From Brazilian anti-dam activists to Newfoundlanders fighting to protect their lake from being turned into a toxic dumpsite, water activists from around the globe are cheering the fact that Vale has been selected as the recipient for the 2012 Public Eye Award for being the worst company of the year.

The company notorious for building a massive $52 billion dam complex in the Amazon Rainforest promising to forcefully relocate 40,000 people and destroy the vital Xingu river ecosystem, earned top spot with 25,042 votes. Canadians had their own reasons for voting for Vale.

Last weekend in Barcelona, the Council of Canadians participated in a gathering of more than 90 activists involved in planning the alternative world water forum (Forum Alternatif Mondial de l’Eau) to take place in Marseilles on March 14 to 17. The FAME is a counter-summit taking place in opposition to the 6th World Water Forum -- a corporate trade show held every three years to give corporations direct access to ministers, heads of state and high-level government officials in order to influence water policy.

A protest was held at the Canadian embassy in El Salvador yesterday to commemorate the two-year anniversary of the assassination of Ramiro Rivera and Dora Sorto, two environmental advocates from Cabanas El Salvador who were active in the campaign against the El Dorado mine of the Canadian company Pacific Rim.

The embassy refused to meet with representatives from the Mesa Nacional frente la Mineria Metalica to hear concerns and receive a letter demanding an end to free trade negotiations between Canada and El Salvador that would further entrench the rights of mining companies.

The Council of Canadians is pleased to learn that the Town of Ajax has become a Blue Community by passing a resolution banning bottled water, recognizing water as a human right and promoting publicly owned and operated water and wastewater systems.

Ajax is the fourth community in Canada and second in Ontario to join the Blue Communities Project launched by the Council of Canadians and Canadian Union of Public Employees.

The community adopted the resolutions after receiving a letter from 13-year-old water warrior, Robyn Hamlyn, who was inspired to take action after seeing the film Blue Gold, featuring the work of Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow.

The Council of Canadians was invited on Tuesday to speak at an event in Ottawa about the housing crisis in Attawapiskat organized by Kairos and Centretown United.

While I spoke about the water crisis as a water campaigner, I recognize that Attawapiskat is a much larger issue in which the lack of access to water and sanitation only highlight the depth of the injustice faced by the community for decades. There is nothing natural about poverty. The housing crisis in Attawapiskat is a not an accident or an isolated incident. Attawapiskat is a natural outcome of Canada's violent colonial past and racist present.

To drive home the message that water-related impacts are key to how climate change is experienced by communities around the world, South African NGOs Umphilo waManzi and Capetown Environmental Monitoring Group (EMG) hosted a "water reality tour" on Thursday, December 1. Discussions were led by people active in the sector at both grassroots and policy levels. The tour showcased experiences of what communities have done to secure their water rights in South Africa's urban and rural areas within the context of the challenges posed by climate change.

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.

In what Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs President, Grand Chief Stuart Phillips refers to as a state of "déjà-vu," chiefs from the Tsilhqot'in National Government (TNG) are back in Ottawa nearly a year after a federal government rejected a proposal by Taseko to develop a copper-gold mine on Tsilhqot'in land due to adverse environmental impacts. They are here to campaign against a repackaged proposal by Taseko that hadn't even made it to the federal review panel last time around because it was so flawed.

The chiefs were accompanied by Finn Donnelly NDP Fisheries critic who is calling on the federal government to halt the Prosperity project without wasting taxpayer money on another environmental review.

At a time when the Chilean public has taken to the streets in defence of public services, the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan has increased its investments in private water in Chile. The Council of Canadians finds this deplorable. In a new wave of privatization that began in December 2010, the Chilean government sold off most its shares in water utilities. There is currently only one public water utility remaining in the entire country.

Notably, amidst the protests in defence of public education that have been ongoing since April, the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan this July increased its ownership of ESSBIO from 51.1 per cent to 89.5 per cent and ESVAL from 69.8 per cent to 94.2 per cent.