about Blue Community Schools
Blue Community Schools ~ Council of Canadians
THINKING BLUE – TEACHING BLUE
We are helping teachers tell the story of water to young people.
What is water?
Where does it come from?
Are we caring for it?
Is it being fairly shared?
Who is making the decisions about water?
Do your students know their own watersheds?
How can they, and we, become water defenders?
The History of Blue Communities
Blue Community Schools grows out of the international Blue Communities initiative – a network of communities protecting water and watersheds and promoting the human rights to water and sanitation. Founded by the Council of Canadians, Blue Community Schools expands this initiative to include elementary and secondary schools and includes educational resources for teachers and students to learn together about what it means to protect water as a public resource, and build an understanding that water is life.
Maude Barlow
Maude Barlow, the founder and former chair of the Council of Canadians, has been central to the creation of the Blue Community Schools program. Explore insightful stories and reports on key issues like the Canadian Water Crisis and the Global Water Crisis, curated by Maude Barlow, Canadian activist and author, on the Water News blog.
The Council sounded the alarm when water was included as a “tradable good” in free trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement, and worked with activists in Canada and around the world to have the United Nations formally recognize the human rights to water and sanitation.
The Council, along with the Canadian Union of Public Employees, led a campaign to stop the privatization of water and wastewater services in Canada, being promoted by a former Conservative government.
In 2009, we launched Blue Communities, whereby a municipality pledges to promote and protect water as a human right and maintain it as a public trust. To date, close to fifty municipalities in Canada – from small ones like Tiny Township in Ontario and Saint-Gabriel in Quebec, to major centres such as Vancouver, Montreal, and London – have taken the “blue” pledges.
The project excited many water advocates around the world, and others followed. Almost thirty international towns and cities, including Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Thessaloniki, and Los Angeles, have taken the Blue Community pledges. Today there are over twenty-five million people living in Blue Community cities. Faith-based communities such as the World Council of Churches, representing five hundred million people, followed suit.
Many universities, including a number in Canada, have become Blue Community Universities, promising to educate about the need to protect water and promote water justice. These include McGill in Montreal, St. Michael’s and Victoria Colleges at the University of Toronto, Saint Paul in Ottawa and Brescia and King’s Colleges at Western in London.
Time to bring the values, principles, and pledges
Now it is time to bring the values, principles, and pledges of the Blue Communities movement to young people through their schools, K to 12. They are inheriting this planet and need to learn about the imminent water crisis facing us and be given the tools to find solutions.
The Water Crisis
Our planet is running out of clean, accessible drinking water. The United Nations reports that, within a decade, the demand for water will outstrip supply by 40%.
As a result, all of nature is impacted, as are humans. Fully one-quarter of the world’s population does not have access to clean drinking water and one-half does not have access to adequate sanitation. Canada, although blessed with more water than many countries, is not immune to the water crisis. We have taken our water for granted and not properly cared for it. Canada faces serious issues of water contamination from industrial pollution, extractive industries, and factory farming. We are over-extracting groundwater, and our glaciers are melting. The western provinces are now experiencing consecutive years of severe drought, with a high impact on people and food production.
As well, Canada has the shameful legacy of human rights abuses in First Nations communities with a history of poor or non-existent water and wastewater services, a legacy only recently being addressed.
In 2024, ice coverage on the Great Lakes reached an historic low.
Instilling Hope
It’s not too late to protect the planet’s water resources and provide safe, clean drinking water and sanitation for all. We have a huge task in front of us – the climate crisis is bringing new pressures on our water resources, and a real urgency for us to act.
To protect water for current and future generations, young people must be educated and prepared for the challenges that lie ahead. By becoming a Blue Community School, your school will become part of a deeply rooted movement that is protecting water as a fundamental human right.
You can help guide your students on their path to becoming water defenders.
