Selected for The Globe 100 Books in 2013.

The final book in Maude Barlow’s Blue trilogy, Blue Future is a powerful, penetrating, and timely look at the global water crisis — and what we can do to prevent it.

The global water crisis has dramatically deepened. The stage is being set for drought on an unprecedented scale, mass starvation, and the migration of millions of refugees leaving parched lands in search of water. The story does not need to end in tragedy.

In Blue Future, international bestselling author Maude Barlow offers solutions to the global water crisis based on four simple principles. Principle One: Water Is a Human Right chronicles the long fight to have the human right to water recognized and the powerful players still impeding this progress. Principle Two: Water Is a Common Heritage and Public Trust argues that water must not become a commodity to be bought and sold on the open market. Principle Three: Water Has Rights Too makes the case for the protection of source water and the need to make our human laws compatible with those of nature. Principle Four: Water Will Teach Us How to Live Together urges us to come together around a common threat — the end of water — and find a way to live more lightly on this planet.

The final instalment in Barlow’s Blue trilogy, Blue Future includes inspiring stories of struggle and resistance from marginalized communities, as well as examples of government policies that work for people and the planet. A call to action to create a water-secure world, it is, in the end, a book of hope.

Maude Barlow is the author of sixteen books, including the international bestsellers Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Threat of the World’s Water (co-written with Tony Clarke) and Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water. She is currently the National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians. She served as Senior Advisor on Water to the 63rd 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. She lives in Ottawa, Ontario.

Maude Barlow's profile page

• Commended, Globe and Mail Top 100 Book

Blue Future offers yet another clarion call to action. [Barlow] challenges all citizens to embrace water as a public trust. We owe much to Maude Barlow, a great Canadian and a leading global voice for public water.

Paul Moist, National President, Canadian Union of Public Employees

As clear as a pristine mountain stream, Maude Barlow lays out a practical and inspiring vision for how we can defend water — the source of all life — from the forces of death. For decades Barlow has been on the front lines of this critical battle and her insights on how water can serve as our guide to a more just, sustainable world are a gift to us all.

Naomi Klein, Author of The Shock Doctrine

The world's leading water warrior has issued a call to arms and a road map to transform our economies and priorities to protect our most precious resource- water. The book is an explosive rethinking of our future that could save the planet.

John Cavanagh, Director of the Institute for Policy Studies

...Blue Future is a provocative and inspiring treatse...

EverythingZoomer.com

If you read one book this year, make it Blue Future! Brilliant, compelling and optimistic, it's the seminal work on averting the world water crisis. Barlow's enthralling account of the water justice movement's remarkable progress brought tears and her roadmap for the future gives me hope.

Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director of Food & Water Watch and author of Foodopoly

Maude Barlow first establishes water as a human right, and then takes us through the titanic struggle, country by country, to make that right come alive. It’s jolting, compelling, astonishingly comprehensive, and beautifully organized. No one but Maude could have written this tour de force.

Stephen Lewis, Author of Race Against Time

Passionate, encyclopaedic, prophetic, hopeful — no one knows the planet’s water better than Maude Barlow. And nowhere has she set out the world’s water crisis more starkly than in Blue Future.

Alanna Mitchell, Author of Sea Sick: The Global Ocean in Crisis

Her work will inspire equal parts outrage and encouragement in anyone who concerned about this most vital natural resource.

Publisher's Weekly

Maude Barlow is a force of nature. Blue Future is the inspiring climax of her visionary trilogy on the world water crisis. With the world teetering on the brink of a devastating water crisis, humanity urgently needs the vision, wisdom, and solutions in Blue Future.

David R. Boyd, Author of The Environmental Rights Revolution

Blue Future is by far the most up-to-date treatise on threats to the world’s dwindling freshwater supply. The scenario [Barlow] presents is scary . . . Fortunately, she also proposes what must be done to prevent the corporate control of water. An extremely powerful book.

David Schindler, Professor of Ecology, University of Alberta

We are water — it inflates our cells, dissolves nutrients, transports materials, and enables metabolism. Once again, Maude Barlow delivers an urgent warning that we are treating this priceless liquid in ways that are unjust, unhealthy, unsustainable, and suicidal.

David Suzuki, Scientist, Environmentalist, and Broadcaster.