Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow will be speaking at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio today.
At 3 pm she will be taking part in an informal dialogue at the Kennedy Auditorium and then at 7 pm she’ll be giving an address at the James and Caroline Duff Banquet Center.
The promotion for her visit notes, “In her bestselling books, world-renowned water activist Maude Barlow has exposed the battle for ownership of our dwindling water supply and the international, grassroots-led movement to reclaim water as a public good. The United Nations has now recognized water as a basic human right. In Blue Future, Barlow lays out principles necessary for a water-secure and water-just world. She focuses on solutions that work for both people and the planet, including stories from marginalized communities. Now that climate change may bring unprecedented drought and the migration of millions of refugees in search of water, Blue Future is a call to preserve our most valuable resource for generations to come. Please join us for this provocative and timely discussion and dialogue.”
In terms of a local context, WLWT in Cincinnati reported just last month that “the Ohio River [which flows through Cincinnati] is the most polluted body of water in the United States for the seventh year in a row. According to the Ohio River Valley Sanitation Commission, most recent Toxic Release Inventory report for the Ohio River, 23 million pounds of chemicals were dumped into the Ohio river by industries and businesses in 2013.” That article notes that 73 percent of the total release of chemicals are from the AK Steel Corp and that more than 90 percent of the pollutants are nitrate compounds, commonly found in pesticides.
Xavier University is a co-educational Jesuit, Catholic university. It has an undergraduate enrollment of 4,485 students and graduate enrollment of 2,165. Xavier is primarily an undergraduate, liberal arts institution. Graduate programs include occupational therapy, education, counseling, nursing, English, theology, psychology, and business.
Photo: Poster for Maude Barlow at Xavier University.
