Across Canada, people are taking a stand in support of public water and against the privatization of our water resources. It is time to unite and get rid of bottled water.

We would love for you to join the Coalition for Bottled Water Free Communities (made up of the Canadian Federation of Students, the Sierra Youth Coalition, the Council of Canadians, the Canadian Union of Public Employees and the Polaris Institute) in the countdown to Canada's third Bottled Water Free Day! On March 15, 2012, campuses and communities across Canada will be mobilizing to take action to kick the bottle and back the tap! We want you to be a part of it!

On Friday, I posed questions that I hoped to find answers to through discussions related to the thematic social forum here in Porto Alegre. I wouldn't presume that the answers I've come up with are definitive, and truthfully I just have more questions now, but I wanted to offer these "observations from Brazil" in the hope that it helps us navigate Rio+20:

1. What could be the implications of Rio+20 on our campaigns related to the commons, the human right to water and sanitation, the rights of nature and climate justice approaches to the climate crisis?

For decades, the industries that thrive on destroying the planet have played a cat and mouse game with the environmental movement. We expose their bad practices and build public opposition, they co-opt our language and attempt to neutralize public opinion by creating confusion.

I have just returned from New York city where Darcey O'Callaghan from Food and Water Watch and I met to work on the next phases of our right to water campaign. More than a year after the UN General Assembly resolution recognizing water and sanitation as a human right, much remains to be done to ensure its implementation.

On Monday Catarina de Albuquerque, the Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation presented a report to the General Assembly on financing for water and sanitation. You can read a joint response by the Council of Canadians and Food and Water Watch here.

Members of the Wakefield community marched this weekend in a street parade calling on the government of Quebec to apply the principles of sustainability it adopted in the Quebec Sustainability Act of 2005.

As mentioned in previous blogs, The Council of Canadians has been working with SOS Wakefield to ensure that a provincial environmental assessment is conducted on the highway expansion and its impacts on the aquifer and spring before any construction proceeds. Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow, staff and chapter activists were recently in Wakefield at a packed fundraiser for SOS Wakefield at the Black Sheep Inn. More on that at http://www.canadians.org/campaignblog/?p=6502.