Executive Director's Note from February 2024 Networker

When I began working on the law of future generations, there were several arguments that naysayers made to counter the idea that we had a sacred responsibility to leave a healthy and thriving Earth to generations to come. They would say future generations would be richer than we are—because That’s The Way It Has Always Been—so we should leave the problems for them to solve. Or they would describe how technology is getting better and better and would address the problems our generation created so we were off the hook for cleaning up our own messes. But the most irritating thing I heard was that we couldn’t possibly know what future generations would need so we actually owed it to them to not worry about our legacy of destruction.

We actually do know what future generations need, starting with clean water: a stable hydrologic cycle, reservoirs of groundwater, an Ocean that has not been acidified, unpolluted amniotic fluid, rivers that run free and full of fish.

Ten years ago, we gathered together several hundred people at the Women’s Congress for Future Generations to draft a bill of rights for water and to assert our responsibilities as humans to protect water for present and future generations. After the bill of rights of water we said this:

As Humans We have Responsibilities 

To honor, love, respect, and acknowledge all water bodies as wild, free, powerful, essential components of an interconnected water cycle that is living and the source and sanctuary of ALL LIFE 

To have empathy, compassion, and reverence for the integral boundaries and relationships of these water bodies 

To learn from these water bodies by heeding the warnings from beings and systems under duress, and to act with urgency to repair and restore these water bodies 

To take active responsibility to educate ourselves, children, and decision-makers to better understand the interconnectedness of the water cycle. Part of this responsibility is to revive traditional wisdom from communities that hold intimate and long-term knowledge of the interconnectedness of these water bodies, and to act on and learn from their wisdom 

To uphold existing laws and policies to protect these water bodies, and to create new laws and policies and new institutions to safeguard these waters, such as to create Guardians and to elect people who will defend the aforementioned rights 

To protect these water bodies by not damaging their ecosystem or the ecosystems from above and below which feed them 

To treat other humans with justice and fairness, giving and sharing water with respect for the needs of each person and our mutual dependence on water. Each commoner has an equal right to share in the Commons 

To withdraw our consent from practices that do not fulfill our responsibilities to uphold the rights of all waters and to give our free, prior and informed consent to practices that repair, restore and protect the waters 

To cultivate relationships with the waters, shared across all cultures, of partnership rather than domination

In this issue of The Networker, we tell the story of water and the myriad threats to it from misguided uses, climate change, and contamination by industry. As important, we are telling how people are rising up to protect water from those scourges. They are fulfilling the responsibilities our generation holds to leave water—clean water—to future generations.

We hope you are enriched by these four pieces by our staff.

Carolyn Raffensperger