Date: Saturday, March 21st, 2009
Time: 7:00PM
Location: Trinity Western University – Northwest Auditorium 7600 Glover Road Langley, BC V2Y 1Y1 Canada

- Screening of FLOW: For the Love of Water

http://cannedcumulus.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/flow-719407.jpg

- Speech by Ken Baerg of Run for Water on his experiences abroad in Ethiopia working on water well projects. Jet Takoaka, Hope International’s Development Officer, will also be speaking.

- Additional speech by Dr. Raul Pacheco (He has 10 years of experience in research on wastewater governance, comparative environmental policy in North America, urban sustainability and environmental NGO mobilizations.)

- Free door prizes

- Opportunities to get involved with the global water crisis through OxFam Canada, TWU, Council of Canadians, Run for Water, Ryan’s Well Foundation and WaterDrop.

For more information please go to: WaterDrop.ca
Or contact us at info@waterdrop.ca
Or give us a call at 778.868.0776

Related posts:

1. World Water Day and “The Global Water Crisis” event by WaterDrop
2. World Water Day is March 22nd
3. Water scarcity – Saving the world one drop at a time

The concept of water stress (water extracted/demanded in relation to water that is really available) is a good metric to understand why we need to conserve water (and stop flushing so much water into the sewage streams!). In situations of high uncertainty, we need to ensure that the availability of water exceeds forecasted demands.

With growing population and increased demands on the precious liquid, the general feel I get from my conversations with the general public is that there is a broad perception that water is readily available in Canada. For the record, only 0.06% of the 2% of the global water availability is actually drinking water. The rest is neither readily available nor appropriate for human consumption.

This graph (the worldwide map of global water stress from the World Water Council) shows that North America actually has a high degree of water stress, despite conventional perceptions.

Source: World Water Council

My hope is that in the near future, the public will realize that 1 billion people lack access to improved water supplies (source: World Water Assessment, UNESCO) and that a global water balance is going to leave many millions of people without access to water while we waste it here in Canada shamelessly. Remember that nothing is local anymore, we need to think globally.

Related posts:

1. Water Drop: The Global Water Crisis on March 21st, 2009 – I’m speaking
2. Conserving water and the “Largest Water Fight” in Vancouver
3. Water footprint: A new tool to examine water scarcity and use

One of the benefits that I’ve gained from engaging with the social media community at large (I can no longer say I only engage with social media in Vancouver, as I have Twitter followers from all over the world) is that the terminology from one field (and the ideas) cross-pollinate other fields. That is the case with my research on water. The concept of echo chamber that has been coined in mainstream media and new media is very much applicable to social science research on water.

I can’t tell you how often I have read the same discussions over, and over, and over again. Water is scarce, we should learn how to manage the common pool resource, we need to design more robust institutions for water management, integrated watershed management is the way to go, etc. All of these are phrases that have become commonplace in the literature on water governance. I have gotten to a point where I feel as though there is an echo chamber in the social science literature on water research. I want the discussion to move forward!

Credit: Ankraut

Yes, I am frustrated. I am particularly frustrated because despite the fact that 2008 was the International Year of Sanitation, very little progress has been made. I would hope that in the near future, we learn more about how to advance the water research agenda. And yes, the phrase I wrote before still applies – before we learn how to govern water we need to learn how to govern ourselves.

Related posts:

1. My year in review – Water governance and policy research
2. World Water Day and “The Global Water Crisis” event by WaterDrop
3. Water footprint: A new tool to examine water scarcity and use

While I blogged WAY MORE about water this year than I have in the past, I didn’t do much in terms of research. I used the field research notes that I had accumulated during my almost three years of fieldwork on wastewater governance in Mexico (2004-2006) to produce one journal article (that actually was already accepted for publication in early 2007, so it shouldn’t really count).

But other than that, I haven’t done much with it. I gave a talk this summer on wastewater governance and watershed councils, and I received really good feedback. This feedback was so solid that I have decided to pursue independent projects on each one of the research streams that emanated from this talk.

One of the reasons why I think my involvement with the social media community has become part of a very successful cross-pollination process is that I’ve learned to use many Web 2.0 tools to strengthen my own findings, to advance my research agenda, and to make it easy for me to publish research thoughts in draft form that I may be able to polish in the future (much along the lines of what danah boyd does). Furthermore, I am also in talks with Rachel Black, who also does research on water, and I wouldn’t have met Rachel if it hadn’t been for Twitter (and Anthony Nicalo, as well).

Speaking of tools that make my life easier that I wouldn’t have come across if it hadn’t been for my involvement in the tech community, Blurb is an online (free) software that Arieanna and Colleen used (in the case of Arieanna to publish the photos from their trip to Europe, and Colleen to create a Christmas gift for their families).

I’ve been mulling over publishing one version of my book (in Spanish) on wastewater governance in Mexico (a book that I had finished writing in 2006, but with the further development of the International Year of Sanitation – which was 2008) using Blurb. Another method I’ve been considering is an on-demand press, as Beth Snow did with her first book).

I REALLY, REALLY want to have at least one volume of my book printed out by the end of 2008 so that I don’t feel so terribly lousy about not having done much with such a large body of work. I mean, it’s kind of stupid. I did compare the wastewater policies of five states (the Mexican equivalent to provinces) and I really should be able to produce more stuff (particularly in the English language journals).

If I manage to publish the book with Blurb, I’ll be VERY happy. I’ll let you guys know what I managed to do with that. Overall, my 2008 wasn’t all that bad for my water research. Learned about new topics, thought more about where my water research agenda will go, and used social media tools to strengthen my research. Good stuff.

Related posts:

1. The echo chamber in water research (social sciences)
2. The governance of wastewater and the culture of flushing
3. Dr. Pacheco’s 2010 Year in Review: Academia, Teaching and Research

Credit: Hypergurl on Flickr

JT and I had a chance to see the movie “Blue Gold: World Water Wars” thanks to an invite by the VIFF office. The film actually premiered at the Vancouver International Film Festival. Blue Gold is a documentary based on the work of Maude Barlow (National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians) and Tony Clarke, Director of the Polaris Institute. From the film’s website:

In every corner of the globe, we are polluting, diverting, pumping, and wasting our limited supply of fresh water at an expediential level as population and technology grows. The rampant overdevelopment of agriculture, housing and industry increase the demands for fresh water well beyond the finite supply, resulting in the desertification of the earth.

Corporate giants force developing countries to privatize their water supply for profit. Wall Street investors target desalination and mass bulk water export schemes. Corrupt governments use water for economic and political gain. Military control of water emerges and a new geo-political map and power structure forms, setting the stage for world water wars.

We follow numerous worldwide examples of people fighting for their basic right to water, from court cases to violent revolutions to U.N. conventions to revised constitutions to local protests at grade schools. As Maude Barlow proclaims, “This is our revolution, this is our war”. A line is crossed as water becomes a commodity. Will we survive?
[Blue Gold: World Water Wars]

The documentary, directed by Jim Bozzo, is very good, and I would recommend it for the general public, as it won an Environmental Film of the Year 2008 Award. Of course, for academics like me (who do research on water), nothing that was said in the film was new. I am well aware of the various debates around privatization, treating water both as a political resource and as a commodity and the discussion on tap water vs. bottled water consumption. I was actually kind of surprised that very little discussion was offered on water as a common pool resource and the problems created by having many users sharing access to dwindling supplies. But the truth is, the social issues surrounding water consumption and pollution are such vast topics, that no documentary can touch on everything.

While the topic of water quality was discussed, neither the documentary narrators nor the interviewees really got into deep discussions of issues of water quality and wastewater management. This was kind of disappointing, as any discussions of the hydrological cycle SHOULD include a mass balance of water AND wastewater. It’s clear that the focus of the film was pretty much the privatization debate and the grassroots battles against corporate acquisition of water.

At the end of the movie, there is some (albeit not extensive) coverage of very important issues: the right to water and the concept of virtual water. While very little support has been given worlwide to a universal right to water, I would think that the recent appointment of Ms. Barlow as Senior Water Advisor to the President of the 63rd U.N. General Assembly may actually increase the visibility of the issue of a right to water.

For a layperson audience, this is a very good film to watch, although I also would recommend additional reading. I would be remiss if I didn’t recommend my own writing on wastewater policy, water governance and the proposed banning of bottled water in Vancouver.

Here is the trailer. Blue Gold: World Water Wars is showing at the Vancity Theatre (1181 Seymour) December 12-18 in the following schedules: Fri 7:00 pm, Sat 9:00 pm, Sun 7:00 pm, Mon 9:00 pm, Tues 7:00 pm, Weds 9:00 pm, Thurs 7:00 pm

Check it out before Thursday Dec 18th, I’d recommend to watch the double feature (e.g. Blue Gold and Flow).

Related posts:

1. Blue Gold (2009) – Salt Spring Island Documentary Film Festival 2011
2. Happy Belated World Water Day 2008
3. World Water Day and “The Global Water Crisis” event by WaterDrop

Although I’ve seen reports by some scientists that this effluent has no negative impact whatsoever (a concept very much in line with the old US Environmental Protection Agency saying “the solution to pollution is dilution“), I am somewhat skeptical and thus would like to explore this issue more. One of my former undergraduate students wrote her term paper about this topic but that was a year and a half ago, so I’m looking to actually do this research on my own.

If you live in Victoria (or in Vancouver Island) and know of some people who’d be interested in sharing their opinions, please feel free to forward this post and/or give them my email address (hummingbird604 AT gmail.com).

[One of the things I love about Twitter and blogging is that I can reach far more people using Web 2.0 tools than I could by just using plain old cold calling or emails]

Related posts:

1. The governance of wastewater and the culture of flushing
2. The International Year of Sanitation was 2008 – how much progress have we made?
3. Get-away to Victoria (even if only for one day)

Credit: Stuck in Customs

When I see how little do people think about wastewater and the right of humans to clean water, sometimes I wish I didn’t do research on wastewater governance. Admittedly, I was entirely thrilled at the beginning of the year, as the UN had announced that 2008 would be the International Year of Sanitation.

However, as time has gone by, I have begun to wonder (and a recent tweet by my friend Nadia Nascimento) made me dig a bit deeper in my archives.

Well, I can’t say that there’s been much progress. The “culture of flushing” still seems quite prevalent, and the only recent local news story about water pollution that I read was related to a Langley mushroom farm. Um, do people in Vancouver really think that we have made great strides in the way we manage our wastewater. I sure hope they don’t. Because if they do, they’re in for a big surprise.

I’m going to embark in doing some serious research on local (Metro Vancouver) wastewater governance and I’ll report back with some of my results. In the mean time, I should just say that if you want to be more environmentally conscious, you should make efforts in reducing the amount of wastewater you generate.

Related posts:

1. My year in review – Water governance and policy research
2. Opinions on wastewater treatment plant in Victoria
3. Movie review: Blue Gold: World Water Wars (2008)

Being an academic and a blogger, I look at issues through research-trained eyes, and the whole discussion on banning bottled water in Vancouver is one of those debates that attract me. I am hoping to do some research about it in the short term future.

Photo credit: Ianiv and Arieanna

I am particularly drawn to water issues as I’ve done research both in the environmental engineering field (building wastewater treatment plants) and in the environmental studies field (studying water governance and policy). I am trained to examine problems from the social sciences AND natural sciences/engineering lenses.

A few weeks back, Duane kindly invited me to guest post on his blog. We were doing Blogathon and my post examined very briefly the debate on water privatization, but I didn’t delve in depth.

The whole banning bottled water debate in Vancouver touches on two issues. One of them, the commodification and privatization of water. The other one is the potential health-associated risk of consuming water from the tap. Both of these issues would give me enough material to start a new blog. However, I’m going to just focus on one small sub-issue: bottling water for sale and redistribution (and the health effects associated).

We often (but not always) consume bottled water because we feel safer. Sometimes we consume bottled water simply because we don’t have access to tap water at the moment. There are different rationales. However, one associated (implicit) benefit is that we don’t need to worry about our safety and health if we consume bottled water. Is our tap water really all that bad?

When I worked as an environmental engineer, I would get stomach illnesses whenever I would be exposed to wastewater streams. But I have never gotten sick from consuming water from the tap (neither in Mexico nor in Canada). I know, the whole “revenge of Montezuma” joke is based on a perception that potable water in Mexico is really polluted and thus every foreign visitor will get stomach cramps or get ill when visiting if they consume water from the tap. But it has never happened to me (not even now that I’m visiting).

Metro Vancouver is undertaking a project to have people pledge to consume only tap water and reduce the number of plastic water bottles thrown into landfills. I have to say that I wholeheartedly support this initiative. From their website:

Why Metro Vancouver has a Tap Water Pledge
* Metro is committed to reducing bottled water use by 20% by 2010 to reduce the environmental impact of bottled water
* Millions of single-use plastic water bottles (one litre or smaller) ended up in our region’s landfills in 2007
* We want to provide a tangible way residents to support a sustainable practice – using refillable water containers instead of single-use plastic water bottles

[Metro Vancouver: Take the Tap Water Pledge]

The Tap Water Pledge page has information on health risks associated with water, fast facts, etc. that are aimed to help the public understand the rationale behind the project. Interestingly enough, I didn’t find data on the worldwide consumption of bottled water in comparison to Canada and/or Vancouver. I think this would be a broader perspective. From the IBWA statistics page, their 2007 stats report, I found out that Mexico is the second largest consumer of bottled water in the world, with 54.1 gallons per capita (but is this figure per year, per month? If one drinks one litre of water a day, how many gallons is that a year? I hate websites with poor statistics!)

Now, from a social media perspective, I have to say that while I think the page is a good resource, I would probably take a much more “public understanding of science” approach to it. I have to say that it would be fun to undertake this type of project, and it would merge Web 2.0 with sustainability research…. Hmm… good idea!

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: For some statistics on bottled water consumption, the International Bottled Water Association has some data. But I couldn’t find anything on Canada. Frustrating.

Related posts:

1. The Red Room, bottled water and bar-hopping
2. Conserving water and the “Largest Water Fight” in Vancouver
3. Water stress: Beyond water availability

Water is a topic that I’m actually rather passionate about (and I’ve previously written about it, like my discussion of the culture of flushing and the concept of water governance). I love researching it and writing about it, particularly because a professor whom I really respect a lot (part of my doctoral committe) told me that the two issues he saw were going to be the most important in the future were water and energy issues. I came across the concept of water footprint via the Max Gladwell blog (actually their twitter account – Hat tips to Max Gladwell!).

What is the water footprint? Well, I am guessing it is modelled after the ecological footprint that Mathis Wackernagel and Bill Rees coined in 1992. The website WaterFootprint.org defines:

The water footprint is an indicator of water use that looks at both direct and indirect water use of a consumer or producer. The water footprint of an individual, community or business is defined as the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual or community or produced by the business. Water use is measured in terms of water volumes consumed (evaporated) and/or polluted per unit of time. A water footprint can be calculated for any well-defined group of consumers (e.g. an individual, family, village, city, province, state or nation) or producers (e.g. a public organization, private enterprise or economic sector). The water footprint is a geographically explicit indicator, not only showing volumes of water use and pollution, but also the locations.[Water Footprint.Org]

It’s an interesting concept, particularly when we apply it to our day-to-day staples, like a cup of coffee (that according to calculations by Hoekstra and Chapagain is about 140 litres of water per cup). As indicated by the Environmental News Network, the concept of water footprint gaining adepts. I was kind of pleased to find that the writer of the ENN article was associated with the World Resources Institute (WRI). One of my very best and closest friends is also associated with WRI as he did a post-doc there, and their datasets on water are some of the finest that I have encountered. Truly speaking, I would not mind doing a post-doc there.

I would like to know if any of my readers actually thinks much about his/her water consumption patterns. Do you ever think about your water footprint or your ecological footprint?

Related posts:

1. Water stress: Beyond water availability
2. The water footprint of tea
3. World Water Day 2007 – Coping with water scarcity

I was going to leave this post all the way until Blogathon, but Arieanna’s recent post on “Canada, the water” reminded me of the relevance of understanding how water supplies and water management works (great post Arieanna by the way). Arieanna’s post calls attention to the fact that the bottled water being sold at Whole Foods was pretty much targeted towards tourist buyers.

Photo credit: Ianiv and Arieanna on Flickr

What worries me a bit more is not so much the privatization and commodification of water, but the misconceptions of water availability on this planet. According to the 2nd. United Nations Word Water Report, between 25 and 40% of the world’s drinking water comes from ground sources (groundwater).

This fact should be scary to people, but I’m not sure that people who live in Canada and particularly British Columbia (since we are so well served by our watersheds and local reservoirs) realize the degree of water scarcity that pervades the world, even if there is a generalized perception that . Therefore, it’s not hard to think that many people have a reason to be rightfully annoyed by the increasing privatization of water supplies.

Given the investment and capital costs that need to be covered in order to provide groundwater for drinking purposes, I would imagine that people would be cognizant of water scarcity and avoid increasing demand on water reserves, both by conserving water and by recycling grey water. In one of my research projects, I have looked at the use of common pool resource (CPR) theory to try and understand the conflicts amongst two communities who share and access the same aquifer (in Mexico).

The nature of public accessibility of aquifers makes them an excellent laboratory to study the behavior of communities who have to share a common resource that can be depleted if inappropriately managed. The purpose of my post was (as subtly suggested in the header) to indicate that in order to appropriately manage or govern water, we need to first learn to govern ourselves and control our natural consumptive instinct, in order to avoid depletion of our water reserves. Will we be able to do that? And how can we increase the visibility of the challenges of governing water when we can clearly see that other issues (such as climate change) are so high up in the environmental agenda in Canada?

More resources and materials for reading:

- The World Water Assessment Project page – Provides lots of information and good statistics. The UNESCO International Hydrological Programme is currently putting together the 3rd World Water Report.

- CBC Series on Water – While I am VERY weary of pointing people out to media sources instead of academic sources, I kind of liked this series.

- The National Water Research Institute of Environment Canada – Basically focuses on freshwater, but a good resource nonetheless.

- The International Water Resources Association (IWRA).

Related posts:

1. World Water Day and “The Global Water Crisis” event by WaterDrop
2. The echo chamber in water research (social sciences)
3. Water stress: Beyond water availability

Photo credit: The Joy of the Mundane

I know that I have always chosen difficult and non-explored questions for my own research, and in this regard, I have created some sort of a niche because very few people study the governance of wastewater. Amongst those very few Canadian scholars who have done work in wastewater and that I know of are Dr. Arn Keeling (whose PhD dissertation was an environmental history of wastewater in Vancouver) and Dr. Jaimie Benidickson (whose book, “The Culture of Flushing“, is a great environmental and social history of flushing in Canada, the United States and Great Britain).

My own work hasn’t dealt with Canadian wastewater, but I do have a fairly solid understanding of the way things work here. I am sure you’ll find it appalling that the city of Victoria, the capital of the province of British Columbia, does NOT have a wastewater treatment plant. The effluent comes straight into the ocean (with some preliminary screening).

A recent post by Matt Collinge about water quality in False Creek reminded me of how little do people in Vancouver AND in Canada think about wastewater. This is something that is prevalent at the larger scale. Professor Dickinson indicates that this is part of “the culture of flushing”, or what I often call, the OOSOOM phenomenon (out of sight, out of mind).

One of my personal pet peeves is that both scholars and non-academics in Canada are SO focused on climate change issues that sometimes they forget other environmental problems that have NOT been solved, including solid waste management (Vancouver’s landfill is about to be entirely full) and wastewater management (we are nowhere near some of the developing countries’ technologies for wastewater treatment, hard to believe as that may be).

My research focus in the area of water policy (I’ve done research in other areas) has examined primarily the role of institutions and the types of rules found in wastewater governance, and the role of watershed councils in strengthening sanitation policy. I found, after that presentation, and having had discussions with other scholars, that I will have to pursue two separate agendas in the future: one on wastewater governance itself and one on watershed councils, and I am very excited about this.

I am curious to know if my readers do think about water scarcity more than they think about what happens once they flush the toilet. Or does even water come into their minds, with so much focus on climate change issues? What do you think?

Related posts:

1. My year in review – Water governance and policy research
2. Opinions on wastewater treatment plant in Victoria
3. The echo chamber in water research (social sciences)