 We are Rob, I can't say this strongly enough, a planet running out of accessible clean water, and it isn't just climate change. We always hear, oh it's climate change created this drought, oh maybe, sure I had a hand in it, but it could also be because you dam the rivers all to death and you pulled up your groundwater way faster than nature can replenish at the Ogallala aquifer is going to be gone in our lifetime. People don't understand that technology that they developed after the Second World War, the circular groundwater technology that green the deserts, that'll be gone. And when it's gone, what will we use? What will people use? So we need to say water is a public trust, a commons, and a human right and then you start to say well then what priorities do we place on it and who has authority over access? This is Rob Johnson, President of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. I'm here today with an extraordinary guest. Maude Barlow from Canada is an activist and an author. She's written 19 books and she focuses on many things for the common good, but most, most preciously, and I'm an aquarium water. I have followed her work since I was involved in a UN commission in 2008 and she was the special advisor to water there for the 63rd President of the United Nations General Assembly. She's the recipient of 14 honorary doctorates as well as many other awards and she won the 2005 Right Livelihood Award known as the Alternative Nobel. She is someone who I've watched on film, water on the table, and a new film I think it's called The Lords of Water, though I haven't seen the title page yet, I just got an advanced feeling. The combination of passion, intellect, and unrelenting nature is something I want to foreshadow for all of our young scholars who tune in today. Let's talk, let's start with, you've been doing this for years and years and years, I mean 30, 40 years of depth and knowledge, but we just had a pandemic come out and I used the silly joke unmask many things that we need to address the fault lines and melodies of our society. How has the pandemic affected your vision in what you see in relation to water? The most shocking thing I guess was when we first all learned about this COVID-19 back in March of 2020, we were told the most important thing to do is wash your hands with soap and warm water and the United Nations immediately put out a statement saying, do we understand that over half the population of the world doesn't have a place to wash their hands with soap and warm water? And that was so stunning, I mean I knew that, but I think for a lot of people this was brand new, it's far away and nothing to do with them. And I think it has, COVID has shown a spotlight on many many many things. In a new book I'm writing on hope, I talk about what can come out of a bad time. And I use the Second World War as an example, what came out of the conflagration of the Second World War was the first framework for human rights globally. I mean we'd never had anything like that, the 1948 Declaration on the Human Rights and so on. A whole legal body of jurisprudence came together. What can come out of COVID is an understanding that number one we are playing fast and loose with nature, we are killing nature, we're destroying our forests and our wetlands and our soils and most particularly our waterways. And this must stop, and this is the hopeful part because I've written about this in a new book that I've just written on hope, that there is what I call a tsunami of understanding that we have to stop destroying nature, we have to restore watersheds and so on. But the other thing that I think that came through very very clearly is that those people living in places where they don't have access to clean water and when I tell you, you're talking about kids at school, no toilets, no place to wash their hands, I'm talking about health clinics. There are studies that show anywhere in certain countries, anywhere from a quarter to over half the health clinics don't have running water. Can you imagine that in any case but then try adding coronavirus complications to that? And I think what it's done is it's simplified a lot of things for a lot of us. What do we value? What matters? How can we hold on to what we have? How can we restore what we've destroyed? How can we how can we adapt and think about values that are not so materialistic? And I think everybody I know has gone through this kind of metamorphosis. I think it's been profound. And one of the things is it has shown the light on the lack of human rights to water. We have well over two billion people who are forced to drink contaminated water every day because they don't have access to clean water. 2.5 billion don't have the most basic sanitation, even more basic than they're literally defecating in a lake or a ditch somewhere. We have well over three and a half million people dying every year of waterborne disease. It's the biggest killer of children, including all forms of violence, including more put together. Waterborne disease kills more children. One of the positive things that may have come out of this virus is this pandemic is that I don't have reports on this but I think it's being worked on at the UN but I have anecdotal evidence that a number of the aid agencies and government aid programs for the coronavirus in the global south has gone to sanitation and to permanent sanitation realizing that this pandemic a future pandemic whatever just like the argument about vaccines so we're all vaccine or a lot most of us in the so-called first world but if we don't care or don't ensure that those vaccines reach those in other countries nobody's safe even if you don't care which of course we do but so even if you don't it'll come back to you and we can't leave this situation as it is so if there's a silver lining here and that's why I made the comparison to the second world war because what silver lining could have come out of such horror well knowing that it must never happen again is one thing right and what what what we need to do now is my goal my long-term goal I talk talk about turning the world blue one community at a time is to have clean safe public accessible affordable water everywhere that's got to be the goal and if we have that as a goal then we're going to build in certain kinds of legislation we're going to bring in certain kind of policies if we think well those millions are expendable we don't care then you're going to bring in different kind of policies and you're going to use water in a different way so it's really important to assess and assert that value and I think coronavirus the coronavirus pandemic has helped us clarify these issues yeah it's a wake-up call for sure and and how we put together the means to first identify and then address the challenge is very important let's go to the building blocks our institute for new economic thinking obviously is centered in the economics profession a lot of people emphasize markets because they say if something is scarce in high demand then pricing will help people conserve others say the incentives from pricing will inspire innovation and investment and expand the supply on the other hand there is a great deal of awareness and I often point back to an old part of the history of economic thought of the time of Adam Smith a man called the Earl of Lauderdale said what do you mean air and water have no value if you turn them off we all die he was pointing out what they continue to argue is the difference between exchange value on the one hand and use value and most painfully when you will not survive if you don't have access to something people can really exploit you they can how you say back you up against your despair and extract a great deal from you and they do I'm from Detroit Michigan I saw the big water tank in Highland Park free the water that the young people drew on as people were shutting off the water throughout that city during the time of the bankruptcy I saw the Flint water crisis close hand and I don't want to be too simplistic but I was scratching my head because Flint is so close to Lake Huron I used to sail on Lake Huron you could take a ladle and put it in that lake and have a drink and this was back in the 70s I don't know if the water is deteriorating but the idea that you're having this crisis that close to that shoreline it sounds like I wanted to buy everyone a kayak so they could just ride out with a glass and take some out of the link but when human systems get involved this is the other side when human systems get involved it really can be exploited and not for good so how do we resolve the role of these mechanisms perhaps in improving things on the one side versus the angst about exploitation and neglect and exacerbating painful inequality on the other well for one thing I think we need to distinguish between saying that we're going to put a price on water as in buying the water or owning the water which actually exists in some places Australia actually and and Chile are the two biggest examples of this where they've actually taken the water separated from the land given people the right to buy and sell it until the prices have just gone through the roof and people can't afford it there's a difference between that and asking for a service charge for the clean water that comes into your home and the wastewater service that goes out you're not owning the water it's still a a common public trust a human right but you're you're paying for the service so I don't think anyone is saying we are all saying no one should be denied water because they if they're too poor to pay and and you know you need to know there are many thousands every single year in the United States who get their water cut off it wasn't just in Detroit from from an inability to pay so we believe strongly that there need to be mechanisms to help work out payments schedules for people who can't pay but we're not talking about free water of course we're going to pay a service charge for that service that that costs a lot of money to bring clean water into my home you know what you're asking we're all this terribly important distinction here is water a commodity or is it a commons is it a public trust and this is very important because we have declining water sources in our world you read these headlines every day the Middle East is running out of water Indonesia is running out of water 11 major cities in China are sorry in India are going to be out of water 22 countries in Africa etc etc etc I mean we are in water crisis if you look at this the graphs at the at the UN and others the the demand for water is going straight up and the supply is going straight down arrows in two different areas we need desperately to say that water is a must be a protected commons that we come or come together and we make rules about who has access you should not be allowing unlimited access by big bottle water companies or big fracking companies or whatever to water that we need for life so we need a hierarchy a priority of needs for the water sources and it's going to be different if there's more water here maybe the rules can be a little looser but if there's less water here they should be pretty tight but if you say that it's a commodity and many people do the World Bank basically sees it as a privatized commodity the big bottled water companies many of the food companies we fought this out at the UN think that and say the best way to deal with the crisis that I've just described this human work crisis this this ecological crisis is to put a price on bring it into the market bring water into the market put a price on it and the market will take care of it well that's true it will millions more will die many millions more will be permanently ill because they'll never have access to clean water and those who can afford will have all the water they need for their swimming pools and golf courses and everything else if if that's what we want if that's the society we want that's the society we'll get if we if we think of it that way there are what there is a what I call a continuum of of ways to see water as a commodity there's the privatization of water services which started with Pinochet the dictator in Chile which is being undone now with the new constitution led by an indigenous woman by the way which I think is a very very lovely piece of information and at the World Bank but Margaret Thatcher started water privatization in England in 1987 and then the World Bank said well that's great then we'll just take that model and we'll only give funding to poor countries that need water infrastructure and water services will only give the money if they bring in a private company and they brought in these big companies Suez and Veolia and so on and there were water wars all over particularly all over Latin America because the deal would be private between the elites in the country and the World Bank and the and the CEOs of these companies and the local people the prices would go through the roof the services would be terrible and we actually there's been such a fight back against privatized water services that there are now 337 cities in the world many of them large like Paris and Berlin that tried water privatization and it brought water back under public management then you get to the next level which I talked to briefly about a minute ago which is where you're actually buying and selling the actual water and we have that in the American West with the first in time first and right system which is not working and California has to go back to the basics back to the basics and and and redefine its law the laws that were made to bring people and ranchers and miners and businesses and settlers out to California 150 years ago should not be applying to a to a state that's running out of water right so we so but that notion of separating water and then selling it brings it up a tad closer to what I call then the financialization of water now you have water assets you can on the stock market you can you can bid you can make money on on the water crisis and then the latest is the um Chicago mercantile exchange which is allowed they allow bitcoin futures and then they allow water futures just starting with california and basically what you're doing you're no longer buying and selling the actual water you're buying water futures so you're saying well I think there's a drought here Jeepers do I ever pick up a newspaper that there isn't a leading story on the crisis in California maybe I'll buy a whole whack of water futures and then I'll hold on to it and of course I'll make a fortune in a few years and they actually have the nerve to claim some of these companies that they're doing this to help conserve water I mean explain how that would happen right and who's got the money for that it's the big banks it's the big equity funds it's the big investors it's the big agribusiness companies it's not you and me it's not the small farmers who desperately needed it's not the small into indigenous communities so you're going to if that's allowed to continue you're going to see more and more control of water in the hands of people who know nothing about water nothing about the environment nothing about sustainability couldn't care less I don't mean as individuals maybe they're nice people as individuals but it's the dead hand of the market they have to make money there's no reason they would be there if they're not going to make a profit from it so it's very important from a perspective of our movement our global social water justice movement that we say very clearly that water is a public trust that we need laws and controls to protect water as a public trust as a commons that we need laws and priorities around who has access and why I mean why are why do we have bottled water come foreign bottled water companies coming in and taking our bottled water when the water coming out of our taps is clean and safe it's it's just we need to ask these hard questions we are robbed I can't say this strongly enough a planet running out of of accessible clean water and it isn't just climate change we always hear oh it's climate change created this drought oh maybe sure I had a hand in it but it could also be because you dam the rivers all to death and you're pulled up your groundwater way faster than nature can replenish at the Ogallala aquifer is going to be gone in our lifetime I people don't understand that technology that they developed after the Second World War the circular groundwater technology that green the the deserts that'll be gone and when it's gone what will we use what will people use well everybody's going to turn to the Great Lakes I can tell you that so we need to say water is a public trust a commons and a human right and then you start to say well then what priorities do we place on it and who has authority over access and who has should be allowed to dump their toxins into this water in my country two governments ago but it hasn't been undone the government of the time allowed mining companies to apply to the government to rename a lake a tailings impalment area so it would no longer be protected by our legislation which is the fisheries act the same as your clean water act there's dozens of them these beautiful lakes that are now just dump sites for mining waste but they're not protected because they've been renamed presto they're not like lakes anymore so this is how the lock and work when the when we're not clear about we need water for life we're a planet running out of water you can have all the human rights in the world if you if you don't have the water there people are going to go without and it isn't just in the global south robin it's really important to say this we I was in Los Angeles a year and a half ago when it became a blue community which is when a municipality vows to protect water as a human right and to protect not to and promise not to privatize it and to protect it as a as a commons and they also promise to phase out bottled water plastic bottled water on municipal premises and events and so on there are a million people in the greater Los Angeles area that don't have access to clean water and sanitation that we're talking not talking a country on the other side of the world we're talking right here so it's it's kind of a mindset and when you say when we come to an agreement that water is not running shoes although I want everybody to have shoes but water isn't isn't cars you know water is essential for life it's limited it's the same it's not only the same amount of water it's the same water that was in the blood of dinosaurs we must take care of it we absolutely must and making it sing to the tune of the of the market is wrong now as I say that and you mentioned earlier if it's valued as nothing what does that mean and there is a movement to put a price not by charging for water or nature but to try to assess and this is being done actually in lots of places in the u.s. and my country canada trying to put a dollar figure on what a forest is worth or what a lake is worth the service it provides and where I I understand the thinking of the good people behind that because what they want is to be able to say well in a competitive market you could that force is giving us clean air you know it's protecting the water it's it's a carbon sink I I can show you in dollars since dollars since you know what why we should keep it well what if it's full of walnut trees and I can and somebody comes along and says I can make more money on it than than the dollar amount you put on it it so it's a double-edged sword and I think we need to be really careful when we talk about net natural assets or nature the assets of nature or net natural cat that natural capital you're here that language then you start hearing about well like we have you know all carbon offsets now you're hearing about water pollution trading which has started in Chesapeake Bay in your country and then you get out then you're using the market and you're using the argument that we need to protect water by putting a price on it you're using it to bring it into the market on the market's terms and I think that's a potential slippery slope it needs to be I quote Martin Luther King who said legislation may not change the the the heart but it will restrain the heartless we need the rule of law and I would point your your listeners to Food and Water Watch in the United States is the really really fine organization and full disclosure I'm on the board that's fighting for good law for water and food and there's the proposing of what's called a water act of water affordability investment in infrastructure and so on that really people can get behind because one of the worries right now in your country is as municipalities are so strapped with particularly through the COVID crisis that this private water companies are coming in and saying we'll give you money and we'll take over the you know we'll take over your water services and if you don't have any money you know you feel you don't have a choice I had a how would I say a premonition of that experience because at the time of the Detroit bankruptcy they wanted to have I believe was a French company Suez take over Detroit water and sewage so that they could lay off all the employees and not pay them a pension and create a windfall for themselves and somehow this was solving the problem activists obviously stopped and thwarted that very quickly but but you're right how the what you might call the private interests may not see the entire what you might call social ramification of what they pursue one of the things at INET that a lot of people are concerned about is the pretend notion that markets and politics are separable domains and what I often refer to in these podcasts is the commodification of social design and enforcement becomes a problem because if money plays too big a role in politics it's hard to imagine what you might call the architect or the referee being able to design or enforce and implement something which has the which might call characteristics of the common good and everything gets refracted by money as does some information that comes through advertising as does some education when schools are dependent on money so how we get to people with truth vision design inspiration to fuel activism is many times outside the system it's people like you and but I'm very very concerned I read lots of history of thought but someone like Carl Poliano great transformation there was almost this sense that markets were overdone and government would be good and the New Deal kind of showed that rebalancing at least for white people and but the notion that somehow now people in America who are progressives would say let's have more government a lot of them think government is captured and some of the strength that libertarians have is that they say we can't rely on government the system is rigged and I think that's part of why Donald Trump was so popular in the aftermath of the great financial crisis so I guess this is a long-winded way of leading to a question how do you maintain your stamina and your perseverance with the vision and the ideas that you have but the which you might call challenges of implementation how do you maintain your resolve well just I'm going to go back I'm not going to forget your question but I want to just say that I was in Detroit many times over that issue and I don't know if you ever remember reading that a group of Canadians brought public water over to Detroit to the organization security guys at the border were not you know they knew we were coming and I mean what were we bringing great big jugs of water of course it didn't make a difference it was totally symbolic but it was the most beautiful meeting of activists mostly African-Americans because as who's who's on the end of the you know the shot the cutoffs are our poor people older people people of color it was just a very very moving event where we just you know we exchange we said this is clean public water our gift to you and and and you're right to have this no your question is really important I often look to my own country as it was at a particular time not now when I think we we found a balance between private and public because I'm not against the private sector I don't want governments making running shoes speaking of running shoes or cars or whatever we have a very big country and a lot of it's cold and a lot of it's still remote and governments realize that if they were going to provide health care services or be able to move people one place or another or deliver mail or whatever they had to have public services because they just you couldn't make enough money going into remote areas in a you know as a private industry so we have what I call a mixed economy and the question was what is you know render on to Caesar that which is Caesar's and and and what is appropriate for the government to be doing and providing and you know the collective and what and where do you want the entrepreneurship to come from because I think there is in the water area there's a whole lot of exciting stuff happening coming from the private sector around new technology so you don't want to dampen that and I still for me I don't know how to put it just and sound very exciting or romantic but that balance is something that I think we're trying to seek I do believe with all my heart that people have the right to good governance and if they don't have it now that doesn't mean they should give up on it and we should not be cynical we should not be cynical we should be we should get up every morning and say my right to good governance continues and this bad government or maybe you know but that bad government or whatever we can change we can do something about I do think I have to say in your country that your new president and his party cares are they perfect nope but I think you're going to I think I think by president Biden sees things through new eyes I'm heartbroken with everybody else with what he's going through in in in Afghanistan and so on but I think you know the who picked up the whole neoliberal conservative give the markets everything the full free trade agreement ever saw a free trade agreement that I didn't love it was Bill Clinton and it was Obama you know it was the democrats the the the you know sounding cool and being cool and saying all the right things but giving so much power to the corporations and listening so much to big oil and big fracking and and the big investors and we know who they were listening to we know who gave them money and I have some feeling some faith that this president wants to change that wants to reverse courses and wants deeply to put America back on a new path again not to squash squish or whatever the word is entrepreneurship and and exciting ideas not to do that but to ask that vital question what is the role of government on public education renewing public public health all the things that we need for a good life I don't know if you've been reading Kate Roweth the donut economy concept she's an economist I love her okay she's an economy boy then you'll know her work and her basically she says rather than the growth economy which is the straight up or straight down we'd have a donut shaped economy and on the outside are all of the environmental thresholds we cannot we cannot break I mean this is the planet this is this is life being sustained what do we need to do to protect that on the inside are all the things that we humans need the real things we need not all the stuff we may want and and and and she calls the sweet spot is that is that part in between and how we get there I think we need to have that kind of thinking and I'm I'm hopeful in your country that you've got a government with with that kind of vision and not to say there aren't problems in the democratic party and not disagreements I can never you can see them from anywhere on earth right but I I do believe that there's an understanding this giving everything to the corporations look you want to know how I got into into the water issue nothing to do with the environment wasn't even specifically to do with human rights it was reading the canada u.s free trade agreement in 1935 between President Reagan and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney who was a Reagan Titan and they came up with the first modern free trade agreement in the world and by free trade they didn't mean nice take down some borders and take down some quotas and no they meant give over to the market all the decisions about finance about the market about the economy and governments will have a smaller and smaller and smaller role and with every new trade agreement governments are reduced I was at the Battle of Seattle in 1999 and you know got tear gassed and everything was an amazing event and I remember when Bill Clinton called called the the head of the WTO and said shut it down shut it down he didn't want you know there were thousands of reporters from all over the world and they were sending stories home on child poverty and and the environmental destruction and the right and human rights and the rights of working people instead of you know the glories of the market but it was Clinton who loved that stuff and in our in our country it was it was the liberal party just as much maybe more than the conservative party so we have a lot of questions for these neoliberals in these so-called progressive parties and I think that's part of why so many people were so angry and voted for Donald Trump because they didn't have to came along and you know just took the rug out anyway I started to tell you about water so back in 1985 I'm reading the Canada US Free Trade Agreement which was the predecessor to NAFTA because NAFTA then included Mexico I'm looking at the at the annex at the back that gave a list of all of the goods tradable goods that were to be now disciplined by the new trade agreement which is basically governments get your hands off these are free trade goods these are the things that are going to be traded without government interference and there was water in all its forms including ice and snow and Rob I can remember looking at it and thinking what water water and we had been fighting a couple of huge proposals to move them commercially moved pipe by pipeline water from Canada's north or from Quebec through the Great Lakes to California and the Texas and the thirsty parts of the United States not as a humanitarian thing very much you know as a commercial enterprise and we had stopped these water exports and when I looked at that I thought that's what this is about that is about freeing up or removing I should say government right to interfere in the commercial export of our water ditto with our energy we signed what's called proportional sharing which meant we couldn't have our own rules for our own energy it was absolutely outrageous that we did that so that's what got me interested I thought boy I don't understand and it sent me on a journey which then took me all over the world from the slums of the poorest communities in the world to the UN understanding that this is a fundamental fight around a human right to something that we need for life and it should not be in a free trade agreement and shame on anybody who thought that you could trade water like running shoes I keep using that example and think that it's the same thing but that's how I got involved it was because that notion of neoliberal you know free for all the market knows everything corporations are the best do you know of the world's 100 leading economies 69 are corporations 31 are countries what does that tell you how much power these corporations have you ask me how I keep going I keep going because there's such a wonderful group of people around the world in my country in my community and around the world who have formed a bond as my new book I talk a lot about this it's called it's not out yet it's called still hopeful lessons from a lifetime of activism and I talk about the need to see the long view you know you may it may not happen in your lifetime it may take longer than that and you know know what to win you think this is the goal you have well maybe you didn't get there but you built a wonderful movement you got a whole bunch of young people you brought in you know you educated a whole new group you met a whole new group of people you moved something you might not have understood and the the fruits of that will come in a different time it's understanding that the need to disconnect from if I didn't if I wasn't successful then to hell with that I'm going to go away no you just you can't have that kind of view you must have hope or what one American philosopher calls wise hope it's not polyanna ish or everything's fine so don't worry uh it's real hope uh and you have to allow for grief and you have to allow for burnout and and watch for it and be kind I talk a lot in my book about the need to be kind to one another because we don't tend to be that kind to each other in our sometimes in our movements you know if you're if you're fighting something too big well I'll fight you instead because it you know you're small fry and I can I can turn on you instead so the need for us to come together but I am hopeful um out of the as I said earlier out of the coronavirus crisis is a new awareness of the need for sanitation in places that don't have it and permanent sanitation out of this is coming a new consciousness of our global connections I mean you're we are one human family and and and I feel that that's that's been very very clear uh and just the the we just owe it I mean I live in I'm not rich I'm middle class I guess but I live in a safe city I was given opportunities that many people weren't I recognize that parts part of it is the color of my skin and you know when and where I was raised and I feel I have a responsibility not to give up because to give up is to give in to is to give up on behalf of people around the world who are in desperate situations and who need us to continue to care support them in any way we can whether it's funding or or sharing technology or you know just being there for them we to give up because I'm petulant or I didn't get all my way is to give up for people who who need us and and anyway there's nothing nicer than getting up in the morning and caring something about something besides yourself