International tensions around water are rising in many of the world's most volatile regions. The policy recipe pursued by the West, and imposed on governments elsewhere, is to pass control over water to private interests, which simply accelerates the cycle of inequality and deprivation. California, as well as China, South Africa, Mexico and countries on every continent already face a crisis. This book exposes the enormity of the problem, the dangers of the proposed solution and the alternative, which is to recognize access to water as a fundamental human right, not dependent on ability to pay.

Sumber dunia yang paling fundamental dan vit adalah air, dan menghilang dengan cepat. Nyatanya, kekurangan air secara global terus meningkat menjadi krisis ekologi, ekonomi, dan politik yang paling mengancam dalam abad 21. Dan siapa yang membuat masalah itu semakin parah? Bisnis Besar. Dalam Blue Gold, Maude Barlow dan Tony Clarke, dua orang yang paling aktif menentang tren itu, menujukkan bagaimana perusahaan-perusahaan raksasa itu bertindak demi kepentingan mereka sendiri dan bagaimana air hanya akan mengalir ke atas bukit, kepada mereka yang kaya dan mampu membelinya. Mereka juga mengingatkan kita dengan informasi dan strategi yang kita butuhkan untuk mencegah hal itu di negara kita sendiri dan secara global. Hanya ada satu tindakan yang harus kita ambil: kita harus menjadi penjaga air bersih yang bertanggung jawab.

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsMaude BarlowMaude Barlow is Chairperson of the Council of Canadians and Tony Clarke is the Director of the Polaris Institute. Their book, Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop Corporate Theft of the World’s Water (New Press, 2003) is now available in Spanish, Oro azul: Las multinacionales y el robo organizado de agua en el mundo (Ediciones Paidcs Iberica, 2004).Tony ClarkeMaude Barlow is Chairperson of the Council of Canadians and Tony Clarke is the Director of the Polaris Institute. Their book, Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop Corporate Theft of the World’s Water (New Press, 2003) is now available in Spanish, Oro azul: Las multinacionales y el robo organizado de agua en el mundo (Ediciones Paidcs Iberica, 2004).

Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke, Global Showdown: How the New Activists Are Fighting Global Corporate Rule (Toronto: Stoddart, 2001) Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello, and Brendan Smith, Globalization from Below: The Power of Solidarity (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000) Craig Warkentin, Reshaping World Politics: NGOs, the Internet, and Global Civil Society (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2001)

North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is leading the way in many areas, notably civil society participation in international governance, procedures to help governments ensure their own environmental laws are adequately enforced, and the need for sophisticated ongoing sustainability assessments of trade liberalisation. Mexico's growing enthusiasm for the full NAFTA principle of 'sustainable development', the accumulating evidence of its benefits, and the ongoing effort to defend and improve its ecological and social protections are potent talking points for the broader trade liberalisation debate. One of the most and far-reaching efforts to assess the ex post environmental effects of trade can be found in the application of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) analytical framework to several case studies in North America. The proliferation of environmental and sustainability indicator reports …

In early February, just in time for Paul Martin's "good news" budget, the Prime Minister and the premiers emerged from a hastily convened first ministers' conference at 24 Sussex Drive to announce a new "Social Union" for Canada. The announcement marked the end of a series of low-profile meetings between the federal and provincial governments to renegotiate their roles and responsibilities in the delivery of Canada's social programs. Once again, the provinces and the federal government had met behind closed doors. Once again, Canadians had been left out, only learning about the talks through media reports that mixed strategic leaks with the best guesses of reporters. The premiers patted themselves on the back for their hard work. The story made the newscasts for the day, and then disappeared as if it had never happened. Anatomy of the Deal In fact, the deal struck by the federal and provincial governments is central to the lives of all Canadians. The Council has studied the agreement and will monitor its implementation over the next three years. That's when the government has promised a review. Essentially, the new Social Union deal says that all provinces have the right to receive their share of any new shared-cost or block-funded program, whether they support it or not, as long as they meet vague "Canada-wide objectives" and enter into a loose "accountability framework" with the federal government. The federal government cannot introduce new programs unless a majority of the provinces agree, and then it must work with the provinces to set "priorities and objectives" for these programs. Further, if a province already has a program in place in the area of a new federal initiative, it will still get its money from Ottawa and can spend it on a related area in the manner it chooses.

(1991). The Free Trade Agreement Fails Canada. American Review of Canadian Studies: Vol. 21, No. 2-3, pp. 163-169.