Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by teenage_reads
Whose Water Is It, Anyway?: Taking Water Protection Into Public Hands by Maude Barlow
5.0
Plot:
Water is an important substance needed to sustain all life on the planet. Yet, governments are allowing private corporations to come into communities and take the water away from the people, to bottle it up and sell it back to them at a higher cost. How is that legal, and why are governments selling water that their community needs? Maude Barlow, a Canadian water activist, talks about the movement people are producing to let their government know that they cannot sell their water out from under them. About everyday people, grassroots campaigns, this novel is not for the naïve, as Barlow explores the demand of water, how Nestle is the worst, and how the Blue Communities Project is something you must force your local municipality into supporting.
Thoughts:
This book is a recommended read for anyone who needs water to survive - which is every living thing. For an extremely short book of fewer than 150 pages and six chapters, Barlow writes for the general adult population to explain why we cannot trust the government to manage our water, and why water must remain public and not privatize. This book explains the Barlow project which is the Blue Communities Project, a Canada born initiative that towns and cities can be apart of if they follow three simple rules:
“1) Recognize and protect water and sanitation as human rights;
2) project water as a public trust by promoting publicly financed, owned, and operated water and wastewater services; and
3) ban or phase out the sale of bottled water in municipal facilities and municipal events” (76).
That is all it takes to be a blue community, so why is it that there are only twenty-seven across Canada, and only a handful internationally? Barlow does an incredible job of keeping the narrative of her story going while providing facts about the water crisis that is going to hit the world very soon. Overall, this book is perfect if you want to know why bottled water is so bad if you want to make your community a Blue community, and if you care about people and the planet.
Water is an important substance needed to sustain all life on the planet. Yet, governments are allowing private corporations to come into communities and take the water away from the people, to bottle it up and sell it back to them at a higher cost. How is that legal, and why are governments selling water that their community needs? Maude Barlow, a Canadian water activist, talks about the movement people are producing to let their government know that they cannot sell their water out from under them. About everyday people, grassroots campaigns, this novel is not for the naïve, as Barlow explores the demand of water, how Nestle is the worst, and how the Blue Communities Project is something you must force your local municipality into supporting.
Thoughts:
This book is a recommended read for anyone who needs water to survive - which is every living thing. For an extremely short book of fewer than 150 pages and six chapters, Barlow writes for the general adult population to explain why we cannot trust the government to manage our water, and why water must remain public and not privatize. This book explains the Barlow project which is the Blue Communities Project, a Canada born initiative that towns and cities can be apart of if they follow three simple rules:
“1) Recognize and protect water and sanitation as human rights;
2) project water as a public trust by promoting publicly financed, owned, and operated water and wastewater services; and
3) ban or phase out the sale of bottled water in municipal facilities and municipal events” (76).
That is all it takes to be a blue community, so why is it that there are only twenty-seven across Canada, and only a handful internationally? Barlow does an incredible job of keeping the narrative of her story going while providing facts about the water crisis that is going to hit the world very soon. Overall, this book is perfect if you want to know why bottled water is so bad if you want to make your community a Blue community, and if you care about people and the planet.