Full program - International Institute for Sustainable Development

Presenters’ Abstracts
Phil Adkins
Acting Manager of Ag-Water Directorate, AAFC-PRFA
Prairie Water Partnerships in Governance
The governance of water on the prairies is driven by necessity in the semi-arid agricultural regions
where the human population places high demands on a limited resource. The Prairie Farm
Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA), as a federal agency with prairie regional responsibilities,
has worked in partnership with the three prairie provinces, in a non-regulatory resource
care/developmental role since 1935. One of the highlights of water governance on the prairies is
the Prairie Provinces Water Board (PPWB) which was established in 1948. The Board is made
up of representatives from each province, Environment Canada and PFRA.
There is a gap in our institutional framework to address the strong interdependence between
water and agriculture. Employing the principles of Integrated Water Resource Management will
help address this gap, and be important to overall prairie water governance, as we adapt to increasing
climate variability and its affects.
Kevin Cash
Chief, Ecological Sciences Division, Environment Canada, Prairie and Northern Region
Water Quality in the Lake Winnipeg Watershed
The Lake Winnipeg watershed is faced with a vast array of environmental issues including water
availability (too much and too little); water quality; habitat fragmentation; wildlife and habitat
loss (e.g., wetlands and uplands); invasive species; wildlife disease; genetic pollution; degraded
freshwater fisheries and fish habitat; municipal water and urban sprawl; climate change; and flow
regulation. The federal government has a wide variety of interests that relate to the long-term sustainability
of the water resources within the inter-jurisdictional Lake Winnipeg Watershed and of
Lake Winnipeg. Actions are required to restore Lake Winnipeg whilst providing economic opportunities
and social benefits without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems. It also
acknowledges that sound knowledge about the watershed resources and ecological processes is a
pre-requisite to sound decision-making. This presentation will describe Environment Canada’s
current water quality program within the basin and will briefly outline a proposed path forward
to provide the science understanding required for effective management of this system.
Roger Gibbins
President and CEO, Canada West Foundation
Urbanization: Physical Realities and Policy Trajectories
Urbanization is both an established feature of, and an unrelenting trend on, the prairie landscape.
At the same time, potential water shortages are a growing trend across the prairie west. However,
the relationship between urbanization and looming water shortages is complex. For the most part,
cities are efficient consumers of water, and thus the impact of urbanization on water shortages may
be less than the impact of water shortages on urbanization. In the short term, the greatest impact
of urbanization may come from their growing demographic and political clout; the impact of what
we do in the cities with respect to water conservation may have less to do with the physical realities
of water shortages than it will with respect to the public policy frameworks through which we
will address more contentious and problematic water issues.