Every time a community passes a resolution or otherwise chooses collectively to become a “blue community,” I cheer. A blue community is one that recognizes access to water as a human right and promotes publicly owned water and waste services. (See Brent Patterson’s blog for updates on this movement.)
Blue communities are part of reclaiming the commons as the habitats in which our lives are immersed and on which our health and the sustainability of our communities, to say nothing of our planet, depends. A possible next step would be to combine this with more local participatory, or citizen science to monitor local water – levels and quality – and to create local common water authorities. I see these as akin to local community public health authorities, and extending their mandate. It’s what my ancestors living in commons communities and on the commons did: responsible self-governance that was political, economic and ecological.
To order my book, request it at your local bookstore or order your copy from New Society Publishers today!
See my article “Reclaiming the commons in the Salish Sea Islands,” in Island Tides, May 15, 2014.
