gases and to assist communities in adapting to the impacts of climate change. UUSC partners with the Soil Farm Multi Cultural group in an innovative program that does both.

Featured stories about the water crisis and climate change