Living Lakes Canada, and Red Zone III May 23, 2012

The 2012 Living Lakes Canada gathering took place in Winnipeg between May 22 and May 24. Day one was a Living Lakes members meeting, followed by an 'I love my Lake! Water Celebration with guest speakers Paul Kemp (producer of 'Save my Lake') and author Allan Casey entertaining attendees.

I joined in for May 24 for a day of learning 'Lessons from Living Lakes and Other Partners', at the Manitoba Museum.

As we were on Treaty 1 land, and talking about water, the water ceremony and prayers offered by Shirli Ewanchuk, seemed appropriate as she smudged waters from across Canada that delegates had brought.

Minister of Conservation and Water Stewardship, Gordon MacIntosh opened the meeting. Four months into his new role, he is learning that watershed management is complicated. He is keen to see things done differently and move towards a coherent water strategy, which was good to hear. He made his views clear about the planned closure of the Experimental Lakes Area, and urged everyone to sign petitions and write to government ministers and their MP's. For more information on how to help save this resource see http://saveela.org/

Alex Salki moderated the first session when we heard from John Pinder from England. He talked about the value of lakes from a Living Lakes International perspective - "Our World, Our Lakes, Our Responsibility", with plenty of pictures of the English Lake District to remind me of home! He was followed by Udo Gattenlohner from the Global Nature Fund who told us about some "International Success Stories", which were fascinating.

We were then introduced to the Manitoba Museum's Lake Winnipeg exhibit, which is under development and looks like an exciting tool to get kids and adults alike interested in watersheds and thinkihttp://www.blogger.com/blog-this.gng differently about water.

James Beddome, Leader of the Green Party in Manitoba, kicked off the next session, which was a bout "Moving together but worlds apart : the intersection of spiritual, social and scientific values" with a joke about lawyers (his own profession). Bob Sandford, Chair of the Canadian Partnership Initiative of UN Water for Life Decade, talked to us about "Worlds moving apart: the accelerating global hydrological cycle and what it means to Canada", which introduced the idea that 'stationarity' no longer exists in terms of climate data making it hard to predict the future and plan for what is to come. Merrell-Ann Phare, Executive Director of the Centre for Indigenous Resources Inc,  also made a lawyer joke, before giving her views on "Ethical Water: Learning to value what matters most" from which I took away the message Remember, Responsibility, Reciprocity, and Reconciliation. This was followed by Allan Casey, author who made a journalist joke before telling us about what he learned about "How citizens, scientists and other species can work together for water" as he wrote his book 'Lakeland: Ballad of a Freshwater Country'. Questions for the panel were followed by lunch and plenty of networking.

I had the task of moderating the afternoon session on "Lake Winnipeg: the global climate canary?", which was a challenge as we were behind schedule, plus I also had to speak in the session. First up was Danny Blair from University of Winnipeg to take us through "Global Climate Change: Implications for Lake Winnipeg and its Watershed" - lots of graphical illustrations of the problem. Warmer wetter winters? Drier? Wetter? winters. We are into 'non-stationarity' now... Shannon Stunden Bower from University of Alberta followed this with a "Historical Perspective on Drainage in Manitoba" - the fertile land was attractive to settling farmers, but the regularisation of drainage early on based on political boundaries soon caused problems, but the shift to watershed basin management has been a slow realization. Phil Slota from Manitoba Hydro, followed this with some of the history and a look at the future for "Adaptation Planning for the Manitoba Hydro System: Improved Decision Making for a Changing Climate".

After a break, we took a look at local watershed solutions: John Ewing from the Dunnottar project took us through studies to look at rural sewage treatment in a new way, Hank Venema from IISD took us through the Bioeconomy model, and Ken Lucko of Springfield RM took us through the Edie Creek water retention drainage improvement project. I then finished up the session with an overview of one of the "Watershed Apadptation Options" the WSRP is working on at University of Manitoba with its partners.

With the chef bringing in canapes and the bar being set up before I had even finished my speech, we went straight into a launch of the "Natural and Social Capital Program" at IISD - all three huge screens were filled with ideas and we were encouraged to try out the knowledge suite and information software as we enjoyed the food and drinks.

We then moved venue for "RED ZONE III" the Living Lakes/Lake Winnipeg Foundation Community Forum at the Radisson Hotel. Here we had a panel of speakers on the topic of "Managing Land and Water in the Lake Winnipeg Basin under rising GHGs", which included some repeating their messages from earlier in the day for the benefit of a new and old audience (Danny Blair, me, Phil Slota, Shannon Stunden Bower) and with additional speakers: Bill Franzin a retired fisheries research scientist on the the "Potential Climate Change Effects on the Biota of Lake Winnipeg", Pascal Badiou of Ducks Unlimited on the question of "Can we/should we restore wetlands", Charles Wong from University of Winnipeg on the impacts of human effluent in the Dead Horse Creek, and Lissette Ross from Native Plant Solutions who took us through "SHIM" - the survey of the southern basin of Lake Winnipeg that looked at the impact of humans on the shoreline to identify management issues. We had a short panel discussion with the smell of food tempting us, before enjoying a feast.

For me, it was a long and hard day, but I was able to raise my profile a little, do what I like doing and learn stuff, so it was worth it!

Selena Randall

IISD-GWSP Conference on the Water-Energy-Food Nexus, Winnipeg May 2, 2012

This conference ran for 4 days, but I was able to make one of them.

The agenda was filled with speaker names from across the globe, gathered to discuss the complex issue of meeting our needs for water, energy and food in the foreseeable future.

Today, the focus was on the integration of such issues, that is, that you cannot just consider water or food, or energy on their own. They all need each other. It takes energy to produce food, collect, distribute, clean and treat water. Food production takes energy and water.

We had a federal perspective of how the water-energy and food security is monitored in Canada and integrated across the world, and what is coming in terms of innovation in the agriculture sector and its use of enegry and water in the production of food in Canada. This was followed by a panel session with representatives from Manitoba Water Stewardship, Agriculture, Agri-Food Canada and NASA who each gave their pitch for their views on issues going forward and then fielded comments or questions from the floor. There was a suggestion that sustainable growth is not the best way to use natural resources but they should be seen for their intrinsic value. This was a controversial point, but no-one seized it. However, the idea of working at the community level and the idea of water being needed for agriculture and food production as well as for environmental health were strong themes.

The discussion session after the networking break was a bit of a struggle. The chair posed about 10 questions for those present to consider, but too fast for us to note down and really take in. People did try, but I think we were all ready for lunch!

Plenty of time for more networking over lunch, and then we had a mix of presentations. First a presentation on the bioeconomy philosophy that IISD are developing from its voice - Hank Venema. Then a historical look at the drainage of wetlands in the Assiniboine valley and how significant that was for flooding from Pascal Badiou of Ducks Unlimited. This meshed neatly with Greg McCullough's presentation of data that shows the was flood waters carry nutrients and how significant these are in the Assiniboine and Red River Valleys. David Lobb of University of Manitoba then presented some options for managing water on farm that the WSRP is developing, and Bruce Shewfelt of Agriculture Agri-Food Canada provided his observations of how farmers are using tools and innovating on water management.

Later we heard about how the Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinneret) is being managed to meet the complexd water needs in Israel from Doren Markel, which was followed with a presentation from Stuart Taylor from iDE on some of the problems and water-energy-food solutions in parts of Africa and Asia where the program is operating. Darren Swanson of IISD then provided us with some policy making approaches and governance ides.

Across the world, water management and protection, food production and energy management are dealt with by different government departments, but there was a clear message coming through that this needs to change and policy makers need to have a wider understanding and be a little more flexible, and users too have to recognise that their actions often cross these.

Gave me a lot to think about...

Selena Randall