Water 2020, 12, 340 9 of 28 instead turning to unfiltered water, leading to an unprecedented cholera outbreak [53]. As Weiss notes, “[P]rivatization is not the panacea to the world’s ailing public water sector” [26]. Albuquerque notes, “The State cannot exempt itself from its human rights obligations by involving non-State actors in service provision . . . the State remains the primary duty-bearer” [46]. Weiss argues that based on collective analysis of various guidelines, a human right to water should, at minimum, be defined as “20 L of safe water per person per day for metabolic, hygienic, and domestic requirements either by direct connection to a home or from a source within one kilometre of the home, at a cost which each person (or family) can afford” [26]. The question remains: How will states will be held accountable to measure and maintain water quality? An intergenerational (future generations) right to water is inextricably tied to an intragenerational right (e.g., regarding aquifer saltwater intrusion, pesticide contamination, radioactive waste contamination). These issues affect both freshwater immediately and groundwater for future generations, in some cases for millennia to come, as with radioactive waste. Climate change impacts groundwater recharge rates, slowing down speeds at which groundwater can be extracted for potable water, and sea-level rise increases salinity of ground water aquifers, rendering water non-potable [26]. Sustainable development principles suggest that a human right to water must address access for both present and future populations [54,55]. Given current enforceability difficulties for international environmental law and extreme challenges with global consensus on commitments to climate change mitigation (e.g., the 2017 United States withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords), any proposal for a binding normative definition of the intergenerational human right to water is sure to be met with resistance from industrial powers. A normative definition of the intragenerational human right to water—and potential for this definition to be incorporated into a legally binding document—is arguably more attainable in the short term. A total of 20–50 L of safe water per person per day for drinking and sanitation as a bare minimum is a starting point, though significant ambiguities remain: (1) How would universal standards for quality be enforced? (2) How would an enforceable treaty account for evolution of these standards over time? (Would mandated reviews every five years be necessary, and/or should quality and minimum quantity be determined on a sliding scale based on location-specific climate concerns?); (3) Is water required for food production sufficiently protected in the existing human right to health, or should water for food production be specifically addressed in the human right to water? The most significant ambiguity is determining what form a document mandating legally binding guidelines for the human right to water would take. In part, the type of document that defines the human right to water and sets forth accompanying principles would predetermine how the above questions are addressed. 3.3. Water and the Human Right to Development The UN human right to development includes contextualised recognition of the human right to water. The 1986 Declaration on the Right to Development sets out states’ responsibilities to “undertake, at the national level, all necessary measures for the realization of the human right to development, and [to] ensure, inter alia, equality of opportunity for all in their access to basic resources” [56]. Water access is presumably part of “basic resources”, and in UNGA Resolution 54/175 (1999), the UN went a step further to include “rights to food and clean water . . . [as] fundamental human rights” [57]. The problem with Resolution 54/175, as with other examples discussed in which a human right to water is implicitly recognised, is twofold: (1) The right to water is only defined insofar as provision of water resources ensures that another, broader human right is respected; (2) This dependency on a separate, broadly defined human right is problematic, because the right to development itself is not legally enforceable [58]. The human right to water’s importance for development demonstrates the need for this right to be independently established as truly enforceable. The absence of a clear, legally enforceable human