Water is life. A secure and reliable supply of water is essential for all life forms.

This webinar explains that water is becoming increasingly insecure and unreliable due to climate change and increased demand by a growing population. Although a global challenge, this webinar demonstrates the nature of this risk in Canada and how governments and communities are rising to the challenge.

Dr. John Pomeroy, director of the University of Saskatchewan Centre for Hydrology, the Canmore Coldwater Lab and head of Global Water Futures, one of the largest university-led freshwater research programs in the world, illustrates how water supplies and water quality across Canada are already at risk due to increasing frequency of floods and droughts, chemicals affecting our drinking water and conflicts between ecosystem and human needs. This risk will increase over time unless changes occur in the way we govern our most precious resource.

Fortunately, creative solutions are being developed both at the federal and provincial levels in Canada. Terry Duguid, MP for Winnipeg South, and Parliamentary Secretary to the Right Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson, Minister for Environment and Climate Change, outlines the role of the proposed Canada Water Agency to coordinate science and monitoring services across the federal government and work with the provinces to track changes in hydrology and climate. This essential information will enable governments to adapt the management of our water resources to reduce risk.

In 1997, Duguid founded Sustainable Developments International, a firm specializing in environmental management. In 2000, he became Chair of the Manitoba Clean Environment Commission and subsequently took leadership positions with the Manitoba Climate Change Task Force and the Manitoba Emission Trading Task Force. He has a lifelong interest in science and its role in the betterment of society and has a Masters Degree in Environmental Design.

Dr. Thomas Axworthy, a policy advisor with the federal government, emphasizes the urgency for strengthening Canada’s water security initiative. Dr. Axworthy works closely with the Global Water Futures Program under Dr. Pomeroy and has the unique capability of translating science into policy advice.

Oliver Brandes, a leading practitioner in policies relating to watershed governance and engagement with Indigenous peoples, reviews a new initiative being launched by the BC provincial government on watershed security to ensure that watersheds are resilient to climate change. The strategy will be supported by a special fund so that both Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities can be engaged in working with governments to manage risk to their water supplies.

Brandes, an Adjunct professor at the University of Victoria’s Law Faculty and Director of the Polis Project on Ecological Governance at the University of Victoria, undertook an independent expert review in 2017 of drinking water source protection, which has since resulted in regulatory change. Brandes is also an advisor on a number of innovative watershed management projects in the Koksilah, Cowichan, Skeena, Nicola and Coquitlam watersheds in BC, as well as to the First Nations Fisheries Council, Freshwater Legacy Initiative and the Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources.

Bob Sandford, Chair of the Global Water Futures at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, and an award-winning author and editor of more than 35 books, co-hosts this informative program.

 

Resources

Global Water Futures
Top 5 Water Challenges by Oliver Brandes & Rosie Simms
Mountain Road Forest Fundraiser
Last Stand for Forests/Fairy Creek
Fantastic Fungi Documentary

 

Additional Q&A

Q. What can the average caring citizen do to prompt our government to start taking action to protect our water?

A. Bob Sandford: We now know what Indigenous peoples have known for thousands of years. We can reduce and moderate the threat of climate disruption by protecting, restoring and constantly rehabilitating natural system function. From this we see that this is not the end of the world. It is just the beginning of another. Perhaps because we are so connected, people today, as this pandemic has demonstrated, have expanded capacity to think in terms of community rather than just thinking about themselves. There is great power in realizing this – for it is at the local level – where we live – that we have the most power to effect change and to act most effectively in service of where and how we live and who we love, now and in the future.

We have before us a moment during which we can turn this great pause, and the catastrophe that caused it, into an opportunity for global re-set and the emergence of new hope for the future. But to make that transformation we have to act on behalf of that hope. The mobilization of hope is a precondition of effective action. Begin where you live. Do what you love. Start there. Xeriscape as much of your property as you can. Practice intentional water conservation as a habit. Join a watershed group or related organization, follow the science, take hydro-climate change seriously and tell others about it; send letters to elected officials at all levels. Support youth groups who are trying to do the same.

Q. How will Canadians refrain from using our water as a commodity in future?

A. Bob Sandford: The first thing is to recognize that the UN has declared access to adequate, reliable supplies of fresh water a human right. We cannot permit water to be commodified to the extent that rights to it trade on a futures market as has happened in the United States. To do that you must never separate water rights from the land, as has happened in Alberta.

You can prevent this from happening also by first finding out where your water comes from, how much of it you use, the state in which the water you use is returned to source waters; protecting source waters, and by recognizing that water will be more valuable than we can even begin to imagine in the future. Water cannot be viewed as a commodity if you swim in it; paddle on it; marvel at it as it falls; and you see water as part of your identity and national heritage. See in water, the spiritual qualities that Indigenous Canadians see in it. If you don’t already have one, make an invocation like this one your mantra:

Rivers Within Yearn
For
Rivers Without

Though water tends to repel organic compounds,
it is strangely attracted to most inorganic substances,
including itself.

Water likes to be around other water.

Its molecules,
in fact,
cling to one another
more tenaciously
than those of many metals.

You can observe water’s remarkable qualities
of self-adhesion
if you sit by a river.

Water sticks together.

Water draws water with it.
Sit on a riverbank long enough
and you might observe
that water likes to sing.

The faster it moves the louder it sings.

Still water barely whispers, falling water roars.

There is a reason we feel different
when we are in the presence
of large volumes of water.

Water reacts to almost everything
and almost everything reacts to water.

The feeling you get
standing on the edge of river or a lake
or beneath a thundering waterfall
may be aesthetic
but it is physical, too.

Your body is aligning itself
with the molecular attraction of the water
and the water is aligning itself to you.

The effect can be even more pronounced
when you stand by the sea.

Ankle deep in surf,
the water in our inner cellular seas
yearns for the salty sea without.

The water within us feels the tug of the tide.

We know water, but water also knows us.

Go to the stream.

Watch the water run.

Feel the cool moisture of wind
and the wetness of cloud and rain.

Feel the cold of snow,
and the hardness of glacier ice.

Hear thunder.

Feel the river flow through your hands.

Feel the water within you
yearn for the water without.

Bring the stream to your lips.

Search with your tongue
for water’s memory of far-away seas.

Taste distant mountains.

Feel the fissures in deep limestone tingle on your tongue.

Fill a glass and hold it up to sunlight.

See our star burn
through the sparkling lens
of the most amazing of all liquids.

Drink.

Repeat daily
until you
and the world
are fully and finally restored.

R.W. Sandford
from Water & Our Way of Life, United Nations International Year of Fresh Water

Q. How will Canada respond in future to climate migration due to water insecurities?

A. Bob Sandford: Hard to say. It isn’t even on our radar yet. The alarms went off years ago but so far we have ignored them. Because of climate warming impacts, the habitable zone in the United States is already shrinking northward toward Canada. Much of south Florida, the Carolina’s, the American west and Southwest are projected to soon be barely habitable. Where will these people go? They will go uphill and to higher latitudes for cooler temperatures to avoid heat and wildfire; inland away from ever more violent hurricanes and rapid coastal sea level rise; and they will gravitate toward places with reliable water security. Sound like any place you might know? This northward movement is already occurring globally. If you don’t think this will affect where you live, think again. Americans have money and nothing will stop them and they are only the first wave. Whether you like it or not, the people who want what we have are coming. Get ready.

Then there is the global circumstance. The UN predicts 200 million involuntary human migrants by 2050. In late April of this year, the World Meteorological Organization released its State of the Global Climate 2020 report. The report makes it clear that weather and climate related hazards and disasters are driving new and ever higher human displacement in ever more complex regional contexts. Over the past decade (2010 to 2019), weather related events triggered an estimated 23.1 million displacements of people on average each year. While the overwhelming majority of the displacements take place within national borders, cross-border movements are also occurring. Some 9.8 million displacements largely due to hydrometeorological hazards and disasters, were recorded in the first half of 2020, alone.

Many vulnerable people on the move, regardless of their reasons for moving, end up settling in marginal high-risk areas where they are exposed to weather and climate hazards at a range of scales. Weather hazards and human mobility inevitably intersect with larger social and political tensions and conflicts, making multi-hazard disaster risk reduction measures harder to orchestrate and proactively implement. The World Meteorological Organization State of the Global Climate 2020 report is clear on the effect accelerate climate change impacts is having on the compound crisis of food security, involuntary human migration and the limits of global humanitarian action. And it is here that the elephant in the room starts pushing around and then flattening the furniture in the room.

Nearly 690 million people, or 9% of the world’s population, were under-nourished, and about 750 million, or nearly 10%, were exposed to severe levels of food security in 2019. The number of people classified as under crisis, emergency and famine conditions has increased to almost 135 million people in 55 countries. In 2020, 50 million people were doubly hit by both climate related disasters and by COVID-19 pandemic disruptions to the agricultural sector. COVID-19 has exacerbated the effects of climate disruption along the entire food supply chain, elevating levels of food insecurity, malnutrition and under-nourishment. The mobility restrictions and economic downturns brought about by the pandemic have slowed the delivery of humanitarian assistance to vulnerable people on the move, as well as efforts to support recovery for affected persons who have had their lives put on hold by earlier shocks. Humanity in 2020 faced – and literally continues to face – what amounts to a perfect storm.

If we in Canada want to get ahead of that storm, the first thing we ought to recognize it is coming and prepare for it.

Q. How are Rural Municipalities being considered in the formation of the Water Agency?

A. Jon O’Riordan: The Canada Water Agency is focusing on federal and provincial responsibilities for a collaborative new approach to water governance in Canada in face of a rapidly changing hydrology. The role of local government will be included in this discussion once the senior levels of government have come to an agreement.

Q. How is the Provincial Government/BC Hydro dealing with the water crisis when negotiating with the US Government with respect to the Columbia River Treaty ongoing negotiations?

A. Jon O’Riordan: The core principles governing a re -negotiated Treaty are sharing benefits between the two countries; restoring ecosystem function where practical; and adapting to a changing climate. Adaptive management is the critical element in dealing with the water crisis as it will require both constant monitoring of key elements of water uses, flows and quality. Water management will have to be adjusted as these elements change over time to provide shared benefits throughout the Columbia basin.

Q. As we transition to an electrified transportation community in BC and we now depend for 90 % of the electricity from hydro. Water here is a necessary commodity for an electrified low carbon environment. What are the prospects for a sole source hydro energy province?

A. Jon O’Riordan: Though controversial, Site C project will provide a significant increase in electrical capacity by mid -decade across the Province. The other advantage of hydro power is the ability to’ turn on the taps’ by passing water through turbines when there is a need to meet demand in the short term. This capacity provides a critical backup to provide reliable power where intermittent solar or wind power needs a boost.

Q. I am concerned about re-establishing and improving our navigable water’s act. How do we hold industry to account for taking for granted a seemingly unlimited water supply and their belief that the water system will absorb all their pollution? Ie: Mining, in particular. Nuclear Power right next to drinking water. Pipelines that spill into waterways.

A. Jon O’Riordan: The Provincial government has enacted a number of laws designed to protect public and the environment from industrial operations. However, their effectiveness depends on risks and oversight. The government applies risk management tools whereby it provides more scrutiny to higher risk operations such as mining with toxic metal contamination and public safety issues. It uses professional reliance to monitor other less risky operations whereby professionals funded by industry oversee industrial activities. Recently the province enacted regulations to make professional more accountable to their peers for their monitoring. Though the new regulations are an improvement, generally there is less independent oversight than appropriate because of budget limitations.

Q. When thinking about the “future” of water, how far into the future are we considering – 10 years, 100 years, 1000 years?

A. Bob Sandford: How would it be if we started with seven generations.

Q. Reconciliation, economic recovery, and stewardship are each important; but what about the spiritual perspective of water?

A. Bob Sandford: The foundation of the work of the entire water and climate community work begins with science. It seems to me that the commandments of science can be reduced to two: tell the truth and stand up for all humanity and for the planet, now and generations into the future. Good science involves not just the sharing of knowledge about the world, it is a candle we light when we want to see and be warmed by the truth. But we know now that modern science is not the only way of knowing.

Scientific knowledge alone will not be enough to get us through the bottleneck in which we presently find ourselves in the human journey. It will take all the knowledge and ways of knowing humanity possesses to get us through this turbulent moment in human history. More than at any time in history we need to braid together all our ways of knowing and caring. We need to bring Indigenous and local wisdom as well as scientific knowledge to bear on the challenge of ensuring sustainable human presence on this planet, a presence that depends on water. And that is why the work we all do – and what every citizen does to help – has become so vitally important.

A. Jon O’Riordan: The importance or water for spiritual values has long been recognized by Indigenous peoples and increasingly by non- Indigenous communities. The advent of the Declaration of Rights for Ingenious Peoples Act by the BC government has introduced a shared decision making approach to resource management where spiritual values will play a larger role on watershed governance.

Q. I am trying to bring Penticton (my city) into the Blue Communities Project. This means: Recognize water and sanitation as human rights; Ban or phase out the sale of bottled water in municipal facilities and at municipal events; Promote publicly financed, owned, and operated water and wastewater services.
There are 1.5 million people who live in Blue Communities, and 81 cities. This is a local movement to protect communities through promotion of water security through public awareness. Have you any suggestions or advice?

A. Bob Sandford: The Blue Communities Project is a worthy one. It was started by Maude Barlow and the Council of Canadians. It should also be noted that it was Maude Barlow who pressed successfully to have the UN Declare access to water a human right.

A. Jon O’Riordan: Generally in British Columbia, water treatment facilities are operated under public ownership. However some local government has turned to public/private partnerships to operate such facilities whereby private companies assume the risk and are paid a fee. The government has regulated the training of operators of such systems to meet stringent standards of care. The public should inform themselves of which model applies to their facilities and hold local government accountable for their operation.

Q. Many of us here in Metchosin & Sooke are on wells. Developers do not seem aware of their impacts on aquifers. What can we do to change this?

A. Jon O’Riordan: The Water Sustainability Act provides for the regulations of both well construction and in the case of high groundwater use, for the licencing of water extraction. The public have rights to complain to the government if they suspect there is not adequate control over development approvals.