Fighting for the right to water
June 23, 2014 · 0 Comments
Water advocate Maude Barlow will be speaking at the Minden Hills Community Centre on July 11, 2014. Photo by Wolfgang Schmidt
By Jenn Watt
When renowned Canadian activist and author Maude Barlow was growing up, it was a commonly held belief that the world would never run out of clean water.
Most people never considered that water would become a scarcity – threatened by pollution, agriculture, manufacturing and global trade.
Today, water is under threat and Barlow has distinguished herself as one of the most prominent international voices for its protection.
“It’s true that the water’s still on the planet somewhere,” says Barlow, “but we’ve either polluted it or diverted it for mass flood irrigation, for food production for the global food market (therefore it’s in commodities and it’s not in the ground anymore) or we’ve sent it into big cities where when they’re finished with it they dump it in the ocean so it doesn’t get cleaned and returned to the land.”
Barlow is a guest of Environment Haliburton scheduled to speak at the Minden Hills Community Centre on July 11.
She recently authored Blue Future: Protecting Water for People and the Planet Forever, one of 17 books she has released over the years.
The last in a trilogy of non-fiction about the world’s water situation, it offers solutions to solving what is an ever-intensifying and frightening situation.
“[On July 11] I’ll talk about the fact that water should be seen as a public trust,” she says. “It belongs to the people; it belongs to the ecosystem; it belongs to the future generations.”
Barlow first became interested in water as a cause in the mid 1980s. An active part of the women’s movement, she noticed that water was largely a women’s issue around the world.
“When I started realizing there were so many million people without access to water, I realized the vast majority of people affected were women. It’s women’s responsibility in the poorer countries in the global south to go out and walk kilometres, maybe five or six kilometres, to get the water and get it back,” she says.
“They are responsible for cooking and the health care of their family, gardening and all the things you need water for.”
At the same time, she was researching free trade agreements and made a startling discovery: water was being listed as a tradable good.
“I realized there was a very big move by corporations, both private utilities that wanted to come in and run water services on a for-profit basis, bottled water companies, all sorts of others that were getting into the water business.”
The topic led to three books, a lengthy list of articles and commentaries and then into the United Nations where in 2010 Barlow became the senior advisor on water to the 63rd president of the UN general assembly.
And on July 28, 2010, the UN passed a declaration that all humans have the right to water – an achievement Barlow says is the pinnacle of her career so far.
“It is the responsibility of each government in the world to make sure that the human right to water and sanitation is fulfilled in their country,” she says.
Of course, that doesn’t mean every country will follow the rules, but there is now a means to enforce that human right in places such as Detroit, which has been kicking users off water access as costs steadily increase.
One of Barlow’s organizations – The Blue Planet Project – partnered with a local organization to write a report on the subject, which was sent to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation.
“It’s not a perfect process,” she says, but without the declaration, water advocates would be in a tougher position than they are now.
Barlow is also a fierce critic of the bottled water industry and has campaigned against corporations such as Nestlé for draining water out of one part of the world for export to another.
“Bottled water not only creates all that plastic garbage … but it also destroys local water sources because these companies come into a local community and they take the local water and mine it until it’s gone. When it’s gone the companies move on,” she says.
“People need to remember that … where there’s water in a bottle it’s come from a plant somewhere and that plant’s based on fresh spring water somewhere and that’s how we’re using up our groundwater so fast.”
To combat growing demand for bottled water and privatization of public water facilities, Barlow helped create the Blue Communities Project through the Council of Canadians, where she is the national chairperson.
The project asks communities to pledge to support public water utilities, ban the sale of bottled water in municipal buildings and at municipal events and to declare water a human right.
Maude Barlow will speak at 7 p.m. on July 11 at the Minden Hills Community Centre. Copies of her book will be for sale at the event. Cost of admission: Suggested Donation of $10.
Most people never considered that water would become a scarcity – threatened by pollution, agriculture, manufacturing and global trade.
Today, water is under threat and Barlow has distinguished herself as one of the most prominent international voices for its protection.
“It’s true that the water’s still on the planet somewhere,” says Barlow, “but we’ve either polluted it or diverted it for mass flood irrigation, for food production for the global food market (therefore it’s in commodities and it’s not in the ground anymore) or we’ve sent it into big cities where when they’re finished with it they dump it in the ocean so it doesn’t get cleaned and returned to the land.”
Barlow is a guest of Environment Haliburton scheduled to speak at the Minden Hills Community Centre on July 11.
She recently authored Blue Future: Protecting Water for People and the Planet Forever, one of 17 books she has released over the years.
The last in a trilogy of non-fiction about the world’s water situation, it offers solutions to solving what is an ever-intensifying and frightening situation.
“[On July 11] I’ll talk about the fact that water should be seen as a public trust,” she says. “It belongs to the people; it belongs to the ecosystem; it belongs to the future generations.”
Barlow first became interested in water as a cause in the mid 1980s. An active part of the women’s movement, she noticed that water was largely a women’s issue around the world.
“When I started realizing there were so many million people without access to water, I realized the vast majority of people affected were women. It’s women’s responsibility in the poorer countries in the global south to go out and walk kilometres, maybe five or six kilometres, to get the water and get it back,” she says.
“They are responsible for cooking and the health care of their family, gardening and all the things you need water for.”
At the same time, she was researching free trade agreements and made a startling discovery: water was being listed as a tradable good.
“I realized there was a very big move by corporations, both private utilities that wanted to come in and run water services on a for-profit basis, bottled water companies, all sorts of others that were getting into the water business.”
The topic led to three books, a lengthy list of articles and commentaries and then into the United Nations where in 2010 Barlow became the senior advisor on water to the 63rd president of the UN general assembly.
And on July 28, 2010, the UN passed a declaration that all humans have the right to water – an achievement Barlow says is the pinnacle of her career so far.
“It is the responsibility of each government in the world to make sure that the human right to water and sanitation is fulfilled in their country,” she says.
Of course, that doesn’t mean every country will follow the rules, but there is now a means to enforce that human right in places such as Detroit, which has been kicking users off water access as costs steadily increase.
One of Barlow’s organizations – The Blue Planet Project – partnered with a local organization to write a report on the subject, which was sent to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation.
“It’s not a perfect process,” she says, but without the declaration, water advocates would be in a tougher position than they are now.
Barlow is also a fierce critic of the bottled water industry and has campaigned against corporations such as Nestlé for draining water out of one part of the world for export to another.
“Bottled water not only creates all that plastic garbage … but it also destroys local water sources because these companies come into a local community and they take the local water and mine it until it’s gone. When it’s gone the companies move on,” she says.
“People need to remember that … where there’s water in a bottle it’s come from a plant somewhere and that plant’s based on fresh spring water somewhere and that’s how we’re using up our groundwater so fast.”
To combat growing demand for bottled water and privatization of public water facilities, Barlow helped create the Blue Communities Project through the Council of Canadians, where she is the national chairperson.
The project asks communities to pledge to support public water utilities, ban the sale of bottled water in municipal buildings and at municipal events and to declare water a human right.
Maude Barlow will speak at 7 p.m. on July 11 at the Minden Hills Community Centre. Copies of her book will be for sale at the event. Cost of admission: Suggested Donation of $10.
