Maude Barlow addressed the Berlin House of Representatives on March 29, 2017.
Berlin’s House of Representatives (state parliament) has voted for the city-state of 3.7 million people to become a blue community!
A ‘blue community’ is a municipality that adopts a framework that recognizes water as a human right, opposes the sale of bottled water in public facilities and at municipal events, and promotes publicly financed, owned and operated water and wastewater services. A blue community can also be a university, faith-based grouping, union, First Nation, or another kind of association.
A media release from our ally Berliner Wassertisch (Berlin Water Table) notes, “The state of Berlin is thus committed to realizing the human right to water and basic sanitation in the city, i.e. to provide drinking water wells and toilets free of charge to the public. Additional principles include the maintenance of water supply as a public good, the protection of Berlin’s rivers, canals and lakes, the maintenance of international partnerships and the promotion of tap water over bottled water.”
That media release highlights, “Thus, the coalition government realized what was initiated at the suggestion of the Berlin Water Table a year ago, when the initiator of this project, the world-renowned water activist and winner of the alternative Nobel Prize, Maude Barlow, was invited by Dorothea Härlin into the Berlin House of Representatives to an interested public to introduce ‘Blue Community’ initiative. The global project was developed by the Council of Canadians. Berlin is the third ‘blue’ capital in Europe after Berne and Paris. In Germany, Munich and Marburg have already come before it.”
Barlow spoke at the Berlin House of Representatives in March 2017, you can read more about that in our blog here.
At that time, Barlow told us, “The three parties came together to host an evening on Berlin becoming a Blue Community. It was packed, about 90 people, including the Berliner Wassertisch activists who initiated the event, conservation groups, workers and anti-bottled water groups.”
For more on our blue community campaign, please click here.
