Board of Directors

Koni Benson
Koni Benson is a lecturer in the Department of History at the University of the Western Cape, working in the areas of gender, urban, public, and oral history. She is a research fellow and worked with the Blue Planet Project, supporting struggles against pre-paid water meters in Cape Town and the growth of the water justice movement on the continent. Her research is on collective interventions in histories of contested development and the mobilization, demobilization, and remobilization of struggle history in southern Africa’s past and present. Koni is the author of Crossroads: I Live Where I Like, a graphic novel history series on women’s organized resistance to forced removals in Crossroads South Africa and a forthcoming book with PM Press. She is the co-author with Faeza Meyer of Writing Out Loud: Interventions in the History of A Land Occupation. With Feminist Alternatives, she co-produced My Dream is to Be Bold: Our Work to End Patriarchy (Pambazuka/ Michigan State UP, 2010). Her writing has been published by the Journal of Southern African Studies, African Studies Review, Feminist Africa, Gender Place and Culture: Feminist Geography, Education as Change, South African Labour Bulletin, Zambezia, Khanya College Journal, Pathways to Free Education, ILRIG, Zmagazine, and newspapers in South Africa, Canada, Kenya, and Namibia.

Koni Benson

Koni Benson is a lecturer in the Department of History at the University of the Western Cape, working in the areas of gender, urban, public, and oral history. She is a research fellow and worked with the Blue Planet Project, supporting struggles against pre-paid water meters in Cape Town and the growth of the water justice movement on the continent. Her research is on collective interventions in histories of contested development and the mobilization, demobilization, and remobilization of struggle history in southern Africa’s past and present.

Koni is the author of Crossroads: I Live Where I Like, a graphic novel history series on women’s organized resistance to forced removals in Crossroads South Africa and a forthcoming book with PM Press. She is the co-author with Faeza Meyer of Writing Out Loud: Interventions in the History of A Land Occupation. With Feminist Alternatives, she co-produced My Dream is to Be Bold: Our Work to End Patriarchy (Pambazuka/ Michigan State UP, 2010). Her writing has been published by the Journal of Southern African Studies, African Studies Review, Feminist Africa, Gender Place and Culture: Feminist Geography, Education as Change, South African Labour Bulletin, Zambezia, Khanya College Journal, Pathways to Free Education, ILRIG, Zmagazine, and newspapers in South Africa, Canada, Kenya, and Namibia.

Meera Karunananthan
Meera Karunananthan is the former Director of the Blue Planet Project. She works with social movements around the world to challenge corporate water grabs and promote community-based strategies for water justice including the Blue Communities Project – a project she co-created as national water campaigner for the Council of Canadians in 2009, which has now taken root in local campaigns around the world. Meera is also a lecturer in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Carleton University and is currently completing her PhD focused on the struggles for access to water of racialized women living in townships and informal settlements in Cape Town.

Meera Karunananthan

Meera Karunananthan is the former Director of the Blue Planet Project. She works with social movements around the world to challenge corporate water grabs and promote community-based strategies for water justice including the Blue Communities Project – a project she co-created as national water campaigner for the Council of Canadians in 2009, which has now taken root in local campaigns around the world.

Meera is also a lecturer in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Carleton University and is currently completing her PhD focused on the struggles for access to water of racialized women living in townships and informal settlements in Cape Town.

Laila Malik
Laila Malik is a desisporic settler and writer living in Adobigok, traditional land of Indigenous communities that include the Anishinaabe, Seneca, Mohawk Haudenosaunee, and Wendat. Her work has been widely published in literary magazines and journals, including Contemporary Verse 2, Canthius, The New Quarterly, Ricepaper, Qwerty, Room, Sukoon, The Bangalore Review, and Archetype. Malik’s essays have been longlisted for four different creative nonfiction contests and she was a fellow at the Banff Centre for Creative Arts in 2021 for her novel in progress. archipelago is her debut poetry collection.

Laila Malik

Laila Malik is a desisporic settler and writer living in Adobigok, traditional land of Indigenous communities that include the Anishinaabe, Seneca, Mohawk Haudenosaunee, and Wendat. Her work has been widely published in literary magazines and journals, including Contemporary Verse 2, Canthius, The New Quarterly, Ricepaper, Qwerty, Room, Sukoon, The Bangalore Review, and Archetype. Malik’s essays have been longlisted for four different creative nonfiction contests and she was a fellow at the Banff Centre for Creative Arts in 2021 for her novel in progress. archipelago is her debut poetry collection.

Mary Ann Manahan
Mary Ann Manahan is a feminist activist researcher, academic assistant and PhD student at the Department of Conflict and Development Studies, Ghent University. Prior to her post, she has worked with various social movements and civil society groups on different national and international initiatives that demand equity, environmental, gender and social justice, and alternative development for the last seventeen years. Outside academia, she is involved with the women’s and peasant’s movements in the Philippines on advisory capacities, and serves as co-facilitator of the Beyond Development Global Working Group, a diverse global platform of activists, community organizers, and academics working on radical and systemic transformations supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. She was former Senior Programme Officer with Asia-based think tank and advocacy NGO Focus on the Global South. She was also a former coordinator of the International Financial Institutions Advisory Board of Global Greengrants Fund (GGF) that provides small grants to NGOs and grassroots organizations around the world working on the intersections of development finance, human rights and environmental justice. She received her undergraduate degree in sociology from the University of the Philippines-Diliman (magna cum laude). She finished her MsC on Globalization and Development (greatest distinction) at the Institute of Development Policy and Management at the University of Antwerp. Her master’s thesis on REDD+ and forest tenure won the Belgian Prize for Development Cooperation in 2016. Mary Ann has written and published various book chapters, journal and NGO articles, op-ed pieces covering the ‘commons’, land politics, agrarian reform, water privatization, international financial institutions, environmental justice, women’s rights, violence against women, resistance struggles, food sovereignty, and alternatives.

Mary Ann Manahan

Mary Ann Manahan is a feminist activist researcher, academic assistant and PhD student at the Department of Conflict and Development Studies, Ghent University. Prior to her post, she has worked with various social movements and civil society groups on different national and international initiatives that demand equity, environmental, gender and social justice, and alternative development for the last seventeen years.

Outside academia, she is involved with the women’s and peasant’s movements in the Philippines on advisory capacities, and serves as co-facilitator of the Beyond Development Global Working Group, a diverse global platform of activists, community organizers, and academics working on radical and systemic transformations supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.

She was former Senior Programme Officer with Asia-based think tank and advocacy NGO Focus on the Global South. She was also a former coordinator of the International Financial Institutions Advisory Board of Global Greengrants Fund (GGF) that provides small grants to NGOs and grassroots organizations around the world working on the intersections of development finance, human rights and environmental justice.

She received her undergraduate degree in sociology from the University of the Philippines-Diliman (magna cum laude). She finished her MsC on Globalization and Development (greatest distinction) at the Institute of Development Policy and Management at the University of Antwerp. Her master’s thesis on REDD+ and forest tenure won the Belgian Prize for Development Cooperation in 2016. Mary Ann has written and published various book chapters, journal and NGO articles, op-ed pieces covering the ‘commons’, land politics, agrarian reform, water privatization, international financial institutions, environmental justice, women’s rights, violence against women, resistance struggles, food sovereignty, and alternatives.

Adriana Marquisio
Adriana Marquisio has been working for the Uruguayan public Water Company, OSE, for 35 years. She is the founder of OSE’s cooperation department. She was president and vice-president of FFOSE, the water workers union, for 10 years. Adriana is also Co-Founder of CNDAV, the coalition that promoted the constitutional reform to elevate the human right to water and sanitation to constitutional status that was achieved in October 2004. Founder of the Red Vida and the Platform for Public and Community Partnerships of the Americas, Adriana is also OSE’s focal point for monitoring the rights agenda in the Human Rights Directorate, particularly in access to drinking water and sanitation at the level of the Uruguayan State. Adriana is also a member of the Historical and Cultural Assets Management Committee for the promotion of a Historical Archive and Water Museum in Uruguay.

Adriana Marquisio

Adriana Marquisio has been working for the Uruguayan public Water Company, OSE, for 35 years. She is the founder of OSE’s cooperation department. She was president and vice-president of FFOSE, the water workers union, for 10 years. Adriana is also Co-Founder of CNDAV, the coalition that promoted the constitutional reform to elevate the human right to water and sanitation to constitutional status that was achieved in October 2004. Founder of the Red Vida and the Platform for Public and Community Partnerships of the Americas, Adriana is also OSE’s focal point for monitoring the rights agenda in the Human Rights Directorate, particularly in access to drinking water and sanitation at the level of the Uruguayan State. Adriana is also a member of the Historical and Cultural Assets Management Committee for the promotion of a Historical Archive and Water Museum in Uruguay.

David McDonald
David McDonald is Professor of Global Development Studies at Queen’s University, Canada, and Director of the Municipal Services Project, a global research network that explores progressive forms of public services with a focus on equity, sustainability and democratic engagement. He has published widely on debates around public water in countries around the world.

Anuradha Mittal
Anuradha Mittal, founder and executive director of the Oakland Institute, is an internationally renowned expert on development, human rights, and agriculture issues. Recipient of several awards, Anuradha Mittal was named the Most Valuable Thinker by the Nation magazine. Since 2008, under Anuradha’s leadership, the Institute has unveiled land investment deals in the developing world which reveal a disturbing pattern of a lack of transparency, fairness, and accountability. The dynamic relationship between research, advocacy, and international media coverage has resulted in an amazing string of successes and organizing in the US and abroad. Mittal has authored and edited numerous books and reports. Her articles and opinion pieces have been published in widely circulated newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Bangkok Post, Houston Chronicle, and the Nation. Anuradha has addressed the US Congress, the United Nations, given several hundred keynote addresses including invitational events from governments and universities, and has been interviewed on CNN, BBC World, CBC, ABC, Al Jazeera, National Public Radio, and Voice of America. Anuradha currently serves on the board of the Environmental Defender Law Center that she joined in 2020.

Anuradha Mittal

Anuradha Mittal, founder and executive director of the Oakland Institute, is an internationally renowned expert on development, human rights, and agriculture issues. Recipient of several awards, Anuradha Mittal was named the Most Valuable Thinker by the Nation magazine.

Since 2008, under Anuradha’s leadership, the Institute has unveiled land investment deals in the developing world which reveal a disturbing pattern of a lack of transparency, fairness, and accountability. The dynamic relationship between research, advocacy, and international media coverage has resulted in an amazing string of successes and organizing in the US and abroad.

Mittal has authored and edited numerous books and reports. Her articles and opinion pieces have been published in widely circulated newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Bangkok Post, Houston Chronicle, and the Nation. Anuradha has addressed the US Congress, the United Nations, given several hundred keynote addresses including invitational events from governments and universities, and has been interviewed on CNN, BBC World, CBC, ABC, Al Jazeera, National Public Radio, and Voice of America.

Anuradha currently serves on the board of the Environmental Defender Law Center that she joined in 2020.

Ruth Nyambura
Ruth Nyambura is a Kenyan feminist and organizer whose research interests are primarily on the agrarian political economy/ecology of Africa as well as other parts of the Global South. She has previously worked as the head of advocacy for the African Biodiversity Network (ABN). Nyambura has written extensively on various aspects of the current agrarian transformations in Africa with her overall work focusing on the ideological underpinnings of the ‘New Green Revolution in Africa’ and its ties to philanthro-capitalist organizations such as the Gates’ Foundation and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). Ruth’s research also analyzes the rapidly changing policy and legislative frameworks across the continent related to biosafety and Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) regime which are not only criminalizing the rights of small-holder/-peasant farmers to use their traditional/indigenous seeds but are also opening up the space for foreign agri-business companies on the continent. Nyambura is the founder and convenor of the African Ecofeminists Collective as well as the No REDD in Africa (NRAN) Collective which challenges forest related carbon markets and documents the impacts of these schemes on local communities in Africa. She is a board member of the Climate Justice Fund (CJF). Ruth holds an LL.M in Comparative Law, Economics and Finance from the University of Turin (UNITO), Italy and has been a judge on the International Tribunal on the Rights of Nature.

Ruth Nyambura

Ruth Nyambura is a Kenyan feminist and organizer whose research interests are primarily on the agrarian political economy/ecology of Africa as well as other parts of the Global South. She has previously worked as the head of advocacy for the African Biodiversity Network (ABN).

Nyambura has written extensively on various aspects of the current agrarian transformations in Africa with her overall work focusing on the ideological underpinnings of the ‘New Green Revolution in Africa’ and its ties to philanthro-capitalist organizations such as the Gates’ Foundation and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). Ruth’s research also analyzes the rapidly changing policy and legislative frameworks across the continent related to biosafety and Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) regime which are not only criminalizing the rights of small-holder/-peasant farmers to use their traditional/indigenous seeds but are also opening up the space for foreign agri-business companies on the continent.

Nyambura is the founder and convenor of the African Ecofeminists Collective as well as the No REDD in Africa (NRAN) Collective which challenges forest related carbon markets and documents the impacts of these schemes on local communities in Africa. She is a board member of the Climate Justice Fund (CJF). Ruth holds an LL.M in Comparative Law, Economics and Finance from the University of Turin (UNITO), Italy and has been a judge on the International Tribunal on the Rights of Nature.

Maude Barlow – Founder and Former Chairperson
Maude Barlow is a Canadian activist and author. She chairs the board of Washington-based Food and Water Watch and is the founder of the Blue Planet Project. Maude co-founded the Council of Canadians and chaired its board for over three decades. She serves on the Board of Advisors of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and is a former Councillor with the Hamburg-based World Future Council. Maude is the Chancellor of Brescia University College in London Ontario. Maude is the recipient of sixteen honorary doctorates as well as many awards, including the 2005 Right Livelihood Award (known as the “Alternative Nobel”), the 2005 Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Fellowship Award, the Citation of Lifetime Achievement at the 2008 Canadian Environment Awards, the 2009 Earth Day Canada Outstanding Environmental Achievement Award, the 2009 Planet in Focus Eco Hero Award, and the 2011 EarthCare Award, the highest international honour of the Sierra Club (US). In 2008/2009, 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 is the creator of the Blue Communities project in which municipalities pledge to protect water as a human right and a public trust and ban plastic bottled water. There are now more than 25 million people living in official Blue Community towns and cities, including Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Thessaloniki, Los Angeles, Vancouver and Montreal Maude is also the author of dozens of reports, as well as 20 books, including Boiling Point: Government Neglect, Corporate Abuse and Canada’s Water Crisis; Whose Water is it Anyway? Taking Water Protection Into Public Hands; and her new book, Still Hopeful, Lessons From a Lifetime of Activism.

Maude Barlow – Founder and Former Chairperson

Maude Barlow is a Canadian activist and author. She chairs the board of Washington-based Food and Water Watch and is the founder of the Blue Planet Project. Maude co-founded the Council of Canadians and chaired its board for over three decades. She serves on the Board of Advisors of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and is a former Councillor with the Hamburg-based World Future Council. Maude is the Chancellor of Brescia University College in London Ontario.

Maude is the recipient of sixteen honorary doctorates as well as many awards, including the 2005 Right Livelihood Award (known as the “Alternative Nobel”), the 2005 Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Fellowship Award, the Citation of Lifetime Achievement at the 2008 Canadian Environment Awards, the 2009 Earth Day Canada Outstanding Environmental Achievement Award, the 2009 Planet in Focus Eco Hero Award, and the 2011 EarthCare Award, the highest international honour of the Sierra Club (US).

In 2008/2009, 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 is the creator of the Blue Communities project in which municipalities pledge to protect water as a human right and a public trust and ban plastic bottled water. There are now more than 25 million people living in official Blue Community towns and cities, including Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Thessaloniki, Los Angeles, Vancouver and Montreal

Maude is also the author of dozens of reports, as well as 20 books, including Boiling Point: Government Neglect, Corporate Abuse and Canada’s Water Crisis; Whose Water is it Anyway? Taking Water Protection Into Public Hands; and her new book, Still Hopeful, Lessons From a Lifetime of Activism.