The Blue Planet Project is a leading water justice organization and part of a global movement that promotes the fundamental truth that “Water is life”, working to protect water for people and nature for generations to come. For more than two decades the BPP has fought for water justice based on the principles that water is a human right, a public trust, and part of the global commons.
We do this because:
- Around the world, over 2 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water and nearly 4 billion lack access to improved sanitation.
- Every year, more than 1 million people, mostly young children, die from preventable diarrhea contracted from drinking unsafe water.
- Over 2 billion people live in water-stressed countries, which will continue to intensify due to climate change and climate related disasters, 90% of which are water related.
- Every day, billions of people around the world suffer and die because they cannot access clean, safe water.
Despite their past and present success, for the past several decades public and community management of water services and resources have been undermined by austerity and under threat from privatization. The global water crisis will only worsen if water is increasingly abused for profit. We must not allow this to continue.
Our goal is to protect water as a vital resource and ensure that it is publicly managed so that it is available to everyone at reasonable, public rates. Water is a vital, non-substitutable source of life and a human right, and as such, must be available to all!
Our Approach: Building Translocal Solidarity for Global Water Justice
The BPP works with local organizations and activists in both the South and North to support grassroots struggles to protect democratic, public and community control and management of water services and resources, and to build a movement to realize the human rights to water and sanitation.
The BPP centers the work of women, Indigenous and other marginalized water defenders and frontline communities struggling to protect water resources and services from privatization and working to realize more just alternatives. The work of frontline defenders and their efforts to build strong organizations and movements are a key axis around which struggles for water justice can move forward.
The BPP emphasizes building movements and networks of solidarity both locally, in the cities, towns and territories where struggles against the expropriation of water resources and the privatization of water services impact the daily life of millions, and across national and international borders, to develop trans-local solidarities and contest water governance at the regional and global levels.
In this work the BPP belongs to several international networks and works closely with many others, including the People’s Water Forum (PWF) and the Blue Communities global network, the Africa Water Justice Network (AWJN), the European Water Movement, (EWM), the Platform of Public-Community Partnerships of the Americas (PAPC) and the InterAmerican Water Justice Network (REDVIDA).
By combining local and international/global scales of work, communities benefit from both grassroots support and trans-local solidarities and knowledge exchanges. This approach strengthens partnerships that provide both critiques of and alternatives to water privatization, financialization and other neoliberal policies which intersect with the daily, lived experience of lack of water access.
Making a Difference
We are proud to be part of a global water-justice movement that continues to grow and thrive, bringing a new vision to how we must all view and protect water. We are making a difference in communities and countries around the world. We helped lead the fight for the historic 2010 UN resolution affirming the Human Right to Water and Sanitation, and continue to work with allied organizations and affected communities to ensure its realization.
We sincerely thank our funders and donors who make these achievements possible. Together, we can create a world that values water as a public resource, and not as a commodity to be bought and sold.