• Protecting Water and Farmland in Simcoe County

Water is sending us a message – don’t take it for granted

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In Issues
Sep 9th, 2018
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Nottawasaga River -AWARE Simcoe photo

Nottawasaga River. -AWARE Simcoe photo

Canada needs to be a global leader in the protection of fresh water

Letter to the Toronto Star from Dan Kraus, senior conservation biologist with the Nature Conservancy of Canada, Guelph

It’s a luxury to not think about water. Most Canadians watch it flow from the faucet and go down the drain without considering its source or destination. When we do think about water, it’s only about where the nearest tap is.

Many people in the world don’t have taps. More than 1.2 billion people experience critical water shortages. They think about water every day.

Rapid climate change is going to change the way Canadians think about water. And we are going to think about it a lot more.

While scientists can’t predict every future impact of climate change, we are already experiencing many impacts, most of which involve water. Climate change has altered how, where and when we receive rain and snow.

Unfortunately, it sometimes takes a disaster to make us rethink our relationship with water. Floods, droughts and polluted water that makes people sick all send a strong message.

Here’s our problem. For more than 200 years in Canada, we have tried to move water off the landscape as quickly as possible by straightening streams and filling floodplains. But draining the landscape has caused profound changes to the ancient interactions between water and land.

In the past, rain and snow melt would slowly infiltrate into aquifers or streams, or meander through roots, stems and leaves to return eventually to the atmosphere. Now we push water along hard, straight lines where the benefits of interacting with soil and plants are lost.

Instead of water being cleaned, water is contaminated with too many nutrients and sediments. Instead of a gentle, steady release of water into streams, we flush it quickly through engineered waterways that rise and fall like a toilet being flushed.

We are a nation that is rich in fresh water. Canada has approximately 25 per cent of the world’s wetlands by area, and more lakes than the rest of the world combined.

But our freshwater endowment is at risk, especially in southern Canada where most Canadians live. Loss of wetland and floodplain habitats, and run-off from our cities and farms is impacting our lakes, rivers and streams. And this impacts us all.

The Nature Conservancy of Canada is helping protect wetlands, floodplains and other places that are important for nature and for people.

We work with willing private landowners who donate or sell their properties or place them under a long-term conservation agreement. This conservation work is supported by Canadians, businesses, foundations, various provincial governments and the Natural Areas Conservation Program of Environment and Climate Change Canada.

Water is sending us a message. A healthy natural environment is a key part of the infrastructure for our cities and communities.

Canada has an opportunity to lead the world in showing how nature conservation supports clean water, climate change adaptation and our well-being. Just as we need to invest in pipes and pumps as a part of our water system, we also need to invest in healthy wetlands, rivers and watersheds to ensure a future of clean and abundant fresh water.

If we think about water a little more today, maybe future generations will need to think about it a little less.

 

One Response to “Water is sending us a message – don’t take it for granted”

  1. Sandy Buxton says:

    Thanks for posting this excellent letter to the Toronto Star. Water is not an inexhaustible resource. Nor is it impervious to endless human landscape manipulation, which the planet cannot tolerate. The sooner we take it seriously, the sooner we and generations to come can thrive. Along with air to breathe, it is the foundation block of life. We ignore its needs at our peril.

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