The difference was clear to Maude Barlow when a Mexican man presented two full water bottles during a World Water Council forum a few years ago.

One bottle was filled with water from the five-star hotel where he was employed, and the other contained water from his home village. The difference? The water from the man’s home was unsafe to drink, Barlow said.

Barlow, a clean water activist, spoke at Hendricks Chapel on Tuesday. She is the co-founder of the Blue Planet Project, a global initiative aiming to protect fresh water supplies from trade and privatization, and chair of the board of the Food and Water Watch nonprofit organization, which ensures water and food are accessible and safe. She was appointed as the United Nations’ first senior adviser on water issues in 2008.

Despite what may have been taught in early school days, the planet is running out of clean water, Barlow said. Through displacement of clean water, water tables are steadily being destroyed, which is creating a global crisis, she said.

‘Water is the gold of our time,’ Barlow said.

Humans are using water supplies faster than they can be replenished because newer technologies are available, Barlow said. A survey found that demand for water will outgrow supply by 2030, she said.

Lack of access to clean water is the largest killer of small children, and every three seconds, a child dies of a waterborne illness in developing countries, Barlow said. The issue is the largest human rights issue at present, she said.

Barlow insisted on the recognition of water as a human right. Barlow said a resolution that confirmed the right to water and sanitation for all human beings was passed in the U.N. General Assembly in June 2010.

Joey DiStefano, a freshman environmental engineering major who attended the lecture, agreed with Barlow and said having water is a human right, and something people require daily.

‘Drinking water is just the same as breathing air,’ he said.

To alleviate the global water crisis, Barlow said it is necessary to conserve and protect water at its natural sources, along with recognizing it as a public trust.

‘Nobody should be unable to receive water because they can’t pay for it,’ Barlow said. ‘We have to change the way we live, socially and globally, based on principles of equity, justice and sustainability.’

Barlow denounced the consumption of bottled water if clean, safe tap water is available. More than 250 billion liters of water are put into plastic bottles, and if placed one on top of the other, the tower of bottles would reach the moon and back 65 times, Barlow said.

There is no substitute for water, and it has already begun to spur conflict between the rich and poor, Barlow said. Clear examples of this can be found in resort areas where five-star hotels are located in close proximity to extreme poverty, like in the case of the man from Mexico.

To address the water crisis, it needs the same political attention as that of the climate crisis, Barlow said. Though individuals can aid the effort by paying attention to their own water usage, large companies use the majority of the world’s water supply, Barlow said. Private sector interests participate in water trading, buying out small farmers’ water property rights and hoarding them, she said.

Large companies often exploit poor areas for their water supplies, depriving them of what little they may possess, Barlow said. Though there is a large fight by activists against companies in developing countries, Barlow said the world is still witnessing the enclosure of water commons by private sector interests.

Water can teach people how to live with one another, but the road to fixing the crisis is not going to be easy, Barlow said.

‘We must remember what we were all born to do,’ Barlow said. ‘Leave the world a better place.’

brvannos@syr.edu

Published on April 5, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Breanne: brvannos@syr.edu | @bre_vann