Maude Barlow’s October 22 presentation at the K’omoks Band Hall, in Courtenay, was not just another stop on the tour to promote her new book, Whose Water Is It, Anyway? The co-founder of the Council of Canadians and the Blue Planet Project is on a mission to sound the alarm about a global water crisis.
Water crisis? That’s hard to believe on the soggy west coast, but it’s true.
Barlow has devoted the last decade, and most of her 19 books, to dispelling the Canadian myth that we have an abundance of water. And she has worked worldwide to convince governments and the public to recognize the human right to clean water, to keep drinking water and wastewater systems under public control and to stop using bottled water.
“We think it will always be here,” she said. “We are blessed with water in Canada, but that doesn’t mean we can be careless with it.”
“The water crisis is a few years behind the climate crisis in people’s minds,” she told Decafnation in an interview at the Union Bay home of Alice de Wolff, a member of the Council of Canadians board.
But it is real. Consider that a United Nations science panel estimates that by 2030 the global demand for water will exceed supply by 40%. They predict water crises will affect seven billion people by 2050, when world population hits 10 billion.
Many African countries already have a water crisis. River systems are polluted beyond human use in India. Adequate water supply is rare in the Middle East. Droughts are now common in Brazil, which has never had them until recently, and more frequent in California and on Vancouver Island.
Canada may have 6.5% of the world’s available fresh water, but we’re treating it poorly.
“We don’t have good legislation for groundwater protection,” she said. “We pollute it with chemicals from stormwater and factory agricultural runoff, we divert it, over-extract it and we don’t have strong national standards for drinking water or wastewater treatment.”
Keeping water public
Barlow’s message is particularly relevant in the Comox Valley after public protests defeated an application to extract groundwater for a water bottling operation in Merville.
The Merville Water Guardians, led by Bruce Gibbons, has now taken that fight to Victoria, pressing the BC government to stop licensing groundwater extraction for commercial water bottling or water exports from provincial aquifers. Last month, the Union of BC Municipalities passed the Water Guardians resolution.
Barlow predicts the battle for British Columbia’s will get more intense as water supplies diminish.
“In a world running out of water, you bet there’s going to be corporate interest,” she said.
Over the last 10 years, 83% of all Canadian bottled water exports came from BC, driven primarily by the Nestle company’s extraction operation near Hope that draws 255 million litres per year. There has recently been a 1,500% increase in exports to the US.
Two years ago, Agriculture Canada started promoting a water crisis in China as an opportunity for the Canadian bottled water industry. A fact Barlow thinks is curious given the Trudeau government’s promise to ban plastics by 2021.
Whistler Water in Burnaby extracts groundwater to produce 43,000 bottles per hour. The company was sold in 2016 to new Chinese investors who have expanded production to serve growing markets in China and California.
And new applications for groundwater extraction have recently been filed with the BC government for operations in Golden and Canal Flats.
Although many municipalities – including the Comox Valley – have passed bylaws prohibiting groundwater extraction for bottling, Barlow worries about which jurisdiction will have ultimate control if the province persists.
A significant Canadian water bottling expansion would add billions more plastic into the world, most of which will not be recycled, adding to the million bottles of water sold every minute around the world.
What are Blue communities?
Barlow initiated the Blue Communities Program in 2009 through the Council of Canadians and the Canadian Union of Public Employees to protect water and promote it as a public trust.
On July 28, 2010, Barlow earliest efforts achieved a major victory to have water recognized as a human right by the United Nations.
It was a bittersweet victory, however, because Canada abstained from the vote. Prime Minister Stephen Harper had led the fight against it the UN resolution, because he was promoting public-private partnerships as the owners of water and wastewater systems. Harper was also encouraged private groundwater extraction.
Barlow believes water protection cannot be left to the federal government. She has focused her efforts on more local levels.
“We have a strong obligation to keep water in democractic hands,” she said.
To become a Blue Community requires that a city or town pledge to uphold three principles:
First, to recognize water and sanitation as human rights. Second, to ban or phase out the sale of bottled water in municipal facilities and at municipal events. And, third, to promote publicly financed, owned and operated water and wastewater services.
She imagined program as a Canadian initiative and never dreamed it would go global.
But when she was in Bern, Switzerland to protest Nestle’s abuse of water around the world, she had the opportunity to speak with the city’s mayor. Bern soon became the first Blue city outside of Canada, followed by the University of Bern, and the Reform Church.
Now Berlin, Barcelona, Munich, Madrid and Paris are also Blue cities. Brussels and Amsterdam will join soon.
And the program is not just for cities. The World Council of Churches recently took the Blue pledge. McGill is the first university in Canada to go Blue. A high school in Quebec and an elementary school (where her granddaughters go) have also taken the pledge.
In the Comox Valley, both Cumberland and Comox signed on to the program in 2012.
Burnaby was the first city in Canada to join, and Montreal is the largest.
Barlow’s new book
Whose Water Is It, Anyway? Is Barlow’s latest book about water. And it takes a different approach than her earlier works that focused on defining the global water problem. In it, she moves from misuse of water around the world, to the success stories of the Blue Communities program.
It’s more of a handbook to show people what they can do as groups or individuals to lessen the coming water crisis. It includes templates of letters to send to governments and corporations.
In a way, it’s the story of Barlow’s evolution to understanding water.
“I’m a practical activist. I have a big dream, but I’m rooted in a practical way to get there,” she said. “Plus, I offer hope. The book is not apocalyptic. I don’t want people to feel helpless.”
George Le Masurier is a retired journalist and newspaper executive. This article is from his website www.decafnation.net and reprinted as part of a collaboration with the Watershed Sentinel.