Maude Barlow

Maude Barlow received the Right Livelihood Award in 2005 for her “exemplary and longstanding worldwide work for trade justice and the recognition of the fundamental human right to water”. She has been a high-profile leader in the women’s movement in Canada and is the founder and former elected Chairperson of the Council of Canadians, Canada’s largest citizens’ advocacy organisation, which works to safeguard Canada’s universal social security system and its water and energy heritage.
The Council of Canadians has also been a leading voice in the international search for a more just and sustainable trade system and, through its Blue Planet Project, fights for the universal right to water. In 2008–2009, Maude served as Senior Advisor on Water to the 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.
Maude is the author and co-author of dozens of reports as well as 20 books on all aspects of globalisation and the theft of the “global commons”, including Blue Future: Protecting Water for People and The Planet Forever; Boiling Point: Government Neglect, Corporate Abuse and Canada’s Water Crisis; Whose Water is it Anyway? Taking water protection into public hands and the forthcoming The Little Book of Hope, Lessons from a Lifetime of Activism.