Whose water is it anyway? – NOW Magazine

“The global water crisis is about five years behind the climate crisis in people’s consciousness,” says author Maude Barlow

Books on the environment often spawn despair. But apocalyptic thinking is the last thing author and activist Maude Barlow wants to impose on readers of her fifth book on water, Whose Water Is It, Anyway?, which hit bookstores this month.

Barlow’s earlier works tackled the facts of a global water problem, pushed the United Nations to declare clean water a human right and asserted that Canada has its own serious water problems.

Whose Water Is It, Anyway? goes beyond the catalogue of misuse and abuse to the success stories, such as the 10-year-old Blue Communities program, which Barlow developed with the Council of Canadians to protect and promote water as a public trust.

That program’s growth in Canada and abroad testifies to people’s willingness to act to protect their water. By working together, Barlow says, we can get ourselves out of this mess.