BLUE AMBASSADORS

What is a Blue Ambassador? read here.

 

The Blue Community Ambassadors (alphabetic by first name)

BLUE AMBASSADORS
Andrea Muehlebach
Professor of Anthropology at the Department of Anthropology and Cultural Research at the University of Bremen, Germany Autor of «A Vital Politics: Water Insurgencies in Europe» (Duke University Press, Open Access).

«I support the Blue Community Initiative because it represents a pact between water utilities and the communities they serve: This is a collective commitment to keep water in public hands and manage it with long-term goals and environmentally sound planning. This commitment by the public sector makes sense not only in economic and ethical terms, but also in ecological and infrastructural terms.»

BLUE AMBASSADORS
Andreas Bieler
Andreas Bieler is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Nottingham/UK and Co-Director of the independent Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice. Tweets on labour movements and resistance to neo-liberal globalization Author of “Fighting for Water: Resisting Privatization in Europe”.

«Blue Community is an excellent initiative raising the awareness of the importance of water and allowing people to mobilise with concrete measures in support of water as a human right.»

BLUE AMBASSADORS
Caitlin Schroering
Caitlin Schroering is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (Charlotte, NC, USA). Her research coalesces around multiple areas of social inquiry, including environmental sociology, resource conflicts, the human right to water, political economy, and transnational social movements, using feminist and anti-colonial research methodologies. She is author of Global Solidarities Against Water Grabbing: Without Water, We Have Nothing published in September 2024 with Manchester University Press.

«Water should not be a commodity for financial profit. Just as corporate power is attempting to profit off of the privatization of water and working globally to do so, transnational (or trans-local) social movements are also organizing to envision new paths forward where all have access to water, land, and other life-sustaining necessities. Without water, we have nothing.»

BLUE AMBASSADORS
Daniel Jaffee
Professor of Sociology, Portland State University, Oregon, US Autor of «Unbottled – The Fight against Plastic Water and for Water Justice» (see for our review here).

«Privatization of municipal water systems and the fast-growing bottled and packaged water industry are the two major ways that drinking water is being transformed into a for-profit commodity on a global scale. The Blue Community movement makes a critical connection between these two forms of commodification, highlighting how both of them pose a threat to realizing the human right to water. Cities, universities, schools, faith organizations, and others who become Blue Communities are taking an important stand–joining a worldwide movement to keep water a public good and working toward water justice.»

BLUE AMBASSADORS
Denise Freitas Soares de Moraes
Researcher at the Mexican Institute of Water Technology (Instituto Mexicano de Tecnología del Agua), member of the Coordination of Water Governance and Capacity Building and an activist with the Gender and Environment Network of Mexico.

«The Blue Community is an initiative that recognizes water as a common good whose availability and quality must be protected. As an organization, it promotes dialogue between organizations and academics committed to struggles of resistance, mobilization, and building alternatives for just and equitable water management. I could not agree more with these principles, which is why I am a strong supporter of the Blue Community.»

BLUE AMBASSADORS
Erin O’Donnell
A water law and policy expert with over two decades of experience, Erin is a Senior Lecturer and Australian Research Council research fellow at Melbourne Law School. Her work focuses on Indigenous water rights, water justice, legal rights of rivers, and water markets. Autor of Legal Rights for Rivers: Competition, Collaboration, and Water Governance.

«Rivers are living beings with whom we are all in a relationship of mutual interdependence and reciprocity. The sooner we stop dominating and exploiting all waterways, the sooner we can embrace a truly legitimate and sustainable way of life. Water is life: for us, for the planet, and for itself.»

BLUE AMBASSADORS
Fredrick Mugira
Fredrick Mugira is a celebrated water, wildlife, and climate change journalist. He is a recipient of globally prestigious Eric and Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communications. He is also a National Geographic Explorer and a Pulitzer Center Grantee. He founded Water Journalists Africa, a media development organization with a membership spanning 50 African countries, dedicated to reporting on water, climate change, and wildlife. Water Journalists Africa runs , InfoNile, a geojournalism initiative, Nilewell, a platform facilitating collaboration among environmental researchers, scientists, and journalists, and the Apes Reporting Project, that champions the conservation of Africa's Great Apes.

«The Blue Community Initiative is a vital effort to recognize water as a fundamental human right instead of a commodity. After covering water issues for over 20 years, I firmly believe everyone deserves clean water access. By joining the Blue Community, we commit to protecting water as a shared resource and fostering conversations and collaboration to enhance water management practices.»

BLUE AMBASSADORS
Isadora Cruxên
Dr Isadora Cruxên is an Assistant Professor of Business and Society at Queen Mary University of London. She holds a PhD in Political Economy, Development and Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her research examines the politics of financial investment in water, with a focus on Brazil.

«Water is life sustaining. Confronting the interrelated social and environmental challenges before us requires a collective commitment to governing water resources sustainably and to promoting access to clean water and adequate sanitation in ways that challenge structural inequalities and centre the health and vitality of our communities and ecosystems. The Blue Community’s mission contributes to this commitment.»

BLUE AMBASSADORS
Jerry van den Berge
Jerry van den Berge (NL, 1966) is an independent researcher focusing on the relations between Water Governance and Social Justice. He has recently finished his research project about Social movements’ struggles against privatisation of water services in Europe. Before, he was policy officer in the European Public Services Unions (EPSU) in Brussels where he coordinated the first successful European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI): “Water is a human right!” a.k.a. “Right2Water”.

«Privatization of water (services and resources) increases inequality and injustice in society. By exploiting water, private companies make huge profits while people are confronted with higher prices, deteriorating environment, and loss of livelihoods. This must be stopped if we are serious about saying: ‘Water is a human right!’ Water is even more than that: ‘Water is a public good, not a commodity!’»

BLUE AMBASSADORS
Léo Heller
Léo Heller is the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights to Drinking Water and Sanitation. He is currently Leading Researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation and previously was Professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil.

«The Blue Community Initiative shares principles of challenging unjust processes of commodification and privatization of water, promoting the human rights to water, and sanitation and strengthening public services. I have advocated for these principles for decades, in my academic career, in my international mandates, and my political activism. For this reason, I support this important initiative

BLUE AMBASSADORS
Lyla Mehta
Lyla Mehta is a Professor at the Institute of Development Studies, UK, and a Visiting Professor at Noragric, Norwegian University of Life Sciences. She trained as a sociologist (University of Vienna) and has a Ph.d. in Development Studies (University of Sussex).

«Water and sanitation are basic human rights. Yet the rights of poor and marginalised people around the world are routinely violated by powerful state and private actors with impunity. I support the Blue Community Initiative’s call for water justice for all, and the need to ensure accountability and that water remains a public good, not a commodity.»

BLUE AMBASSADORS
Madeleine Moore
Political economist working on all things water, social reproduction, eco-socialism. Post-doc @bielefeld uni. Autor of «Water Struggles as Resistance to Neoliberal Capitalism. A time of reproductive unrest».

«Water is essential for all forms of life, we cannot exist without it. That is why it is so crucial that we organise together through groups like Blue Communities to protect water and make it accessible for all.»

BLUE AMBASSADORS
Marcela González Rivas
Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Policy and International Affairs in Pittsburgh, USA. Her expertise is in sustainable water policy, water equity, and governance. She leads a research working group that has a dual focus: enhancing understanding of the implementation of the human right to water and examining the global environmental justice implications of U.S. water policies. She serves is a permanent member of the Pittsburgh public water system advisory committees on Lead Response and the Low-Income Assistance programs.

«Water is essential for all forms of life, we cannot exist without it. That is why it is so crucial that we organise together through groups like Blue Communities to protect water and make it accessible for all.»

BLUE AMBASSADORS
Rutgerd Boelens
Rutgerd Boelens is Professor ‘Water Governance and Social Justice’ at Wageningen University, The Netherlands, and Professor ‘Political Ecology of Water’ with CEDLA, University of Amsterdam. He also is Visiting Professor at the Catholic University of Peru and the Central University of Ecuador.

«Across the world, new water justice movements have proliferated that creatively enliven rivers in all their senses. As multi-scalar coalitions they deploy alternative river–society proposals and practices that foster environmental justice. They bridge, translate and merge local river commoning practices, languages and strategies into global ones and vice versa, joining forces among South and North, triggering fundamentally new ways of thinking, acting, defending and living with rivers.» (Riverhood)