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The United Nations has implicitly lent its support to the historic resistance against the Dakota Access pipeline on the land of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe by thrusting water into the international spotlight as the “first victim” of climate change during the COP22 world climate summit in Marrakech, Morocco.
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Marking a first in the history of U.N. summits on climate change, Wednesday was dubbed the Action Day for Water at the two week-long conference focused on defining the details and rules for implementing the Paris climate deal that entered into force last Friday and has been ratified by 103 of 197 U.N. countries.
“Water is one of the most impacted resources (by climate change),” president of the World Water Council, Benedito Braga, said Wednesday, highlighting the increasingly complex “stresses” brought by extreme weather. “But water also provides solutions to these challenges.”
The U.N.’s celebration of water as a precious resource and calls for its protection comes at a pivotal moment in the unprecedented uprising in North Dakota led by the Standing Rock Sioux and hundreds of other Native American tribes against the fossil fuel industry’s unbridled exploitation of land and water.
The self-proclaimed “water protectors” at Standing Rock say they are taking a stand against the “serious threat” to land and water to protect resources for future generations under the banner “Water is Life.” Dakota Access pipeline operators announced Tuesday — in the heat of the presidential election — that the company Energy Transfer Partners is plowing ahead with construction despite a lack of final approval from federal regulators. The pipeline is set to tunnel under Lake Oahe — the fourth-largest reservoir by volume in the United States — to connect to completed sections of the hotly contested pipeline.
As water protectors keep up the struggle, the U.N. statement on water as the “first victim” of climate change and also part of the “solution” to mitigate global warming’s effects comes as a silent endorsement of the fight to stop the Dakota Access pipeline and its destructive environmental consequences.
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Experts have argued that policies related to water management and discussions of climate action often underestimate or disregard the critical way that climate change impacts water resources and the vulnerable communities whose water access may be affected in turn. When it comes to the fossil fuel industry’s role in exploiting water resources, both water availability and quality come into question, as the oil and gas sector is notorious both for using huge amounts of water in extraction and contaminating reservoirs.
But despite expert’s calls for a focus on water policy as part of global action on climate change, the Paris climate agreement — celebrated as a “historic” step in the fight against climate change despite harsh criticism from environmentalists that it falls far short — fails to even mention the word water. It also makes to no mention of coal, oil or fossil fuels and pays no substantial attention to Indigenous rights or the role of Indigenous communities as unparalleled stewards of the environment.
What’s more, the election results this week has sparked fears that the U.S.’s commitment to even modest climate action through the Paris agreement will be completely derailed by a Donald Trump presidency paired with Republican-controlled Senate and House. Analysts expect Trump's win to make the completion of the Dakota Access pipeline even more likely.
Overall, Trump is expected to push U.S. toward more dirty energy extraction, not less, and could spell disaster for the environment, the rights Indigenous and other racialized communities, and water resources, especially if the likes of climate change denier Sarah Palin wins his pick for secretary of energy, as some have predicted.
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