Water activist Maude Barlow believes there’s still time to save the world’s water – and her new book is a blueprint for the rescue mission.
CUPE National President Paul Moist joined Barlow on stage to launch Blue Future: Protecting Water for People and the Planet Forever at a packed Ottawa event. Moist called the book a powerful reminder that “water is worth fighting for.”
Barlow told the audience the struggle to control the planet’s water is intensifying, with corporations and governments polluting, abusing and mismanaging this scarce resource. The crisis is being felt most deeply by people in the global South who don’t have reliable public water systems.
But Barlow was clear there’s plenty to be hopeful about, from the hard-fought battle to win the recognition of water as a human right at the United Nations, to the growing number of communities rejecting water privatization. “We have built an incredibly powerful movement in communities and countries around the world,” said the national chairperson of the Council of Canadians.
On stage and in her book, Barlow emphasizes CUPE and other public sector unions as “the backbone” of the water justice movement.
She singled Canada out for being increasingly out of step on water issues, including the federal government’s push to privatize municipal water and wastewater systems. “Globally, we are winning the privatization fight and communities are moving back to public control. Only in Canada are we starting the wrong process,” said Barlow.
The vast majority of Canada’ lakes and rivers have been stripped of their legal protections to speed up destructive fossil fuel production in the tar sands and through shale gas fracking. She also outlined how the Harper government’s aid policy favouring mining corporations is fuelling environmental and human rights abuses in the global South.
The way forward begins with water at the centre of all future decision-making, said Barlow. A truly blue future will be one where people work together to ensure water is a human right for everyone, where water resources are part of the commons – not a commodity, and where water sources have stronger legal protection.
“There’s a finite amount of water on our planet. We have to fiercely guard it, and share it more equally,” said Barlow.
The Ottawa event was the first stop on a month-long book tour. Details are at canadians.org/bluefuture