Maude Victoria Barlow (born May 24, 1947) is a Canadian author and activist. She is a founding member of the Council of Canadians, a citizens' advocacy organization with members and chapters across Canada, where she served as the board chairperson for over three decades. 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, serves on the Board of Advisors to the Global Alliance on the Rights of Nature, was a founding member of the San Francisco–based International Forum on Globalization, and was a Councillor with the Hamburg-based World Future Council. She is the Chancellor of Brescia University College at Western University. 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.
Barlow is the creator of the Blue Communities Project, in which municipalities pledge to protect water as a human right and a public trust while banning plastic bottled water. There are now more than 25 million people living in official Blue Community towns and cities, including Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Thessaloniki, Los Angeles, Vancouver, and Montreal.
She has authored and co-authored 20 books, including Whose Water is it Anyway? Taking water protection into public hands and Still Hopeful, Lessons From a Lifetime of Activism.
Water policy
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."
Film
Barlow is in the feature documentary film Blue Gold: World Water Wars by Sam Bozzo.
Barlow is featured in two other recent documentaries about water rights issues: Irena Salina's documentary Flow: For Love of Water, and Liz Marshall's Water on the Table. Barlow also contributes to a blog associated with Water on the Table.
Barlow is the subject of a National Film Board of Canada documentary Democracy à la Maude as well as a CBC TV Life and Times biography.
The Bollywood film Paani, being directed by Shekhar Kapur, is based on Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right.
Awards
Barlow is the recipient of 16 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).