What is water's dollar value to the Canadian economy?

Image credit: http://blue-economy.ca/

The question above was partially answered by a research project called the Blue Economy Initiative involving a team of authors from the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation, Canadian Water Network and RBC Blue Water Project.

Among the impressive list of authors is Professor Steven Renzetti, an environmental economist and one of Canada's biggest thinkers on the economics of water. You can read a summary here, which features an interview between Water Canada and Professor Renzetti. The report finds that water is responsible for a contribution to Canada's economy of between $7.8 and $22.9 billion.

Here is an excerpt from the interview:

"We just don’t know what the value of water is in Canada today. That’s the biggest concern. We’re making decisions on public capital and infrastructure and improving water quality, but we don’t have enough information to determine whether these decisions are sound. As usual, it’s a typical academic result in that we don’t know enough and we should.

To promote dialogue about how water contributes to the economy, people need to understand the wide range of ways from which we derive benefits from it. We need to have more experience and knowledge on measuring these values so we can incorporate them into decision making and protect the resource. Another worry is that we’re falling behind. When you look at places such as the European Union and China, they have large research programs aimed at informing decision makers about biodiversity and ecosystems. Here, we have lots of scientists worrying about the chemical and physical natures of water, but we don’t know about its economical nature. It means we’re not going to make good decisions".

Read the full interview here.

Water auctions and participatory water management

An excellent article by Abraham Abhishek on innovative ways to improve water management. Some highlights from the post:

"The Umatilla County Critical Groundwater Solutions Taskforce in Oregon, United States is a body that represents government officials, scientists and (perhaps most importantly) various communities and native tribes in the county. It was formed in response to a dual crisis - rapidly depleting groundwater, and impending conflict amongst various users in the county and neighbouring areas. The taskforce enabled water users and technocrats to work together, which resulted in comprehensive planning and effective implementation of groundwater management activities".

"the proposed water auction mechanism and the observed water management system—seem to make at least one common suggestion: that water security demands efficient water management, which should be based on decentralized decision making. All-in-auctions run counter to the more centralized processes of reallocating water rights, represented by quotas and subsidies. Umatilla-like participatory planning and outreach brings water governance a notch closer to the end users".

Full article here.

Public Perceptions on Water Issues in British Columbia

For the past two months I have been blogging for the Adaptation to Climate Change Team out of Simon Fraser University (SFU). As part of my internship with them, I have been blogging about Bob Sandford's cross-Canada tour where he has been presenting on the need for strong water governance and water policy reform in this country. Bob has been touring for almost two months now visiting the Prairies, Maritimes, Ontario, Quebec, BC, and Alberta. He is a water policy author for the Adaptation to Climate Change Team.

You can read my blog posts on the tour stops in Vancouver (summary of the presentation here, reactions from the audience here). And for Victoria (summary of the presentation here and reactions from the crowd here).

In short, the presentations in Vancouver and Victoria focused on a number of issues in water management centred on BC's Water Act Modernization Process and the exemplary water strategy in the Northwest Territories that should act as a resource for cities across the country.

Happy reading.

Ontario's leadership in Water Conservation

For the past month I have been blogging for the Adaptation to Climate Change Team out of Simon Fraser University (SFU). As part of my internship with them, I have been blogging about Bob Sandford's cross-Canada tour on Canadian water governance. Bob has been touring for a month now visiting the Prairies, Maritimes, Ontario and now BC. He is a water policy author for the Adaptation to Climate Change Team.

Here is the first post on Saskatchewan. Here is the latest post on Ontario.

Happy reading.

Climate Change Adaptation and Water Governance report

In May 2011, I started an internship with the Adaptation to Climate Change Team (ACT) out of SFU. One of my job responsibilities was to review and provide on-going feedback to the Climate Change Adaptation and Water Governance report led by policy author Bob Sandford. After months of revisions and feedback from several professionals, academics and students working in the field of climate change adaptation, ACT released the finalized version of the report on Tuesday October 4th. Here is a snapshot of it:

“The days when Canadians take an endless abundance of fresh water for granted are numbered,” warns Bob Sandford, lead author of ACT’s new report Climate Change Adaptation and Water Governance. “Increasing average temperatures, climate change impacts on weather patterns and extensive changes in land use are seriously affecting the way water moves through the hydrological cycle in many parts of Canada, which is seriously impacting water quantity and quality."

“The reform of water governance structures in Canada is essential if we want to successfully manage and protect our water supplies and minimize climate-related impacts on our environment, our economy and our society,” says Sandford."

To inquire about more details of the report along with some of the work I have been doing over the past 5 months, see here.

An Integrated Planning Approach to Climate Change Adaptation

I will be presenting my research at the Eighth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic and Social Sustainability in January 2012. The conference will be held at the Robson Square, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada from 10 to 12 January 2012.

My title is "An Integrated Planning Approach to Climate Change Adaptation: Exploring the Water Sector in Canada". My abstract is below and has been slightly revised since. But here is the gist:

Through my internship with the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, I have been exploring strategies and best practices surrounding climate change adaptation in the water sector in Canada and abroad. Interest in adaptation could not come at a more important time as various academics and practitioners are pressuring the Canadian government to reconsider a more holistic and robust water policy. Given the complexity and uncertainty surrounding climate change, adaptation must take a holistic and pro-active approach to consider environmental and economic strategies that will help us adapt today to bring a more promising tomorrow. Through a literature review, content analysis, and the use of social media, my project develops a planning guide based on best practices in the water sector that the federal government could use to make decisions on how fund or assist communities with their adaptation plans.

The intended results are to complement the growing national movement calling for a Canadian water policy. Through contacting professionals in the water field along with raising awareness of the value of water through social media, this project will engage various perspectives and beliefs - all of which are critical for creating robust adaptation plans with a supportive national water policy.

Coping with a drought in Central Texas

This article from the NY Times tells a story of how Llano, Texas is coping with a water drought.

"Government has always had a hard time telling Texans how to live. But the ban on most types of outdoor watering has been embraced by people in Llano, where a kind of World War II-era rationing spirit has become a way of life."

Residents are taking several innovative steps to conserve water and make use with as little as possible. Alas, there is no discussion about water pricing. Texas, like many southern states, is subject to droughts. Implementing pricing measures to reflect water scarcity would go a long way in helping communities like Llano adapt to climate change. All this would mean is that when there are droughts and water supplies are limited, a pricing structure would be in place to reflect how much water there is. As droughts portend limited water, prices would be high and would theoretically send a signal to households to use less.

$20 million for water research in Southern Ontario

A couple of days ago, the University of Toronto announced that the Southern Ontario Water Consortium (composed of many diverse groups and individuals including U of T researchers) will be receiving $19.58 million from the federal government. FedDev Ontario, an agency created in 2009 as part of Canada’s Economic Action Plan, was the agency that informed U of T of the grant.

"The funding will allow the Southern Ontario Water Consortium to build an integrated system for the development, testing and demonstration of new market-driven water technologies and services, primarily along the Grand River and adjacent watersheds".

This is important because the money will, among other things, help U of T researchers develop technologies to treat and improve water quality. Enviro Boys has blogged about water quality before,  discussing the emerging contaminants of concern including pharmaceuticals, personal care products (deodorant, soap, shampoo, perfume etc.) and illicit drugs which have and continue to worry many public health experts.

With the $20 million grant, Professor Andrews and his team at U of T will be to further develop advanced oxidation technologies to treat the aforementioned compounds. Improving water quality and enhancing dis-infecting technologies, are critical for water systems and for ensuring that the water we drink is safe. Their research is applied driven; the results will be shared with municipalities in Ontario and the province with the intention of improving current standards and targets for water quality. You can find out more about this through viewing the video below. This news really excites me (as a water nerd) but should excite everyone who appreciates the great water we enjoy in Southern Ontario.


Interview with Professor Robert Andrews, U of T from U of T Engineering on Vimeo.

Using RCTs for Water Research

RCTs refer to Randomized Control Trials, a powerful statistical tool that has been used by the medical profession for quite some time. I am currently reading a book called "Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty" by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. These MIT researchers (both development economists) are using RCTs in a lot of the research they do on poverty.

One example of an RCT experiment is giving computers to kids in school to see if it improves their overall learning and educational experience. The example provided is that 100 schools are randomly selected. 50 are given computers (treatment group) 50 are not (control). Banerjee asks "if we find that the schools where children did have access to a computer did in fact learn more, does this mean it's because of the computers that they learned more, or is it because the government gave the computers to the schools where the students were more enthusiastic and were more interested, and that's why the kids learned more?

Banerjee says that one can easily conflate reasons for why children are doing better now because they received computers. But what randomized control does is it solves that problem of inference. It basically says: with this school and that other school, all the names of the students are put into a hat and we draw out 50 of their names at random. And so the schools that did get the computers are chosen at random, and that gives you the advantage that you can compare the two groups. There's no difference between them; decide by lottery which will be in each group. 100 is a smaller sample size but nonetheless, the idea is randomization which helps minimize selection bias.

There is a lot more sophistication to these experiments which you read about here. As someone who is learning more about statistics everyday and starting to appreciate them for their ability to produce policy recommendations,  RCTs are certainly worth exploring beyond the medical field or international development. Indeed, water researchers can certainly use them. Suppose we wanted to use water meters as an intervention in a community to test whether meters help cut down on household water consumption. Meters are expensive to install and are politically and socially unpopular and some argue they don't even cut down on water consumption. Thus, doing an RCT to evaluate their effectiveness merits consideration. If our sample was 2000 community members (all with different socio-economic backgrounds), we could randomly select 1000 people for the trial (like pulling names out of a hat). The other 1000 would be homes that do not receive water meters so we can compare the two.

You would probably have to wait a few months for the meters to be fully installed, but this intervention (while not as interesting or significant as a drug experiment by the FDA or an experiment by Banerjee and Duflo), would still help decision-makers understand the effect of the meters on water consumption. The intervention might show us that water consumption has gone done considerably and because we have randomized the population (litterally by doing a coin toss) we can have a better idea of the effect of this intervention. Not that meters cause consumption to go down, but help give us more reliable information.

Every method of research has its limitations, but the more we can do to minimize biases, the more influential and cogent our recommendations will be for policymakers (whether it's water meters or computers in schools in developing countries).

Short video on NYC's water supply system

The YouTube video above provides a short (but comprehensive) overview of NYC's water supply system; where it comes from, how it's distributed, how a majority of the water is unfiltered and what steps PlaNYC is taking to protect its water supply from contamination. Despite NYC's water abundance, it's important to keep in mind that conservation initiatives (public education and water metering) should be critical components of its planning process and vision.

It would great to see other videos on other cities' water supply systems such as the one above. I would personally like to see one of Vancouver and Toronto. Short videos like these can go a long way in building awareness of a city's water system and the programs, risks and policies that should be known by residents.

Water's connection to climate change adaptation

This summer I have been working as an intern with the Adaptation to Climate Change Team (ACT) based out of Simon Fraser University's Public Policy School. 

"ACT is a five-year series of six-month sessions on top-of-mind climate change issues that brings leading experts from around the world together with industry, community and government decision-makers to explore the risks and generate recommendations for sustainable adaptation".

Among many of the climate change topic areas (biodiversity, energy, extreme weather), I have had the fortune of working on the water session. This particular session focuses on water governance and water policy in Canada and how our governments (municipal, provincial and federal) can start working toward policy that is based on adaptation to climate change. Certain places have been more progressive than others - my job is to investigate why and how such critical lessons can be applied across the country.

What does adaptation mean, exactly? Well, in the climate change world, there are two really popular words that are thrown around; these include "mitigation" and "adaptation". Both words became quite popular when British economist Nicholas Stern released his 700 page report on the economics of climate change in October 2006.

In short, Stern argued that we can mitigate greenhouse gas emissions through policies that support the development of a range of low-carbon and high-efficiency technologies. Further, we could use economic instruments such as carbon pricing, taxes and cap-and-trade to alleviate emissions. Adaptation by contrast (which has been less popular but is now emerging) is an approach where institutions can invest in technologies, systems and ideas that help us prepare for the impacts of climate change. These adaptation solutions are diverse but can be as simple as more efficient air conditioners that alleviate the impacts of heat waves, or floatable homes that, in the event of a flood, do not sink or lose their structural integrity. For those who are interested in the economics of climate change adaptation, please read Matt Kahn's Climatopolis.

Enviro Boys has written about adaptation in the past and will continue to do in the future given the salience of climate change. But from a water perspective, and based on what I am learning through my work, adaptation strategies such as water conservation or natural flood control tactics, while having higher upfront investment costs, the benefits and future returns on lessening the impacts of droughts, floods or even heat waves can be immense. In addition, getting people to think about the impacts of climate change can foster a collective and community oriented approach where groups think of creative solutions and where businesses and entrepreneurs start to innovate in response to the demand created.

More to come on how governments in Canada are thinking about this and what the opportunities are from a water policy and governance perspective.

David Zetland's new book: The End of Abundance

David Zetland's new book "The End of Abundance: economic solutions to water scarcity" is now available.

I have ordered my copy and look forward to reading it.

Our blog has been lucky to benefit from David Zetland and his blog Aguanomics over the past two years. David wrote a guest post for us a year ago and has continued to provide academic and blogging tips to me personally. He has been incredibly insightful on all things water (especially water policy and the economics of water). He kindly offered some tips and suggestions for a conference presentation I made in February of this year along with a research project on groundwater management in Andhra Pradesh.

David has been great and his writing has certainly helped shape my perspective on water policy, planning, governance and management.

For more information about his book, see here. Book review on "The End of Abundance" forthcoming.

The problem of water leakage

Water leakage is a significant problem in the developing and developed world alike. When water is pumped into the system, being transported from a water treatment plant to your home, a percentage of it is lost due to cracked or corroded service pipes or aging distribution pipes.  In the City of Lagos, Nigeria, a significant amount of the water pumped into the distribution system is lost to leaks, theft or non-payment. There are debates about how much water is lost, but ostensibly, it is as much as 85%. Other water supply systems face similar challenges particularly when it comes to leaks. When water systems leak, not only is water wasted and lost, but energy is wasted because it takes energy to move water in and around our cities.

Tokyo, by contrast, has one of the most efficient water systems in the world. Through efficient approaches of detecting and repairing leaks, the city has reduced the amount of water wasted in the past ten years from 150 million cubic meters of water to 68 million cubic meters of water.

From a technological perspective, Tokyo uses a computerized system that calculates and gathers whole information on leakages by computer such as the causes, details of each repair work, the cost for repairs. Such progress on water leak reduction can be seen as a climate change adaptation strategy. Climate change brings with it a number of uncertainties around water supply. In general, it is expected that as climate change unfolds, there will be more demand for water and hence more pressure on water infrastructure systems. With Tokyo's pro-active approach to water management such as repairing water leaks annually, their water infrastructure is already becoming more efficient and will be more resilient to climate change impacts in the future.

Read more here.

Water as the next oil?

In light of my recent presentation on water markets and trading, I would encourage you to read a Freakonomics guest post by Charles Fishman titled "Why Water Will Never Be the Next Oil". In this post, Fishman argues that we've hardly seen any innovation or progress in the water sector over the past 30 years including water markets, technology and infrastructure. The chief reason? We still do not understand the true value of water. Oil, by contrast, is the world's most liquid commodity market with a clear market price; while this resource has severe social, economic and environmental ramifications, it has a transparent price that markets and governments can respond to.

Water still has a long way to go in establishing a price -- not least for its scarcity value -- but also so people do not use the resource profligately. Fishman makes insightful comments in his post and also comments on water markets. I agree with him for the most part, but I think he is wrong to say that we have hardly seen any innovation in the water world.

On the supply side of water, desalination has been taking off in parts of the world.  By no means is desalination the solution to our global water challenges; it's very energy intensive and can disrupt aquatic ecosystems. But, it is helping countries like Australia and Israel with their water shortages. I am a firm believer in the demand side solutions to water and there have been many of them. The case study project I did on Andhra Pradesh has proven that education, capacity building and leadership can lead to innovation in the conservation and management of water resources.

Water markets and pricing are other forms of demand side solutions that can help jurisdictions around the world conserve their water resources and distribute it more equitably. This, alas, is not always the case, as rapacity, corruption and water profitability can erode a government's goal of reaching better water management.

Either way, I fervently believe that we'll see lots of water innovation in the coming future. At the heart of this innovation we should ask ourselves how our "efficiency" improvements can also lead to "equity" improvements so that we can get one step closer in alleviating the dismal statistic of poor water access, that is, "one out of 6 people lack access to clean drinking water". This will be challenging but I hope we'll see change in my lifetime.

Water Markets and Trading

I recently delivered a presentation on water markets and trading in my class "planning for water resource management". Students in my class presented on a number of different topics from wastewater treatment in Vancouver and Singapore to water challenges in the Yucatan Peninsula.

My topic focused on the proposal of water markets as an economic efficiency tool in British Columbia's soon to be revised water act. I discussed how water markets work and how they might function in certain places in the province such as the Okanagan. You can view my presentation slide show here, and my summary here.

Below is a word cloud I created using this really neat and free tool called "wordle". The cloud below is an illustration of the words that represent my presentation on water markets and trading.

Happy World Water Day!

This is our 401st post. We want to thank everyone who has taken the time to read, comment and contribute to Enviro Boys over the past two years. It has been real fun side project for the both of us (or as Chris says, "blogospheric experiment") and we hope to continue it going for years to come.

For the past two years, I have written a post on World Water Day (for 2009 see here, for 2010 see here). I have taken the time to sit down and reflect about how lucky I am to be living in a country where clean and affordable water is readily available by the turn of the tap. A feeling of fortune that the water managers and politicians who make decisions about water distribution, treatment, pricing and policy are all somewhat competent at their tasks to ensure that residents receive the water they need.

I also recognize the tremendous equity issues surrounding this fundamental resource. According to the UN, 2.8 million people die every year due to problems with poor water supply, sanitation and hygiene. Worse yet, 2.6 billion people are living without improved access to sanitation facilities. This amounts to a situation where water is simply not treated well and leads to serious water related illnesses including cholera and typhoid fever, for example, due to contaminated water.

Even closer to home we have many First Nations communities that are on boiling water advisories due to poorly treated water. If not boiling water advisories than it's bottled water which is not only an incredibly wasteful resource, but one that is expensive and inexcusable for a country that treats water relatively well. On the quantity front, residents of Vancouver (the city I am currently living in) consume much more potable water per capita than most urban centres in Canada; the average Vancouverite uses approximately 100 litres more per day at home. The Canadian average is about 343 litres per person per day which is 1.5 times more than Europe's residential water consumption.

These are a just a few facts and are not meant to paint a dismal picture. I refer to them to illustrate how critical this resource is to our existence and how unevenly distributed it is globally. We are fortunate in this country to have clean water and should take a moment to be thankful for that. But at the same time we should be asking ourselves what our level of knowledge is about water not only globally but locally. Do you know where your water comes from, where it is treated, how it is priced, the sorts of organizations that work on education and advocacy efforts? If not, it wouldn't hurt to learn. A good starting point to learn about water in Canada is here.

I wrote my honour's thesis on the topic of water. I am taking a graduate level course on water management and planning and I continue to love the resource (other than just academic contexts) for its beauty, its ability to keep me alive and for the aquatic ecosystems it supports.

Happy World Water Day!

Guest Post for Aguanomics

Check out my guest post for David Zetland's Aguanomics blog. It's co-authored by me and my friend, Erik.

"Over the past two months, we have had the fortune of researching an innovative and highly participatory project in one of our graduate courses at the School of Community and Regional Planning. Both of us had an interest in exploring groundwater in the developing world and were fortunate to stumble across an article in the Economist magazine entitled “Making Farmers Matter” with a focus on India. Why India you may ask? India is the world’s largest user of groundwater with an estimated 22 million wells. As Steven Solomon writes in his newest book, “in India's breadbaskets of Punjab and Haryana, the water tables are falling over three feet per year; monitored wells in the western state of Gujarat show a fall in the water table from 50 feet to over 1,300 feet in thirty years”. India accounts for 25% of the world’s total groundwater draw. Interested in more statistics?"

Read the whole post here.

Applying a water market system to restore an ecosystem

My friend DM, shared this video with me. It's an inspiring story about how farmers, industry and citizens have an incentive to conserve the amount of water they use and return it to degraded ecosystems (e.g. streams and creeks) that have seen water levels drop over the years. For years, senior water rights in places like Montana have allowed right holders to use copious amounts of water. Why wouldn't they use lots of water? If they don't use the water, they risk losing their water right. Talk about incentive to conserve!

Rob Harmon is now working with farmers to measure water and divide it into one thousand increments, each increment gets a serial number and a certificate. The brewers in the area are worried about their "water footprints" and branding images. They use a lot of water and need some mechanism to return it back to the ecosystem. So they buy those certificates to restore water to the ecosystem.

The market-based system developed by Rob Harmon is based on the utilization of incentives and providing the right information to water users about how they can save money and restore ecosystem integrity.

Steven Solomon and Water Scarcity

Steven Solomon is a journalist who has written for the New York Times, Business Week and the Economist. He recently published a book called "Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power and Civilization." The book is a comprehensive history of how various civilizations have built water projects, managed water resources and delivered these resources to the people. In short, it's about water management. I read the book this past December and enjoyed it very much. I was thinking of writing a book review for it but due to the hectic and busy nature of my schedule right now, I don't have time. Luckily, David Zetland of Aguanomics found time to write a really thorough and informative review of Steven Solomon's book. You can see his review here. Below is an excerpt from David's review:

"Although I enjoyed the historical narrative in Water, I was less-compelled by Solomon's thesis, that success and failure is determined by good water management. Yes, of course, good water management is necessary for continued success, but it is not sufficient.* Success and failure can come from many directions (poor leadership, for example). It would perhaps be more correct to claim that civilizations with good governance also manage water well".

The final section of Solomon's book is about the age of water scarcity which is a more contemporary outlook on how water policy and governance are playing out internationally. There are indeed many water challenges such as the ones he speaks about in the video above. Don't, however, be discouraged by the forthcoming challenges around water and climate change. There is a lot of work to be done. The first step is to start learning about the nature of the water problem; the second, well, I will leave that to you. Read the book if you get around to it.

I finally get charged for water. But you'd never guess from who...

When you live on a bike, you drink a lot of water. Because (most) bikes aren't hooked up to a stable water supply, one needs to refill quite often. As I travel around the United States, it hasn't be as difficult to get my hands on clean, fresh water as I had initially predicted. Even in the most remote of areas, water holes exist. Indeed, one must only encounter a cafe, restaurant or bar in order to refill. Heck, even a Rona has filled me up.

The process is quite simple. You walk in with your bottles, making sure to identify yourself as a weary traveller. This is done in a variety of ways, although some are unavoidable. For example, you will likely already be dirty and smelly, but your cycling clothes or shoes will provide evidence that you are not some homeless person they'd rather kick to the curb. For added sympathy, bring your cycling specific gear inside with you, such as a helmet or riding gloves. You look like a dork, yes, but you have to keep your eye on the prize: you're here for water, not a modelling audition. You can also make sure to strategically position your bike outside where it is easily visible to those inside.

In most cases, however, it is unnecessary to do any of this and folks are often happy to fill up your bottles regardless of who you are. Although you might get a fun social encounter with some locals if they ask about your bike.

Before I left, I thought it'd be more difficult to obtain water refills. But until I hit the Florida Keys, I had no problem. But in the Keys I got turned away for the first time. Because of their geographic location, the Keys have very little fresh water and have to pipe in a lot from the Miami area. This doesn't come cheap and the region is littered with campaigns to conserve water -- difficult in a tourist economy. But restaurants, even Mom & Pop types, were more than happy to refill my bottles.

After spending $10 on food at a McDonald's in Marathon, Florida, I asked if they could also fill up my water bottles. The cashier gave me a strange look and said she'd have to charge me for it. Not only that, but she'd also have to pour it in one of their own cups, for inventory sake, I guessed. I didn't even bother to ask how much it would be and declined her offer.

I couldn't believe it. One of the richest companies in the world has to charge for water? This wouldn't be nearly as shocking had the Mom & Pop diner next door not been willing to fill up my bottles. But guess what? They were happy to.

Screw you McDonald's. You're lucky your food is so cheap and energizing, otherwise I'd join the group of largely ineffective boycotters.