Maude Barlow, leading expert on water issues, to close University Lectures 2010-11 season

Maude Barlow, co-founder of the Blue Planet Project and chair of the Food & Water Watch, will be the final guest in the 2010-11 University Lectures season at Syracuse University on Tuesday, April 5.

Her presentation, “The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water,” will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Hendricks Chapel and is free and open to the public. Reduced-rate parking will be available in the Irving Garage. Sign language interpretation and CART will be available at the lecture.

Barlow will also speak to middle-school students at Eagle Hill Middle School in the Fayetteville-Manlius School District on April 6.

Barlow is considered by many to be one of the world’s leading experts on water issues. “This notion that we’ll have water forever is wrong. California is running out. It’s got 20-some years of water,” she says. Barlow talks about how our misuse of water may actually be changing the hydrological cycle and contributing to global warming.

In 2008, she was appointed the United Nations’ first senior adviser on water issues, a role she hopes to use to establish water as a human right. She is also the co-founder of the Blue Planet Project, a group that works to protect fresh water from trade and privatization around the world. Barlow chairs the board of the Washington-based Food & Water Watch and is also an executive member of the San Francisco-based International Forum on Globalization. She is the recipient of the Right Livelihood Award for her work on global water justice. Barlow holds several honorary doctorates and has written or co-written 16 books, including the international best seller “Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and The Coming Battle for the Right to Water” (New Press, 2007).

The Office of University Lectures welcomes suggestions for future speakers. To recommend a speaker, or to obtain additional information about The University Lectures, contact Esther Gray in the Office of Academic Affairs at 443-2941 or eegray@syr.edu. More information can be found at the University Lectures website, http://lectures.syr.edu or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/universitylectures.