Blue Gold: whoever controls water is going to be very rich and very powerful

There are some people who, when they speak, compel us to listen. Maude Barlow is one such person. She has devoted most of her adult life to the pursuit of higher moral ideals… and I don’t mean the book-burning kind of higher moral ideals…

An interview with Maude Barlow

In 1995, a vice president of the World Bank famously declared that, as the wars of the 20th century were fought over oil, so the wars of the 21st would be fought over water. In the decade since, potable water, scarce even then, has become even more so thanks to pollution, industrial development in nations like China — and especially the process whereby giant firms like Vivendi, Suez and Bechtel increasingly buy up impoverished nations’ water supplies, taking sorely needed water and selling it at a profit, all with the blessing of transnational organizations like the World Bank and World Trade Organization.

As Maude Barlow explains, this process isn’t sustainable. Barlow is national chairperson of The Council of Canadians, a nonpartisan public watchdog group working to fight against global trends in privatization and deregulation, and co-founder of the organization’s Blue Planet Project. She’s also the co-author, with Tony Clarke, of Blue Gold, a 2002 international best-seller about the world’s growing water crisis. While in San Francisco recently, Barlow spoke with MotherJones.com about how governments are ceding control of their water supplies to the private sector and what can be done before the public’s water supply dries up…

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Harold: "You're good with people." Maude: "Well, they're my species."