Contributors

Maude Barlow is the national chairperson of the Council of Canadians, Canada’s largest public advocacy organization, and the co-founder of the Blue Planet Project, working internationally for the right to water. She serves on the boards of the International Forum on Globalization, and Food and Water Watch, as well as being a councilor with the Hamburg-based World Future Council. Barlow is the recipient of six honorary doctorates, the 2005/2006 lannan Cultural Freedom Fellowship award, and the 2005 Right Livelihood Award for her global water justice work. She is also the best-selling author or co-author of sixteen books, including Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water (with Tony Clarke) and the recently released Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water.

Tony Clarke is the founder and executive director of the Polaris Institute. he is the author and co-author nine books, including Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water (with Maude Barlow). In 2005 he won the Right Livelihood Award for his work on international water and trade issues. Clarke has written numerous articles on water issues for magazines and journals. He has worked with mass social movements of indigenous peoples, peasants and urban workers in building resistance to the privatization of water. At Polaris, He has spearheaded several new projects on water justice issues, including a sustainable water project for agriculture in California and a city and countryside project on water struggles with counterpart groups in Mexico. Clarke also has a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of British Columbia plus a master’s and a doctoral degree from the University of Chicago in social ethics.

Brock Dolman is the director of Occidental Arts and Ecology Center’s Water Institute and Permaculture Design Program, and he co-directs the Wildlands Biodiversity Program. He co-instructs Basins of Relations and permaculture-related courses. He also co-manages the center’s biodiversity collection, orchards and 70 acres of wildlands. His experience ranges from the study of wildlife biology, native California botany and watershed ecology, to the practice of habitat restoration, education about regenerative human settlement design, ethno-ecology, and ecological literacy activism towards societal transformation.

Tom Engelhardt runs the Nation Institute’s tomdispatch .com. A Fellow of the Institute, he is also the co-founder of the American Empire Project. his book, The End of Victory Culture (University of Massachusetts Press), has been thoroughly updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture’s crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.

Paula Garcia is the executive director of the New Mexico Acequia Association. She is a community leader, political activist, and aspiring farmer who dedicates her time to family and community. During her years of service to the NMAA, acequia communities have built a movement around the principle that “el agua es la vida” (water is life), and have achieved major policy changes locally and statewide. the association also launched campaigns and programs to involve youth in agricultural traditions and to increase cultivation of foods of spiritual and cultural significance to native and traditional communities in New Mexico.

Wenonah Hauter is the executive director of Food & Water Watch. She has worked extensively on water, food, energy, and environmental issues at the national, state, and local level. From 1997 to 2005 she served as director of Public Citizen’s Energy and Environment Program, which focused on water, food, and energy policy. From 1996 to 1997, she was environmental policy director for Citizen Action, where she worked with the organization’s 30 state-based groups. From 1989 to 1995 she was at the Union of Concerned Scientists where, as a senior organizer, she coordinated broad-based, grassroots sustainable energy campaigns in several states. She has an M.S. in applied anthropology from the University of Maryland.

Jacques Leslie writes narrative nonfiction about the world’s most pressing environmental issues. His 2005 book, Deep Water: The Epic Struggle Over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment, won the
J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award and was named one of the top science books of the year by Discover Magazine. A former Los Angeles Times foreign correspondent, he has won numerous literary and journalism awards including the Drunken Boat Panliterary Award in nonfiction, the Sigma Delta Chi Distinguished Service Award for Foreign Correspondence, and an Overseas Press Club citation. For more information go to www.jacquesleslie.com.

Eric Lohan is a project manager for Living Machine Research and Development at Worrell Water Technology. He has a B.A. in biology and environmental studies from Oberlin College and a M.S. from the Ohio State University in environmental science with a focus on ecological engineering. Lohan has been involved with research, design and project management of Living Machine systems for eight years. He is co-author of five patents.

Tara Lohan is an environmental journalist and senior editor at AlterNet. She manages the environment and water coverage. Lohan has worked as a writer, editor and organizer on environmental and social justice issues for ten years. She has a master’s degree in literary nonfiction from the University of Oregon and bachelor’s degree in english and environmental studies from Middlebury College.

Kelle Louaillier has been with Corporate Accountability International for nearly two decades, serving as director of international outreach, campaign director, development director, and associate director before becoming the organization’s executive director in 2007. Under her leadership, Corporate Accountability International (formerly Infact) helped move general electric out of the nuclear weapons business, spearheaded grassroots efforts behind the passage of the global tobacco treaty, and launched the nationwide “Think Outside the Bottle” campaign. Prior to joining CAI, Louaillier taught math in the Central African Republic and worked to empower homeless youth in Seattle. She holds degrees in French, philosophy and mathematics from Seattle University.

Bill McKibben is an environmentalist and writer who frequently writes about global warming, alternative energy, and the risks associated with human genetic engineering. His first book, The End of Nature, was published in 1989 and is regarded as the first book for a general audience about climate change. It has been printed in more than 20 languages. He has written over ten books and has been awarded Guggenheim and Lyndhurst Fellowships, and won the Lannan Prize for nonfiction writing in 2000. He has honorary degrees from Green Mountain College, Unity College, Lebanon Valley College, and Sterling College. He is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College. You can learn more about him at Bill McKibben.com.

Sandra Postel directs the Independent Global Water Policy Project, as well as the Center for the Environment at Mount Holyoke College. She is author of Pillar of Sand: Can the Irrigation Miracle Last? and of Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity. She is also co-author (with Brian Richter) of Rivers for Life: Managing Water for People and Nature. In 2005, The Worldwatch Institute released her publication Liquid Assets: The Critical Need to Safeguard Freshwater Ecosystems. Postel has served as advisor to the Division on Earth and Life Studies of the U.S. National Research Council as well as to American Rivers. she has served on the Board of Directors of the International Water Resources Association, and on the editorial boards of Ecosystems, Water Policy, and Green Futures. she received a B.A. (summa cum laude) in geology and political science at Wittenberg University and an M.E.M. with emphasis on resource economics and policy at Duke University. She has also received two honorary Doctor of Science degrees. Postel has been awarded the Duke University School of Environment’s Distinguished Alumni award, and a Pew Scholar’s Award in Conservation and the Environment.

Christina Roessler is a consultant and writer working on water issues in the Western United States. Before becoming a consultant she was the founding director of the French American Charitable Trust.

Miguel Santistevan is a Ph.D. student at the University of New Mexico in biology. His research interest is in crop diversity and agriculture ecology of the acequia and dryland agricultural systems in northern New Mexico. He is a youth mentor/radio producer for the New Mexico Acequia Association Project, “Sembrando Semillas” and a radio show called “¡Que Vivan las Acequias!” He has a B.S. in biology from UNM and a M.S. in ecology from the University of California, Davis. He maintains a small experimental seed-saving farm in Taos called Sol Feliz. Santistevan is a permaculture design course instructor with the Traditional Native American Farmers’ Association.

Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental leader and thinker. Director of the Research Foundation on Science, Technology, and Ecology, she is the author of many books, including Water Wars: Pollution, Profits, and Privatization and Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge. Shiva is a leader in the International Forum on Globalization, the founder of Navdanya (“nine seeds”), a movement promoting diversity and use of native seeds. Before becoming an activist, she was one of india’s leading physicists. She holds a master’s degree in the philosophy of science and a Ph.D. in particle physics. In 1993, Shiva won the Right Livelihood Award.

Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman are award-winning filmmakers whose PBS documentary Thirst and its follow-up book (Wiley, 2007) exposed how the corporate drive to control water has become the catalyst for community resistance to globalization. Snitow and Kaufman’s earlier PBS films dealt with organizing high-tech workers Secrets of Silicon Valley and with Black-Jewish relations Blacks and Jews. Snitow is on the board of Food and Water Watch. Kaufman is on the board of the Progressive Jewish Alliance. They are currently working on a film about Jewish power and identity in America.

Eleanor Sterling is the director of the American Museum of Natural History’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation. She received her B.A. from Yale College and a joint Ph.D. in physical anthropology, and forestry and environmental studies from Yale University. Sterling has more than 25 years of field research experience in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. She has served as an adjunct professor at Columbia University since 1997, and has served as the director of Graduate Studies for Columbia University’s Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology since 2003. Sterling sits on the Board of Governors of the Society for Conservation Biology and is the chair of the society’s education committee.

Roger Stone is the director and president of the Sustainable Development Institute. He was formerly a correspondent and news bureau chief for Time magazine with three years of service in Brazil. He has also been a vice president of the Chase Manhattan Bank and of the World Wildlife Fund, and president of the Center for Inter-American Relations. He is the author of five published books.

Erin Vintinner is biodiversity research specialist at the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History. She provides research and writing support for various CBC projects and contributes content to the Network of Conservation Educators and Practitioners. Prior to coming to the CBC, Vintinner served as research and expedition coordinator for the No Water No Life nonprofit photodocumentary project in the Columbia River Basin. She also previously served as a fisheries technician with the USDA Forest Service in Sitka, Alaska and the Bureau of Land Management in Eugene, Oregon. Vintinner holds a M.A. in conservation biology from Columbia University’s Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology and a B.A. in biology from Boston University.