Engaging Nova Scotians in Caring for our Water

Transcription

1 Engaging Nova Scotians in Caring for our Water Krista Hilchey Acting Water Strategy Coordinator Nova Scotia Environment September 16, 2011 Bozeman, Montana

2 CLIMATE PEOPLE AND ENVIRONMENT Second ECONOMY From 5 smallest to 20 C (41 province to 4 F) in in Canada January (area to 14 of to 55,284 Slow C (57 82 economic km2= F) 21,300 in July growth mi2) over the last 20 years Primarily Population Average natural of ~950,000 resources mm with (39 59 (farming, about in) of 40% fishing, total of the forestry, population rain and snow mining) living per and in year( the tourism province s based cm= largest city, in Halifax of World s snow) largest exporter of Christmas trees, lobster, 40 >13,000 % of gypsum the km province (> and 8,000 wild miles) get berries their of water coastline from wells 6,700 45% lakes have waste treated with on site septic Hundreds of rivers and wetlands

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5 Risks to Nova Scotia s Water Land use for natural resource extraction Land use for home building + shifts in population Storm damage erosion, storm surge, flooding, sea level rise Attitudes (> 2/3 of municipal water is used for activities that don t require drinking quality water)

6 Governance of Nova Scotia s Water Federally Department of Fisheries and Oceans Department of Environment Provincially Departments of: Environment Fisheries and Aquaculture Agriculture Natural Resources Tourism Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal Municipally

7 Towards a water strategy for NS 2002 : A Drinking Water Strategy for Nova Scotia (a Canadian wide response to Walkerton, ON 2000= 7 people died, 2700 ill) with a focus on municipal treatment facilities What about the other aspects of water sources of municipal water, groundwater, rivers, lakes, etc? 2007: Committed by our government to develop a comprehensive water resources management strategy by 2010

8 How did we get there? By talking to Nova Scotians! 2008: 14 public workshops and hundreds of written submissions 2009 and 2010: First Nations and targeted consultation with stakeholders Municipalities Water and wastewater industry Home builders Environmental industry NGOs Forestry/farming/mining/fisheries Health practitioners Launched December 16, 2010

9 Water is essential for life and will be valued, kept safe and shared Five goals: Human Health Economic Prosperity Ecosystem Integrity Emergency and Hazards Preparedness Water Monitoring and Knowledge

10 Integrated Water Management A comprehensive approach to managing water resources, including human activities and their effects on watersheds and ecosystems. It aims to ensure sustainability of water resources and their functions today and into the future.

11 The Nova Scotia Water Advisory Group Municipality representative First Nations representative Agriculture representative Environmental services consultant Drinking water expert Aquatic ecology expert Community based water quality monitoring expert

12 Water for Life 29 actions in three action areas: Understand the quality and quantity of our water Protect the quality and quantity of our water Engage in caring for our water Actions for today (within three years) and tomorrow (within ten years)

13 Engage

14 Build capacity for community monitoring in watersheds across the province Community monitoring? Citizen science: the process whereby citizens are involved in science as researchers; a process where concerned citizens, government agencies, industry, academia, community groups and local institutions collaborate to monitor, track and respond to issues of common community [environmental] concern (Kruger and Shannon, 2000; Whitelaw et al., 2003; Conrad and Hilchey, 2011)

15 Why community monitoring? Worldwide, government cutbacks in funding and staffing for ecological monitoring BUT still require monitoring data for decision making (Whitelaw et al., 2003; Pollock and Whitelaw, 2005; Conrad and Hilchey, 2011)

16 What type of monitoring? Monitoring informs when the system is departing from the desired state, measure the success of management actions, and detects effects of perturbations and disturbances (p. 194, Legg and Nagy, 2006) Commodity based monitoring ie. fisheries Economic + social + environmental Non commodity based monitoring ie. water or air quality, indicator species (Conrad and Hilchey, 2011)

17 Benefits of citizen science Increase in environmental democracy Citizen inclusion in local issues Cost effective, large scale, monitoring collection for government and policy use (Conrad and Hilchey, 2011)

18 Challenges for citizen science 1) Organizational issues Volunteer interest, capacity, funding 2) Data collection issues Data fragmentation, data inaccuracy, lack of participant objectivity 3) Data use issues Not used by decision makers or published (Conrad and Hilchey, 2011)

19 How do we overcome the challenges? Collaborative governance of monitoring activities Multi party governance of monitoring activities (private landowners, the public, business, industry, government, universities, etc.) Often yields more decision making power than topdown or bottom up governance May use environmentally, as opposed to politically, appropriate boundaries (ie. watershed not county) (Conrad and Hilchey, 2011)

20 Partnership with CBEMN Community Based Environmental Monitoring Network, housed within the Department of Geography at Saint Mary s University in Halifax, NS ( Network of community based monitoring groups Environmental Stewardship Equipment Bank General assistance with research, protocols

21 WET PRO Kit and Certification Course Certification course= consistent data collection and better study design, better quality data for government and academic use Field kit= consistent water quality monitoring equipment and protocols

22 Benefits of this partnership For government: Reliable, consistent data collected that we can use for policy For Saint Mary s University: Reliable, consistent data collected that can be used in research projects and published For community monitoring groups: Know that the work they do can make a difference!

23 Thank you! For more information contact Krista Hilchey