Changing Currents – Message from the Chair
Message from the Chair
As Chair of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, I am pleased to present Changing Currents: Water Sustainability and the Future of Canada’s Natural Resource Sectors, the first of two reports examining the future of Canada’s water supply.
The world’s supply of freshwater is limited and finite. While Canada is blessed with an abundance of freshwater, an expected increase in the development of the natural resource sectors begs the question of whether our country has enough to support economic growth while also maintaining the health of our ecosystems. We need to know whether we are in a position to sustainably manage our water resources for future generations and if we have the capability to deal with issues like an anticipated change in precipitation patterns caused by climate change.
While many of the challenges we found in our work are regional in nature, they risk becoming national problems if we do not move quickly to deal with them. They include issues like water governance, allocation, and access to water-use data. We plan to deal with some of these matters in our next report.
We also believe that governments and industry still have many options available to them to resolve the issues in the most effective and efficient manner, before water availability and ecosystem degradation become country-wide problems.
The NRTEE believes that the opportunity is now to put Canada on a policy path to ensure sustainability of our water and natural resource sectors. There is a clear urgency in proceeding on this task to ensure sufficient clean water for future generations.
Bob Page
NRTEE Chair
© 2013