The International Year of Sanitation was 2008 – how much progress have we made? November 12, 2008
Posted by Raul in academic life, wastewater, water, water policy.Tags: Metro Vancouver, wastewater, water governance, water policy
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Credit: Stuck in Customs
When I see how little do people think about wastewater and the right of humans to clean water, sometimes I wish I didn’t do research on wastewater governance. Admittedly, I was entirely thrilled at the beginning of the year, as the UN had announced that 2008 would be the International Year of Sanitation.
However, as time has gone by, I have begun to wonder (and a recent tweet by my friend Nadia Nascimento) made me dig a bit deeper in my archives.
Well, I can’t say that there’s been much progress. The “culture of flushing” still seems quite prevalent, and the only recent local news story about water pollution that I read was related to a Langley mushroom farm. Um, do people in Vancouver really think that we have made great strides in the way we manage our wastewater. I sure hope they don’t. Because if they do, they’re in for a big surprise.
I’m going to embark in doing some serious research on local (Metro Vancouver) wastewater governance and I’ll report back with some of my results. In the mean time, I should just say that if you want to be more environmentally conscious, you should make efforts in reducing the amount of wastewater you generate.
Banning bottled water in Vancouver and the Metro Vancouver pledge September 5, 2008
Posted by Raul in academic life, environment, Focus on Vancouver, food for thought.Tags: Metro Vancouver, public policy, regional issues, water, water policy
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A large portion of my research agenda focuses on water, despite the fact that sometimes some relevant water issues go unnoticed (did you know that 2008 is the Year of Sanitation?). The good thing about studying water is that questions pop always on my mind and there’s always something new to look at.
Being an academic and a blogger, I look at issues through research-trained eyes, and the whole discussion on banning bottled water in Vancouver is one of those debates that attract me. I am hoping to do some research about it in the short term future.
Photo credit: Ianiv and Arieanna
I am particularly drawn to water issues as I’ve done research both in the environmental engineering field (building wastewater treatment plants) and in the environmental studies field (studying water governance and policy). I am trained to examine problems from the social sciences AND natural sciences/engineering lenses.
A few weeks back, Duane kindly invited me to guest post on his blog. We were doing Blogathon and my post examined very briefly the debate on water privatization, but I didn’t delve in depth.
The whole banning bottled water debate in Vancouver touches on two issues. One of them, the commodification and privatization of water. The other one is the potential health-associated risk of consuming water from the tap. Both of these issues would give me enough material to start a new blog. However, I’m going to just focus on one small sub-issue: bottling water for sale and redistribution (and the health effects associated).
We often (but not always) consume bottled water because we feel safer. Sometimes we consume bottled water simply because we don’t have access to tap water at the moment. There are different rationales. However, one associated (implicit) benefit is that we don’t need to worry about our safety and health if we consume bottled water. Is our tap water really all that bad?
When I worked as an environmental engineer, I would get stomach illnesses whenever I would be exposed to wastewater streams. But I have never gotten sick from consuming water from the tap (neither in Mexico nor in Canada). I know, the whole “revenge of Montezuma” joke is based on a perception that potable water in Mexico is really polluted and thus every foreign visitor will get stomach cramps or get ill when visiting if they consume water from the tap. But it has never happened to me (not even now that I’m visiting).
Metro Vancouver is undertaking a project to have people pledge to consume only tap water and reduce the number of plastic water bottles thrown into landfills. I have to say that I wholeheartedly support this initiative. From their website:
Why Metro Vancouver has a Tap Water Pledge
* Metro is committed to reducing bottled water use by 20% by 2010 to reduce the environmental impact of bottled water
* Millions of single-use plastic water bottles (one litre or smaller) ended up in our region’s landfills in 2007
* We want to provide a tangible way residents to support a sustainable practice – using refillable water containers instead of single-use plastic water bottles
[Metro Vancouver: Take the Tap Water Pledge]
The Tap Water Pledge page has information on health risks associated with water, fast facts, etc. that are aimed to help the public understand the rationale behind the project. Interestingly enough, I didn’t find data on the worldwide consumption of bottled water in comparison to Canada and/or Vancouver. I think this would be a broader perspective. From the IBWA statistics page, their 2007 stats report, I found out that Mexico is the second largest consumer of bottled water in the world, with 54.1 gallons per capita (but is this figure per year, per month? If one drinks one litre of water a day, how many gallons is that a year? I hate websites with poor statistics!)
Now, from a social media perspective, I have to say that while I think the page is a good resource, I would probably take a much more “public understanding of science” approach to it. I have to say that it would be fun to undertake this type of project, and it would merge Web 2.0 with sustainability research…. Hmm… good idea!
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: For some statistics on bottled water consumption, the International Bottled Water Association has some data. But I couldn’t find anything on Canada. Frustrating.
Water footprint: A new tool to examine water scarcity and use August 24, 2008
Posted by Raul in academic life, public policy issues, wastewater, water, water policy.Tags: water, water footprint, water governance, water policy, World Resources Institute
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Water is a topic that I’m actually rather passionate about (and I’ve previously written about it, like my discussion of the culture of flushing and the concept of water governance). I love researching it and writing about it, particularly because a professor whom I really respect a lot (part of my doctoral committe) told me that the two issues he saw were going to be the most important in the future were water and energy issues. I came across the concept of water footprint via the Max Gladwell blog (actually their twitter account – Hat tips to Max Gladwell!).
What is the water footprint? Well, I am guessing it is modelled after the ecological footprint that Mathis Wackernagel and Bill Rees coined in 1992. The website WaterFootprint.org defines:
The water footprint is an indicator of water use that looks at both direct and indirect water use of a consumer or producer. The water footprint of an individual, community or business is defined as the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual or community or produced by the business. Water use is measured in terms of water volumes consumed (evaporated) and/or polluted per unit of time. A water footprint can be calculated for any well-defined group of consumers (e.g. an individual, family, village, city, province, state or nation) or producers (e.g. a public organization, private enterprise or economic sector). The water footprint is a geographically explicit indicator, not only showing volumes of water use and pollution, but also the locations.[Water Footprint.Org]
It’s an interesting concept, particularly when we apply it to our day-to-day staples, like a cup of coffee (that according to calculations by Hoekstra and Chapagain is about 140 litres of water per cup). As indicated by the Environmental News Network, the concept of water footprint gaining adepts. I was kind of pleased to find that the writer of the ENN article was associated with the World Resources Institute (WRI). One of my very best and closest friends is also associated with WRI as he did a post-doc there, and their datasets on water are some of the finest that I have encountered. Truly speaking, I would not mind doing a post-doc there.
I would like to know if any of my readers actually thinks much about his/her water consumption patterns. Do you ever think about your water footprint or your ecological footprint?
Governing water, governing ourselves July 22, 2008
Posted by Raul in academic life, environment, public policy issues, sustainability, urbanization, water, water policy.Tags: common pool resource theory, environmental policy, public policy, water policy
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Continuing on my research-related posts, I have previously talked about my research on wastewater governance, on environmental NGO mobilization, and now I’ll briefly talk about what I have studied on water supply governance.
I was going to leave this post all the way until Blogathon, but Arieanna’s recent post on “Canada, the water” reminded me of the relevance of understanding how water supplies and water management works (great post Arieanna by the way). Arieanna’s post calls attention to the fact that the bottled water being sold at Whole Foods was pretty much targeted towards tourist buyers.
Photo credit: Ianiv and Arieanna on Flickr
What worries me a bit more is not so much the privatization and commodification of water, but the misconceptions of water availability on this planet. According to the 2nd. United Nations Word Water Report, between 25 and 40% of the world’s drinking water comes from ground sources (groundwater).
This fact should be scary to people, but I’m not sure that people who live in Canada and particularly British Columbia (since we are so well served by our watersheds and local reservoirs) realize the degree of water scarcity that pervades the world, even if there is a generalized perception that . Therefore, it’s not hard to think that many people have a reason to be rightfully annoyed by the increasing privatization of water supplies.
Given the investment and capital costs that need to be covered in order to provide groundwater for drinking purposes, I would imagine that people would be cognizant of water scarcity and avoid increasing demand on water reserves, both by conserving water and by recycling grey water. In one of my research projects, I have looked at the use of common pool resource (CPR) theory to try and understand the conflicts amongst two communities who share and access the same aquifer (in Mexico).
The nature of public accessibility of aquifers makes them an excellent laboratory to study the behavior of communities who have to share a common resource that can be depleted if inappropriately managed. The purpose of my post was (as subtly suggested in the header) to indicate that in order to appropriately manage or govern water, we need to first learn to govern ourselves and control our natural consumptive instinct, in order to avoid depletion of our water reserves. Will we be able to do that? And how can we increase the visibility of the challenges of governing water when we can clearly see that other issues (such as climate change) are so high up in the environmental agenda in Canada?
More resources and materials for reading:
– The World Water Assessment Project page – Provides lots of information and good statistics. The UNESCO International Hydrological Programme is currently putting together the 3rd World Water Report.
– CBC Series on Water – While I am VERY weary of pointing people out to media sources instead of academic sources, I kind of liked this series.
– The National Water Research Institute of Environment Canada – Basically focuses on freshwater, but a good resource nonetheless.
– The International Water Resources Association (IWRA).
The governance of wastewater and the culture of flushing July 16, 2008
Posted by Raul in academic life, food for thought, public policy issues, sustainability, urbanization, wastewater, water.Tags: governance, wastewater, water policy
11 comments
One of the things that has struck me a lot throughout the past five years that I have studied water policy is the absolute disconnect that exists between our understanding of the different elements of the hydrological cycle and their interconnectedness. The social sciences literature has examined in great detail issues of water scarcity, but water quality and wastewater treatment are, for the most part, absent from the discussion.
Photo credit: The Joy of the Mundane
I know that I have always chosen difficult and non-explored questions for my own research, and in this regard, I have created some sort of a niche because very few people study the governance of wastewater. Amongst those very few Canadian scholars who have done work in wastewater and that I know of are Dr. Arn Keeling (whose PhD dissertation was an environmental history of wastewater in Vancouver) and Dr. Jaimie Benidickson (whose book, “The Culture of Flushing“, is a great environmental and social history of flushing in Canada, the United States and Great Britain).
My own work hasn’t dealt with Canadian wastewater, but I do have a fairly solid understanding of the way things work here. I am sure you’ll find it appalling that the city of Victoria, the capital of the province of British Columbia, does NOT have a wastewater treatment plant. The effluent comes straight into the ocean (with some preliminary screening).
A recent post by Matt Collinge about water quality in False Creek reminded me of how little do people in Vancouver AND in Canada think about wastewater. This is something that is prevalent at the larger scale. Professor Dickinson indicates that this is part of “the culture of flushing”, or what I often call, the OOSOOM phenomenon (out of sight, out of mind).
One of my personal pet peeves is that both scholars and non-academics in Canada are SO focused on climate change issues that sometimes they forget other environmental problems that have NOT been solved, including solid waste management (Vancouver’s landfill is about to be entirely full) and wastewater management (we are nowhere near some of the developing countries’ technologies for wastewater treatment, hard to believe as that may be).
My research focus in the area of water policy (I’ve done research in other areas) has examined primarily the role of institutions and the types of rules found in wastewater governance, and the role of watershed councils in strengthening sanitation policy. I found, after that presentation, and having had discussions with other scholars, that I will have to pursue two separate agendas in the future: one on wastewater governance itself and one on watershed councils, and I am very excited about this.
I am curious to know if my readers do think about water scarcity more than they think about what happens once they flush the toilet. Or does even water come into their minds, with so much focus on climate change issues? What do you think?
Random Thoughts of a Student of the Environment 