Blue Covenant: Maude Barlow on the Global Movement for Water Justice

On February 27, award-winning independent media (radio/television/web) outlet Democracy Now! interviewed Maude Barlow of the Blue Planet Project about a new documentary entitled "Flow, For Love of Water." The piece (both the interview and documentary) focuses on dangers of corporate interests privatizing a quintessential life source in impending water shortages attributed to global climate change as well as the process of "recycling" water as opposed to practicing and enforcing its conservation. Their argument taken from the Blue Planet Project's website: "Water justice is based on the right to water and on the principles that water is a public trust and part of the global commons."

For me, this is a pretty compelling example of a "low dread, high risk" situation. The documentary writers include a survey of the severity--in describing what the actual impact of global water shortages will be, and, based on the interview, begin describing regional effects before expounding upon global effects. There is a strong sense of urgency delivered, and a strong claim that each individual is susceptible to such a disaster, being touched by resource wars or an actual shortage (due to privatization, turning water into a commodity)--all in the name of water ownership.

The information provided through this particular choice of a media outlet is disseminated to a widely civic-literate audience which is generally comprised of activists and leftists. There is an assumption of some scientific literacy, on both the part of the interviewees as well as the interviewer, that the audience is familiar with climate change itself and what it means in terms of affecting water shortages.

-Kristin Herbeck (can't figure out how to change her handle!)