Resources: Media Releases
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 10, 2008
New UN Water Advisor Report Opposes Water Commodification
Maude Barlow Calls for New Freshwater Narrative Based on Commons Principles
United Nations, New York City – To commemorate the 60th anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, The Council of Canadians and On the Commons are launching an exciting new report titled Our Water Commons: Toward a new freshwater narrative. Written by Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians and recently appointed Senior Advisor on Water Issues to the President of the General Assembly of the United Nations, Our Water Commons is part of the ongoing work to address the global water crisis by naming and reclaiming the freshwater commons. Barlow is at the United Nations in New York today discussing water as a human right on a panel with Miguel d’Escoto Brockman, President of the UN General Assembly.
To download a copy of 'Our Water Commons: Toward a new freshwater narrative', visit www.canadians.org or www.onthecommons.org. Barlow is also launching a 3 minute video discussing her UN trip at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MIKlYGNNL8. The webcast of today’s UN panels can be accessed at http://www.un.org/webcast/, and a 15 minute video of yesterday’s press conference in New York with Maude Barlow and UN President d’Escoto is online at http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/ondemand/
pressconference/2008/pc081209am2.rm?start=00:15:08
“There are two competing narratives about the earth’s freshwater resources being played out in the 21st century,” Barlow says in the report. “On one side is a powerful clique of decision-makers, heads of some powerful states, international trade and financial institutions and transnational corporations who do not view water as part of the global Commons or a public trust, but as a commodity, to be bought and sold on the open market.”
“On the other,” Barlow notes in the report, “is a global grassroots movement of local communities, the poor, slum dwellers, women, indigenous peoples, peasants and small farmers working with environmentalists, human rights activists, progressive water managers and experts in both the global North and the global South who see water as a Commons and seek to provide water for all of nature and all humans. This paper describes the tense – and globally threatening – relationship between these two prominent narratives and points to ways that the life affirming water Commons can be used as a framework to bring water justice to all,” says Barlow.
“The Commons and managing water at the community level is the best way to ensure empowerment of the community and future sustainability,” says Rajendra Singh of Tarun Bharat Sangh in Rajasthan, India, highlighting the support the ‘Our Water Commons’ report is receiving from around the world:
Harriet Barlow of On the Commons, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, says “Our Water Commons outlines a clear and effective means of dealing with the global water crisis, by involving the people who are most affected and aligning them around these principles of the Commons.”
“The indigenous peoples around the world have long lived by principles of the Commons and that this is a positive way forward to a just and sustainable water future,” says Oscar Olivera from the Coordinadora in Cochabamaba, Bolivia.
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For More Information:
Dylan Penner, Media Officer, Council of Canadians, 613-795-8685
OUR WATER COMMONS BACKGROUNDER
With the support of a new organization called On the Commons, the report promotes a better understanding of the concept of “the Commons,” which is described by American Commons pioneer and journalist Jonathan Rowe as “the vast realm that lies outside of both the economic market and the institutional state that all of us use without toll or price.”
Our Water Commons highlights ten crucial steps needed to move toward a new freshwater narrative based on commons principles:
1. Declare water to be a Commons
2. Adopt an Earth Democracy narrative
3. Protect water through conservation and law
4. Treat watersheds as a Commons
5. Assert community control over local water sources
6. Maintain water sovereignty for both communities and nations
7. Adopt a model of water justice, not charity
8. Restore public delivery and fair pricing
9. Enshrine the right to water in nation-state constitutions and a UN covenant
10. Use and expand the public trust doctrine to protect water
About the Author
Maude Barlow is the National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians, Canada’s largest public advocacy organization, and the founder of the Blue Planet Project, working internationally for the right to water. She serves on the boards of the San Francisco-based International Forum on Globalization and Washington-based Food and Water Watch, and is a Councillor with the Hamburg-based World Future Council. Maude is the recipient of seven honorary doctorates, the 2005/2006 Lannan Cultural Freedom Fellowship Award, the 2005 Right Livelihood Award (known as the “Alternative Nobel”) for her global water justice work, and is the Citation of Lifetime Achievement winner of the 2008 Canadian Environment Awards. She is also the best selling author or co-author of 16 books, including Blue Gold, The Fight to Stop Corporate Theft of the World’s Water and the recently released Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and The Coming Battle for the Right to Water.
