water and resources
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The Central American Water Tribunal is one of the first actions of the Latin American Water Tribunal, in its attempts to create a parallel legal system. This enables diverse sectors of civil society to use their organizational skills, and to prosecute those responsible for damaging or otherwise abusing water resources and aquatic environments in the region.
It is well known that vital river basins and aquatic areas in Central America are being polluted and destroyed. Rivers and water tables crucial to the human inhabitants and biodiversity are used for dumping sewage, garbage, and chemical waste from farming and industry. Many communities face these attacks daily, without being able to find solutions to the problem, and without knowing who to report the environmental destruction to.

The Central American Water Tribunal is a means to utilize existant environmental laws, as well as the power of public outcry and moral outrage, to show that the people can act to bring about positive change and save precious water resources - in spite of government inaction and powerful business interests.

• Population of Central America in the year 2000: 40 million people
• Those with no access to potable water: 15 million people
• Half the population gets its drinking water from primary natural springs, in most cases untreated.
• From 1955 to 1990, the amount of water available per capita dropped 62% in the Central American isthmus.
• It is predicted that in the year 2025, individuals will have only 21% of the amount of water that was available to them at the end of the Second World War.

Yet these numbers indicating the drastic reduction of water resources in the last decades, and the projections for the first quarter of the 21st century ( done by Population Action International), only take into account demographic growth, without even factoring in water loss due to contamination of water tables, deforestation, industrial growth, the increase of lands used for agricultural, and other destructive processes which seriously effect the quality and quantity of water available.

TRIBUNAL CENTROAMERICANO DEL AGUA
Apdo. 101-6000, Costa Rica
Tel. (506)2241770 Fax (506)2834895/4167375
Web site : www.tragua.com
E-mail: correo@tragua.com