POLIS PROJECT ON ECOLOGICAL GOVERNANCE

Newsletter: Fall Edition 2009

Cultivating Canadian Water Leaders with ActionH2O!

In partnership with the Sierra Club of Canada, the POLIS Water Sustainability Project (WSP) is launching the community-based water conservation campaign ActionH2O in early 2010. This multiyear initiative (funded by RBC's Blue Water Project) will save litres by growing water leaders in local governments across Canada through the development of tools, pilot projects and focused water conservation outreach and engagement.

ActionH2O seeks to harness a grassroots collective effort to develop new conservation and efficiency-based approaches to water management and turn these into practical solutions that are adopted by communities. “We’re excited to combine our organisations’ unique strengths for maximum impact,” says WSP Community Water Coordinator Susanne Porter-Bopp. “No other partnership combines the complementary forces of policy expertise, local government experience, and community engagement at the local level. This bottom-up effort has immense potential to change how water is managed across the whole country,” she notes.

From “How To” handbooks, to hands-on learning through a Water Conservation Workshop Roadshow Series to a unique visual-based resource that outlines the full application of best water practices called "Canada’s Bluest City", to WSP’s ongoing Water Soft Path Pilot Project Program, ActionH2O will bring a comprehensive suite of water conservation planning and action resources to the doors of Canadian communities.

Over the next two years we’ll be working with at least 20 cities and towns across the country to specifically engage communities and governments to identify locally relevant solutions and opportunities for action. ActionH2O will leverage the community engagement and activist expertise of Sierra Club Canada’s chapters and local group volunteers to bring unique resources and a sophisticated network of experts and practitioners to communities across Canada.

The local benefits of reduced water use are obvious, but these applied projects will also provide valuable case studies and strategic catalysts for action for other jurisdictions across Canada and around the world. This initiative will create a network through which communities can learn from each other including an inter-institutional mentorship program that pairs local governments that are getting it done with local governments elsewhere that are excited to get started. “This unprecedented collective action will set the bar higher as today’s innovations become tomorrow’s standards," says project co-manager and Sierra Club National Water Campaigner Celeste Côté.

New Source Water Protection Research!

POLIS WSP is part of an international team working towards an assessment of source water protection and integrated watershed governance in Canada. The four-year project, funded by the Canadian Water Network and the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation, seeks to generate a meaningful assessment that is guided by the value of collaboration and the goal of creating policy-relevant outcomes. The overall direction of the project is influenced significantly by the contributions of partners who represent a cross-section of water stakeholders, including industry, First Nations, environmental non-government organizations as well as federal, provincial and local governments. The core research team brings together knowledge from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and various regions of Canada.

Source water protection (SWP) is frequently linked to drinking water protection and the two terms are often used interchangeably. This can be misleading as there are other significant uses of water that require source protection. These uses include irrigated agriculture, hydroelectric generation and commercial shipping. In-stream flow levels for fish habitat and general ecosystem health are also significant uses of water which can be addressed by source water protection strategies. Therefore, achieving an effective source protection strategy involves much more than the designation of wellhead protection zones.


Developing a comprehensive source protection strategy is a complex task that requires careful consideration of many aspects of water use. One of the greatest challenges to successful SWP is its integration with other water and land use management strategies. Rather than viewing SWP as a task that is limited to drinking water, it is more appropriately regarded as a component of integrated watershed management planning. This is why it is important to address the governance challenges that are associated with integrated planning at the watershed scale. Questions of accountability, responsibility, legitimacy, power, knowledge, capacity and inclusiveness are just some of the difficult issues that arise when attempting to make decisions that involve many stakeholders in new structures and processes for decision making. Balancing government and non-government actors, finding the right combination of regulatory and non-regulatory tools, and achieving coordination across different sectors and scales of management are three major challenges that this project will address.

To date, outputs from the project include a briefing note series; a discussion paper regarding collaboration and source water protection planning in Ontario; a discussion paper reviewing key themes in the environmental governance literature; and a report that highlights regulatory and non-regulatory tools that are in use for source water protection in Canada. A series of outreach activities in several provinces, including Alberta, British Columbia and Manitoba, are planned for the new year and will take place between January and March 2010. For more information, please contact Dr. Rob de Loë (rdeloeuwaterloo.ca) or Georgia Simms (gsimmsuwaterloo.ca) at the Water Policy and Governance Group.

Water Soft Path Book Release!

September '09 saw the release of “Making the Most of the Water We Have: the Soft Path Approach to Water Management” (Earthscan) -- the first book of its kind. The book presents and applies the water soft path approach and discusses the emerging issues and policy impacts around this new paradigm of water management. This comprehensive analysis recognizes that emerging water challenges and the looming breakdown of the world's ecosystems is due, in part, to the supply side mindset that has dominated water management over the last century. “We must be willing to re-think how we manage and govern our freshwater resources to avoid an arid future of our own making,” says editor Oliver M. Brandes, POLIS Associate Director and Water Sustainability Project Leader.

By focusing on a series of case studies at the provincial (Ontario), watershed (Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia) and the urban and community scale across Canada, the authors demonstrate the viability of a soft path analysis and a backcasting approach in the context of sustainable water resource management – even in the face of significant municipal and provincial gaps in water use, availability and quality data. The principal conclusions emphasize that the goal of ‘no new water’ is achievable and that historical water use patterns need not determine future infrastructure priorities.

This edited volume also chronicles water soft path thinking as it is emerging around the world to demonstrate the range of solutions for building less water-intensive buildings, communities and practices. These living examples show the huge reductions possible in water use that are practical, economical and politically feasible - but also reveal the need for a significant re-visioning of policy and goverance to embed the soft path as the water management approach for a sustainable future.

For governments across Canada, this shift means moving to policies that start with a clear vision and concrete commitments to reduce water use in communities, industries and across sectors. It requires developing effective mechanism for public involvement and builds partnerships across watersheds. Fundamentally, the soft path emphasizes whole system thinking, placing watershed health and ecological function as the priority. This book addresses the disconnect between ecological and political boundaries to allow for collaborative water management and inter-jurisdictional cooperation as the foundation to a sustainable water future.

At a time when communities across the globe face spiraling costs to replace aging water infrastructure and diminishing supply, “Making the Most of the Water We Have” provides solutions for revitalizing our institutions, reshaping our approach to water infrastructure, and planning for a future with real water limits.

Upcoming EventsWSP

Project Leader Oliver M Brandes and Kirk Stinchcombe will be instructing a new course at the University of Victoria entitled Making the Most of the Water We Have: Contemporary Issues in Water Management and Protection. The course will run April 14th - 28th, 2010.

The WSP Team will be hosting two last events for the National Water Conservation Workshop Series. In conjunction with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) a webinar will be held in January 20th (tentative) and a workshop on February 12th as part of the FCM: Sustainable Communities Conference and Trade Show.

Recent Releases
First Soft Path Pilot Project Released!

This is the first 'report from the field' from our soft path pilot project programme which aims to develop leading examples of innovative and cutting edge conservation-based water management. The Soft Path Strategy for the City of Abbotsford and District of Mission was released in August 2009.

FLOW Monitor

The WSP team contributed to the inaugural edition of the FLOW Monitor, a regular bulletin by the Forum for Leadership on Water (FLOW). This first edition includes a review of Environment Canada's progress on key national water priorities, celebrates the success of International Joint Commission, and reviews the numerous failed efforts to develop a comprehensive Federal freshwater strategy.

The WSP Partner Profile

Econnics is a new company established in 2009 by Victoria-based consultant Kirk Stinchcombe. The company works on the premise that the starting point in meeting a community's water supply needs is to understand demand and look for ways to improve efficiency.

Econnics specializes in designing and delivering effective, comprehensive and integrated water programs, and is helping to show the way for a conservation focused approach to sustainable water managment.

For more information, see www.econnics.com or call +1 250 588 6851

Featured Presentation
The Institute for Research on Public Policy hosted a working lunch to discuss national water policy and BC's water plan with presentations by water experts Hans Schreier and Karen Bakker of the University of British Columbia and Oliver M Brandes of the WSP presenting "BC's Living Water Smart - Lessons for a National Strategy".

Susanne Porter-Bopp presented "Turning Innovative Water Conservation Planning Into Action" at the Canadian Water and Wastewater Association's 3rd Canadian National Conference and Policy Forum onWater Efficiency and Conservation in Victoria.

Don't forget to Check out the WaterSmart Scenario Builder Trial Version! Interested in a sustainable community water future? The WaterSmart Scenario Builder is a spreadsheet-based water soft path analysis tool that allows communities to determine the potential for water and energy savings