The Global Water Summit webinar gathered water advocates and experts from across water insecure parts of our national and global connection to discuss a strategy for leadership for water security.
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Our Keynote Speakers
Maude Barlow is a Canadian activist and author. She chairs the board of Washington-based Food and Water Watch and Ottawa-based Blue Planet Project. Maude co-founded the Council of Canadians and chaired its board for over three decades. She serves on the Board of Advisors of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and is a Councillor with the Hamburg- based World Future Council. Maude is the Chancellor of Brescia University College in London Ontario.
Pedro Arrojo-Agudo is the Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation. He was appointed by the Human Rights Council in September 2020 and started his mandate on 1 November 2020. From 2016 to 2019, Mr. Arrojo-Agudo served as an elected member of the Spanish Parliament.
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Our Presenters
Tasha Beeds is an Indigenous scholar of nêhiyaw, Scottish-Metis, and Bajan ancestry from the Treaty 6 territories of Saskatchewan. She activates from various, connected roles: as a mother, a kôhkom (Grandmother), a creative artist and poet, a Water Walker, and a Midewiwin Kwe (woman) from Minweyweywigaan Lodge out of Roseau River First Nations and Wiikwemkoong Unceded Reserve. She belongs to the Makwa (Bear) Clan and is also a traditional daughter to Daabaasanaqwat (Peter Atkinson), Turtle Clan from Baagwaanish Giiziibii. Tasha’s collective work highlights and celebrates Indigeneity while promoting Indigenous nationhood, sovereignty, care and protection of the land and waters and all of Creation based on carrying Indigenous Ancestral legacies forward for the generations to come. She asserts Indigenous intellectual bundles, legal orders, cultural legacies, and spiritual traditions have survived and will continue to flourish.
Peggy Case is a retired school teacher currently living in northern Michigan and engaged in organic gardening, beekeeping, and regenerative forest management practices. Her work as an activist has centered on the issue of water for the past 14 years. She is the president of Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation.
Rev. Dr. Mark Y. A. Davies is the Wimberly Professor of Social and Ecological Ethics, Director of the World House Institute for Social and Ecological Responsibility, and Executive Director of the Leadership. Education, and Development (LEaD) Hub North America for the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry (GBHEM) at Oklahoma City University where he has worked in both teaching and administration for 24 years. He is an ordained elder in the Oklahoma Conference of the United Methodist Church where he has served as Chair of the Board of Church and Society from 2015 to 2018.
Mark’s Ph.D. is from Boston University in the area of Social Ethics, and he has served Boston University School of Theology (BUSTH) as a member of its Dean’s Advisory Board and as the alumnus representative on BUSTH’s Green Team as part of the Green Seminary Initiative.
Krista Dover is the Executive Director of Clean Water for the World. Clean Water for the World (CWFW) provides clean water purifiers to communities who lack access to potable water. With a focus primarily in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Haiti, Krista leads a team of local water promoters who, through partner organizations, accompany communities in their community development projects.
A Detroiter at heart, Krista was a transplant from the South after attending Emory & Henry College studying Public Policy & Community Service and Psychology. Placed in Detroit through the US-2 Program (now Global Mission Fellow) through the United Methodist Church, she worked at the N.O.A.H. Project at Central United Methodist Church and a number of other non-profits, including Urban Neighborhood Initiatives in Southwest Detroit, in her nearly 10 years of living in Detroit.
Krista was contracted in 2016 to work with Clean Water for the World as it transitioned from an all-volunteer organization to a full-fledged non-profit.
Jefferson Boye Knight is the Human Rights Monitor of the Liberia Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. One of the many projects Jefferson oversees is the Water for Life program. Under Jefferson’s leadership, the Water for Life Program has installed over 300 fresh water wells in Liberia providing water for hundreds of thousands of people. Jefferson has a vision to make sure everyone in Liberia has access to clean and safe drinking water.
Monica Lewis-Patrick is an educator, entrepreneur, and human rights activist/advocate. Along with the other four founders of We the People of Detroit (WPD), she, with the leadership of volunteers and community experts, placed herself and WPD at the forefront of the water justice struggle in Michigan, across the country and globally. Lewis-Patrick is known throughout the environmental justice community as The Water Warrior. She is actively engaged in the struggle for access to safe, affordable water for all under-resourced communities.
She currently serves as a member of several organizations, boards, and committees dedicated to the advancement of water equity, including the National Water Affordability Table, All About Water/Freshwater Future - Subcommittee, PolicyLink- Water Energy Resource Caucus (WERC), Michigan Water Unity Table, End Water Poverty, Healing Our Waters/Equity Advocacy and Action Committee, and D-REM.org. In October of 2015, she was named to the World Water Justice Council. In 2019 she was appointed to the International Joint Commission (IJC) Great Lakes Water Quality Advisory Board, and she received an appointment to the Michigan Advisory Council on Environmental Justice by Gov. Whitmer.
James Olson is Founder and President of Flow for Love of Water (FLOW), a Great Lakes Water Policy Center, and senior principal of Olson, Bzdok & Howard, P.C., Traverse City, Michigan. Jim writes and publishes research and articles on current and emerging issues, including water, commons, public trust, privatization, water justice, climate change, water levels, Great Lakes diversions, and new solutions to systemic threats to water in the 21st century, Jim is a frequent speaker for presentations, lectures, and panel discussions.