In conversation with Maude Barlow

Maude Victoria Barlow is a Canadian author and activist.  In anticipation of her World Water Day Webinar in Wakefield, Maude Barlow chats with LPM about history, health and hope.

She is a founding member of the Council of Canadians, a citizens' advocacy organization with members and chapters across Canada. She is also the co-founder of the Blue Planet Project, which works internationally for the human right to water. Barlow chairs the board of Washington-based Food & Water Watch, is a founding member of the San Francisco–based International Forum on Globalization, and a Councillor with the Hamburg-based World Future Council. In 2008/2009, she served as Senior Advisor on Water to the 63rd President of the United Nations General Assembly and was a leader in the campaign to have water recognized as a human right by the UN.

She has authored and co-authored 19 books, including her latest, Boiling Point: Government Neglect, Corporate Abuse, and Canada's Water Crisis and Whose Water is it Anyway? Taking water protection into public hands.

Barlow proposes the remunicipalization of the water and sanitation services because "the public and communities lose control as local government officials abdicate control over a vital public service, private water companies are accountable to their shareholders, not to the people they serve and often restrict public access to information about their operations Because they have to make a profit, they have to cut corners, raise water rates or lay off workers - often all three."

Barlow is the recipient of fourteen honorary doctorates as well as many awards, including the 2005 Right Livelihood Award (known as the "Alternative Nobel"), the 2005 Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Fellowship Award, the Citation of Lifetime Achievement at the 2008 Canadian Environment Awards, the 2009 Earth Day Canada Outstanding Environmental Achievement Award, the 2009 Planet in Focus Eco Hero Award, and the 2011 EarthCare Award, the highest international honour of the Sierra Club (US).