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<h1 class="entry-title" title="Having made this vital resource
a cause célèbre, Maude Barlow now calls for it to be front
and centre in government policy"><small>Page 16 of today's
Globe and Mail. Excerpted. Pick up a copy to read the
whole article. <br>
</small></h1>
<h1 class="entry-title" title="Having made this vital resource
a cause célèbre, Maude Barlow now calls for it to be front
and centre in government policy"><small>We are bringing her
to Guelph Oct 9th . <br>
</small></h1>
<h1 class="entry-title" title="Having made this vital resource
a cause célèbre, Maude Barlow now calls for it to be front
and centre in government policy">A living entity, water
should have some rights of its own </h1>
<div class="column-2 gridcol">
<p class="byline author vcard"> VIDYA KAURI </p>
<p class="creditline source-org vcard"> The Globe and Mail</p>
Aug 24, 2013<br>
<p>Ms. Barlow, 66, is nationally recognized as a staunch
advocate for public control of water and equal access to
clean water worldwide. A grandmother of four, the
Ottawa-based writer has 11 honorary doctorates and several
environmental awards for her tireless work. The first book
in her series, <em>Blue Gold,</em> was a call to people
to understand that water is being captured by corporate
interests and that governments should retain control of
it. The second, <em>Blue Covenant,</em> was about the
international movement to fight water privatization. It
ended with the statement that people had to push the
United Nations to recognize water as a human right – a
global struggle in which Ms. Barlow was one of the
leaders.</p>
<p><em>Blue Future</em> starts by announcing the achievement
of that goal on July 28, 2010. She spoke with The Globe
and Mail about what needs to be done now that the goal has
been achieved.</p>
<p><strong>What is the main argument in <em>Blue Future</em>?</strong></p>
<p>It is that we have to create a new ethic that puts water
at the centre of our lives and around which we build all
policy: Trade, economics, energy, food, you name it. If it
hurts water, it has to be re-assessed, or dropped. The
book is based on four principles. The first is that, if
water is a human right, we have to find a way to pay for
it. The second is that water is a public heritage, the
third is that water has rights too, and the fourth is that
water can teach us how to live together and we can find
ways to see water as a means of peace-keeping and
peace-making. For example, the warring factions in the
Middle East who have unified to protect the Jordan River.</p>
<p><strong>Who profits from water in our country?</strong></p>
<p>Water is mostly still in public hands in Canada, but
about three years ago, the Harper government tied funding
to municipalities for new water infrastructure to
public-private partnerships. Most people don’t know about
it, but it’s quite dangerous because it locks
municipalities to a private model, which is always more
expensive. A lot of municipalities, including Regina and
St. John’s, by and large, don’t want to privatize, but
they can’t get federal funds if they won’t. The Harper
government is keen to sign the Comprehensive Economic and
Trade Agreement with Europe, which would make it
impossible to reverse that decision. So that’s pernicious
and just starting in Canada.</p>
<p>Also, Alberta is seriously looking at water trading,
where you convert your licenses into a kind of property
and you allow the owner of the licences to trade them. In
the book, I look at two places that have allowed this:
Chile and Australia. In both cases, they’ve lost total
control of their public water. In Australia, the price of
water skyrocketed because big farm conglomerates bought
the licences from the small farmers and traded them on the
open market. When the government tried to buy it back
because it was drying up, they couldn’t afford it.</p>
<p><strong>The water never stops flowing from my tap. Why
should I be concerned?</strong></p>
<p>We are nowhere near as blessed as most people think.
There’s been a steady decline in water supply to Southern
Canada because of overdraining. I was just up by Lake
Huron a couple of weeks ago, and you can see where the
water came to just a few years ago, and way, way, out
where the water starts now. It makes me sad. You begin to
have a visceral understanding of what it’s like when a
major body of water starts to retreat. It’s partly climate
change, partly over-extraction. The Harper government
gutted the Navigable Waters Protection Act, which means
that 99 per cent of our lakes and rivers are unprotected
from pipelines going under or over them. They’re moving
tar sands crude over barges and ships across the Great
Lakes. We’re fighting nuclear shipments as well. It’s like
this whole new slew of threats to the Great Lakes.</p>
<p>Other large bodies of water have gone under in the world.
They were so large it was inconceivable they would ever be
gone, like Lake Chad in Africa. The Aral Sea in the former
Soviet Union is almost gone. Lake Winnipeg is by some
accounts dead because of the blue-green algae from
nitrates from farms. Some scientists don’t know if it’s
recoverable. Prince Edward Island is dumping nitrates into
its groundwater for its potato farming. I can name them as
we go across the country. I’ve just been in New Brunswick
and they’re planning fracking operations. My message to
Canadians is: If we think that somehow we’re exempt from
the water crisis that is upon many parts of the world now,
we should think again.</p>
<p><strong>What’s our biggest challenge?</strong></p>
<p>In Canada, our biggest challenge is this myth of
abundance. It’s a global myth that goes back to learning
about the hydrological cycle when we were kids. The water
goes round and round and it can’t go anywhere. That’s
true. It’s still on the planet somewhere, but it’s a
problem when you displace it from where you can access it
by massive transport or dumping massive amounts of surface
water into oceans.</p>
<p><strong>You often speak of water in your book as if it is
a living entity that can get hurt and has rights. What
do you mean?</strong></p>
<p>This is newer in my thinking. I used to think about water
in terms of equality of access. But I’ve come to see that
we have a human-centric view of nature in that it’s there
to serve us. We need to start asking what rights an
ecosystem has. I mean, stop and think what it would be
like if the Gulf of Mexico could have sued British
Petroleum? Of course, the gulf couldn’t have, but what
would it be like if our laws were more compatible with
protecting water in and of itself? You have to start
recognizing that if we live more compatibly with the
natural world, it’s going to be better for everyone.</p>
<p><em>This interview has been edited and condensed.</em></p>
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