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Defining Autopoiesis - Maturana and others

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Defining Autopoiesis - Maturana and others

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This is the rich picture with the added rich feedback flow for Assignment D

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Rich Pic Bottled Water with Feedback Flow

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Feedback loops: How nature gets its rhythms - Anje-Margriet Neutel

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Systems thinking: a cautionary tale (cats in Borneo)

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Week 6 – Jan. 6th, 2017

6:07- Meeting commenced with Doug, Kim, Helene, & Carol

Doug - Focus is to clarify Assignment D

·         Concerned about how our decisions occurred in assignment A & B, in our collaboration vs. distributing the workload and sharing

·         We shared with Doug how we worked together because we weren’t confident, and how we thought doing the mind map together helped us understand the case study, as well using our research on padlet

·         Happy with our explanation, and understands why we did what we did

·         Another question about the arrows (this is associated with that) – our direction with arrows are influenced by relationships, arrows represent reciprocal relationships, what the arrows specifically mean???

6:20 – Doug’s connection lost

6:25 – discussing 4th bullet

Nestle Greater capacity + demand for plastic water bottles : there’s more to it than a direct connection

6:33 – Doug’s connection lostJ

6:38 – Assignment D

Use today’s version of assignment

4) dynamic (description) connection – driving at why feedback loops are so important, in terms of 2 or 3 of the important loops that you notice in your causal loop, in your case study, how it works in the world ( What’s the engine?)

Relationship between two components where the behavior and the components change, dynamics through time, not static (how does it change or behave over time)

3) example of describing issues around systems boundaries – was that good, how did it impact and marginalize (social disadvantages/exclusion) the study

FORMING BOUNDARIES- what was our process? (excluded, did you get it right, expanded…words for chart)

6:53 – speaking about week 7 youtube video and watch it early –

2) – In video has a newer version of CATWOE, how do rich picture evoke feedback loops, (how well do they) use fragments of rich pictures to explain

1)      Cynefin (use 2-3, what aspects (examples) are those useful for in the case study, give examples of why 4th quadrant is not relevant)

6:59 – Summary clarifies table (Brief be succinct report half of a mini essay)

List  stakeholders, etc.  )

7:08 – We will need to meet at our regular meeting Thursday 4pm PST, 5pm AB time. Witnessing of Team 4 dialogue is a separate time, Friday or Saturday, we need to figure out a time that works.

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follow-up article by the Langley chemist

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follow-up article by the Langley chemist

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More thoughts on Aquifers, Shills and the Commoditization of Groundwater

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Late last week I posted my thoughts on Aquifers, Drought and the Nestlé water bottling plant in Hope and the response has been overwhelming. My Twitter and Facebook feeds exploded and I was even interviewed by a local radio station CKNW (a recording of the interview is provided here) on the topic.

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Dave Snowden explains Cynefin (Knavin) Framework

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Dave Snowden explains Cynefin (Knavin) Framework

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here's the link to our padlet. It's interesting to see the contrast in focus! My geology gene naturally made me focus on the aquifer and not so much on other environmental concerns

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Today's topic comes to us courtesy of my local newscast. As many of my readers know, much of the Pacific Northwest (including parts of British Columbia) is under drought. As a consequence of the drought-like conditions we have been put on Level II water restrictions, which for non-British Columbians means you can't do a lot of everyday things like watering your lawn (except under strict conditions). A feature of these restrictions is a limitation on the industrial use of water. As an example, the restrictions mean that many power washing companies that depend on Metro Vancouver water are not allowed to operate; leaving a lot of people out of work. This evening our local news featured a story about Nestlé Waters Canada ( Nestlé) and its water bottling plant in Hope B.C. ( ). After watching that broadcast I figured I should post a blog to help people understand about aquifers and explain why the Nestlé bottling plant may not be the bad guy portrayed in the local news. Nestle faces renewed criticism of their B.C. groundwater operations as drought levels increase

There are a lot of misconceptions about aquifers, groundwater and our potable water supply; so to begin I am going to provide a mini-primer on aquifers. As described by

An aquifer is an underground formation of permeable rock or loose material which can produce useful quantities of water when tapped by a well. Aquifers come in all sizes and their origin and composition is varied. They may be small, only a few hectares in area, or very large, underlying thousands of square kilometres of the earth's surface. They may be only a few metres thick, or they may measure hundreds of metres from top to bottom.

A confined aquifer is an aquifer below the land surface that is saturated with water. Layers of impermeable material are both above and below the aquifer, causing it to be under pressure so that when the aquifer is penetrated by a well, the water will rise above the top of the aquifer. A water-table, or unconfined, aquifer is an aquifer whose upper water surface (water table) is at atmospheric pressure, and thus is able to rise and fall. Water-table aquifers are usually closer to the Earth's surface than confined aquifers are, and as such are impacted by drought conditions sooner than confined aquifers.

In an unconfined aquifer the

level below which all the spaces are filled with water is called the water table. Above the water table lies the unsaturated zone. Here the spaces in the rock and soil contain both air and water. Water in this zone is called soil moisture. The entire region below the water table is called the saturated zone, and water in this saturated zone is called groundwater (

Note: for those of you who went to school in the 1990s (or before) you would have used the term "vadose zone" rather than the more modern term "unsaturated zone".

In the lower mainland the groundwater supply is dominated by unconfined aquifers. In my local community (the Township of Langley) we have a hybrid water system:

The Township is one of the few municipalities in the Lower Mainland that relies heavily on groundwater, for agricultural, commercial, industrial and residential uses; 23% of the Township is not supplied by the municipal drinking water system, and residents in these areas rely on private wells. However, the majority of the Township's population live in areas served by one of two municipal water systems. The smaller eastern system is entirely groundwater based, while the larger western system supports 61% of the Township's total population, and is a mix of groundwater (40%) and Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) [now called Metro Vancouver] surface water (60%). The Township prefers to use its own available groundwater, as it is significantly cheaper than purchasing surface water from the GVRD. The Township of Langley operates 18 municipal wells, and private wells number at least 5,000 (

My father-in-law lives in the community of Aldergrove, in the southeast corner of the Township. His water comes from a groundwater-based system using a number of municipal wells that draw from a number of smaller unconfined aquifers including the Aldergrove and Abbotsford Aquifers ( ). These aquifers (along with the Hopington Aquifer) represent some of our region's most threatened groundwater resources. The problem is that these aquifers are used by the community of Aldergrove, by residences in the agricultural lands, by agricultural users and are also important sources for a number of very important salmon streams. For those of you unfamiliar with the area, almost 75% of the Township of Langley is in the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) and agricultural users, in the ALR, are given priority in water use battles. The increasing and sustained use of these smaller unconfined aquifers is having a negative effect as drawdown in summer has continuously exceeded the inflow in winter. As such a number of these unconfined aquifers are threatened and thus the Township developed a . As part of that plan the Township is spending a good deal of money to hook Aldergrove up to the Metro Vancouver water supply to reduce the stress on the aquifers, but until then water restrictions are even heavier in that part of the community. Even in non-drought years come summer my father-in-law is not even allowed to wash his car by hand...a true hardship according to him.

Although water supplies appear to be abundant, the costs associated with the delivery of water to your residence weighs heavily on our infrastructure system. By reducing the demand for water the District of Hope will reduce costs and extend the life of our pumps that pull the water out of the ground providing you with fresh consumable drinking water. Water conservation is our number one priority to ensure ample water not only for today's customers but for generations of customers to come ( )

As for Nestlé, in 2012, corporate affairs spokesperson John Challinor said, Nestlé withdrew 71 million gallons ( ) in its operation. Now that sounds like a lot until you put that number into perspective. Regular readers of my blog will remember my post How Big and Small Numbers Influence Science Communication Part 1: Understanding Fuel Spill Volumes where I discussed the "Olympic-sized swimming pool" as a measure of volumes used to scare people about oil spills. Well 71 million gallons translates to approximately 268 million litres of water which is just under 108 Olympic-sized swimming pools (OSPs).

The Kawkawa watershed system, upon which the aquifer used by Nestlé draws, includes Kawkawa Lake which is approximately 1 km long by 1 km wide ( ). That represents 1 billion litres of water for each meter of depth in the lake and that is only the stationary storage since the lake draws from a watershed that is many square kilometers in area. As I described above,when an unconfined aquifer is hydraulically connected to a surface water body (KawKawa Lake in this case) then the aquifer would only be at risk if the Lake were at risk, but as pointed out in the Tyee article Nestlé draws less than 7/10 th of one percent of the available water in the sub-watershed. That is a rounding error even in the driest of years. As described in their documentation, Nestlé has been operating for 15 years at this location and they have seen no effects on Kawkawa Lake. Rather excess water from the lake continues to flow into Sucker Creek and from that into the Coquihalla River and ultimately the Fraser River. To put this volume into perspective, the Fraser River has an average flow rate of 3.745 million liters of water per second ( ) so the amount of water extracted by Nestlé in a year is about 72 seconds worth of water flow from the Fraser River as it passes Hope. So to answer the question, does the Nestlé operation put the aquifer at risk? Absolutely not. If Nestlé stopped operating (and put its 75 employees out of work and stopped paying municipal taxes) would there be more water for the rest of us? Absolutely not. Kawkawa Lake drains its excess water into the Fraser River, which simply drains into the Strait of Georgia. Neither the Fraser River at Hope nor the Strait of Georgia are particularly short of water even in the driest of years.

To be clear here, I am not saying that Nestlé shouldn't be paying more to extract groundwater from the aquifer, but that is a matter for our elected government to decide. What I am saying is that the operation of the Nestlé plant in Hope would not appear to be affecting the local water supply in Hope, the greater water supply of the Fraser Valley or the even greater water supply of the Lower Mainland. Nestlé's water supply is completely independent of the water supply used by you and me in Metro Vancouver and not a single litre of the water bottled in Hope would otherwise be available to the users in Vancouver dependent on the Metro Vancouver Water system. The only reason to deprive those 75 people of their employment and the District of Hope of those tax revenues, during this drought, is to make someone else suffer in order to make ourselves feel better and that is not a very reasonable basis for a policy decision.

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On Aquifers, Drought and the Nestlé water bottling plant in Hope

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Today's topic comes to us courtesy of my local newscast. As many of my readers know, much of the Pacific Northwest (including parts of British Columbia) is under drought. As a consequence of the drought-like conditions we have been put on Level II water restrictions, which for non-British Columbians means you can't do a lot of everyday things like watering your lawn (except under strict conditions).

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CTV article: Provinces Move to Change Rules for Bottled Water Companies

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CTV article: Provinces Move to Change Rules for Bottled Water Companies

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Shelby

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Premier Kathleen Wynne has ordered a review of the rules for taking ground water in Ontario.

Currently bottled water companies are paying the province less than 4 dollars per million litres of water; plus a permit application fee.

"There is the issue of the quantity of the water being taken, there's the issues of the cost of that water," says Wynne. "It's not a fair price. They have to pay more."

According to the Canadian Bottled Water Association the money paid to the province is an administration fee to pay for a government program that monitors the water use. The money does not pay for the water itself.

Across the region water protection groups have joined together to argue the current rules are out of date, particularly in a year when the province is experiencing a drought.

"If you are going to take it out it's not getting back into the watershed," says George Powell from the Blue Mountain Watershed Trust.

Ice River Spring, a bottling plant based in Feversham, Ont., has a permit to take about 3 million litres of water from the ground daily.

The vice president of the company, Sandy Gott, says the industry is willing to pay its fair share. "If the government wants to review, and charge for water, we would just ask that we not be singled out and that we pay what others pay," she says.

The province says when it comes to its review of the rules, everything is on the table.

"We really need to look at our water policy, extraction, permitting, pricing; all of that is under review," says the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Glenn Murray.

There is no timeline for new regulations as of yet.

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Province moves to change rules for bottled water companies

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Premier Kathleen Wynne has ordered a review of the rules for taking ground water in Ontario. Currently bottled water companies are paying the province less than 4 dollars per million litres of water; plus a permit application fee. "There is the issue of the quantity of the water being taken, there's the issues of the cost of that water," says Wynne.

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Google Scholar Article - Protecting Freshwater Resources in the Era of Global Water Markets

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Google Scholar Article - Protecting Freshwater Resources in the Era of Global Water Markets

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Shelby

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protecting freshwater resources in the era of global water markets: lessons learned from bottled water

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Protecting Freshwater Resources in the Era of Global Water Markets: Lessons Learned from Bottled Water by Noah D. Hall :: SSRN

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Throughout human history, water has defined our sense of place. American water law reflects the connections between water and local people, communities, and th

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Google Scholar Article - Energy Implications of Bottled Water

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Google Scholar Article - Energy Implications of Bottled Water

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Shelby

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Video - Rick Mercer's Rant on Nestle Water

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Video - Rick Mercer's Rant on Nestle Water

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Shelby

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Youtube video: CBC's "Behind the Bottle Water Industry" - Shelby

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Youtube video: CBC's "Behind the Bottle Water Industry" - Shelby

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Summary: We should be take it up with the govn't if "we" are unhappy about water prices...not nestle. Nestle is "concerned about protecting water" too

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News Article - Nestle Controversy - Shelby

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News Article - Nestle Controversy - Shelby

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In fact, Nestle Waters Canada-a subsidiary of the multi-billion dollar Swiss company Nestle Group actually has a pretty long history of extracting clean groundwater from all across Canada, specifically British Columbia. Nestle Waters has two plants in Canada-one in Hope, BC, the other in Aberfoyle, near the city of Guelph, Ontario. There have been ongoing water disputes between the community and Nestle in both those regions.

Kawkawa Lake, District of Hope, BC

Nestle and the residents of the District of Hope have been at loggerheads over water supply from the Kawkawa Lake since 2000, when Nestle opened a water-bottling facility in Hope, using water from only one source, the Kawkawa Lake. Nestle vehemently defends its operations, stating that they withdraw less than 1 percent of the available groundwater in the Kawkawa Lake aquifer. But the issue arises when a drought hits and the residents of Hope are forced to restrict water use, while Nestle is allowed to continue the same pace of production.

Nestle bottles approximately 265 million litres of water from BC. Up until the beginning of this year, Nestle paid absolutely nothing for water it took from Kawkawa Lake. It was only in 2016 after much pressure primarily from the residents of Hope, that the province instituted regulations requiring any company extracting clean drinking water to pay $2.25 per million litres of water. According to activist group The Council of Canadians, the $2.25 rate is low compared to other provinces. In Ontario, for instance, companies have to pay up to $15 to extract a million litres of clean drinking water. In 2011, as a gesture of appreciation of sorts, Nestle donated $45,000 to the District of Hope for the construction of a playground.

The BC government takes a different stance on the issue of payment. They say charging a fee for water could have the potential of raising legal questions over who owns that water. In addition, they claim that Nestle is hardly affected by a small fee for water, but many smaller bottling companies would be priced out of the market. Until the Water Sustainability Act was instituted in 2016, BC's only water regulation related to ensuring groundwater extraction techniques were environmentally safe. Clean groundwater is up for bids in most of BC, with corporations like Nestle often having the upper hand because of their scale of production, and ability to ensure that extraction methods do not hurt the environment. Now however, the provincial government has the authority to step in with mandatory restrictions in the case of a drought.

Hillsburgh, Ontario

In 2005, the former CEO of Nestle, Peter Brabeck was quoted as saying that water should not be considered a human right and be instead treated as a "foodstuff commodity." That video was leaked and went viral in 2013-the same year that Nestle was in the middle of another dispute with the town of Hillsburgh, Ontario, near Guelph. Nestle withdraws as much as 1.1 million litres of water daily from a well in Hillsburgh, which has suffered three major droughts since 2007.

2013 was one of the driest years in Hillsburgh, yet Nestle continued to extract the same amount of water from that one well. Public pressure caused the province to intervene, and when it renewed Nestle's contract on the Hillsburgh Well, it made it mandatory for Nestle to reduce the amount of groundwater it extracts during times of drought. The story didn't end there, unfortunately. Nestle aggressively appealed the new permit's restrictions and a few months later, the Ontario's Environment Ministry agreed to remove the restrictions.

Wellington, Ontario

Just a couple of days ago, Nestle outbid the Township of Centre Wellington, Ontario, for it's only new source of clean drinking water-a local well. The Township sits entirely on what is called glacial moraine, an unconsolidated accumulation of soil and rock that once used to be a glacier. This unique geological formation makes it particularly difficult for residents of the town to have access to a safe supply of drinking water. In fact, there is only one new source of clean drinking water in Centre Wellington-the local well that Nestle now owns.

The same activist group that was involved in getting Nestle to pay for water in BC put out a petition last week calling for the boycott of Nestle, which actually already owns a large bottling plant in nearby Aberfoyle, Ontario. According to the petition, Nestle pays less than $15 a day for clean groundwater from this particular well, and "ships it out of the community in hundreds of millions of single use plastic bottles for sale all over North America-at an astronomical markup."

However, according to Andreanne Simard, Nestle's Natural Resource Manager at its plant near Guelph, the Township of Centre Wellington is "lucky to have a company that monitors and manages a resource like water so well."

"We're very particular that there is no adverse, negative impact on the surrounding ecosystem."

Simard claims that in August this year, at the height of the drought in Centre Wellington, Nestle voluntarily reduced their water extraction by 20 percent. "One thing we have in common with the community is our shared passion for water," Simard said.

But the declaration from the Council of Canadians is asking for more than just a boycott of Nestle because of its activities in the Township of Central Wellington, it's calling for Nestle to "stop profiting from water altogether."

"Wasting our limited groundwater on frivolous and consumptive uses such as bottled water is madness," it said.

However, Ontario's government has come to the defence of Nestle. Treasury Board President Liz Sandals, who reps Guelph, says the public often has the wrong facts about the company.

"There's no doubt that there is a lot of concern, but my point to you is that many of the things that people will express a concern about actually turn out to be based on misinformation," she said, according to the Canadian Press.
Follow Vanmala Subramaniam on Twitter.

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A Look into Nestle's Controversial Water Bottling Business in Canada

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In fact, Nestle Waters Canada-a subsidiary of the multi-billion dollar Swiss company Nestle Group actually has a pretty long history of extracting clean groundwater from all across Canada, specifically British Columbia. Nestle Waters has two plants in Canada-one in Hope, BC, the other in Aberfoyle, near the city of Guelph, Ontario.

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Shelb

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Access to clean water and adequate sanitation is a growing problem for many parts of the world. More than one billion people are in need of clean water, and 2.6 billion lack access to basic sanitation. Water intensive agricultural, manufacturing, and land use practices throughout much of the world are drawing down or contaminating groundwater at an alarming rate.

Many questions confront the world today. How can we ensure that an adequate supply of clean water is available, both for today and for coming generations? How equitable will access to it be? How should it be managed, and by whom? What will the implications of climate change be on the quality and quantity of fresh water? Is clean water destined to become for the twenty-first century what petroleum was for the twentieth, a source of geopolitical power and conflict? Will social change concerning water use come through technological innovation or through cultural and value change, or some combination of both?

Concurrent with the ecological dimensions of the water crisis are public health dimensions, including, but not limited to, the spread of water-borne diseases, particularly in the developing world. Existing systems need to be modified, or new systems need to be created, so as to achieve more just access to clean drinking water, as well as to provide for effective societal responses to public health concerns. From a systems perspective, water is more than simply a medium for vectors of infectious disease; it is a foundation for maintaining the social determinants and human capacities that sustain and promote health and well-being. Water is not so much a "resource" as it is a lynchpin in the entire web of planetary life. The focus of ethics is therefore not on water in isolation, but on the water cycle and how the cycle connects the land and the atmosphere. The notion of a "watershed" has this connotation, connecting water, the soil, and the biotic community.

Water is dynamic, elusive, determined, and a fecund source for the human moral and spiritual imagination. We talk about water as a medium of disease transmission, as a fluid essential for biological functioning, and as a thing to be manipulated with wells, pumps, sluice gates, dams, and dikes. When we talk about the scientific and engineering aspects of water, we should not lose sight of the fact that water is also a vital source of cultural meaning, which not only sustains our biological life but also our imagination and spirit. No culture or tradition known to us is indifferent to it. It is a symbol of purification, rebirth, and reconciliation, even as it is also a source of animosity and conflict. Water, with its close connection with fertility and life, figures deeply in religious and metaphysical worldviews of virtually all peoples. There is a prototypically two sided aspect to the way water is represented and imagined in most traditions.

Water is the place from which order comes, but it is itself without form. It is life nurturing and yet unshapeable, uncontrollable at the same time. If the creator could manage it, human beings cannot. It is protean and relentless. It floods and recedes, indifferent to human constructions on a floodplain. It finds tiny fissures and eventually splits the hardest rock and enters the best sealed dwellings. Its changing physical state slowly reshapes the geology of the planet as ice sheets progress and recede, as sea levels rise, as rain falls, and as rivers find new channels. Human things are small by comparison. We move and channel water, to be sure, and we must use it (carefully), but effective, sustainable utilization of water is really more a form of accommodation than a form of control. We are not always honest with ourselves about our dependency on water, and our sheer frailty in the face of it.

Different ways of conceptualizing what water is and how human beings should use it have different ethical implications. Understanding water supplies as commodities to be bought and sold, and as property to be controlled unilaterally by certain individuals or groups, has different implications for fulfilling the ethical principles (such as human rights and social and environmental justice) than does understanding it as a fragile ecosystemic component of an ecosystemic commons upon which we all depend in myriad ways. Of particular interest in the chapter, therefore, will be the convergence between ecosystemic and public health perspectives, on the one hand, and the appropriate ethical use of water to sustain and promote human and ecosystemic health, on the other.

Taken together the ethical values of efficiency, equity, and stewardship can form a basis of a set of ethical principles that can normatively guide water management and public health policy. Additional principles of water ethics will be based on procedural and decision-making process values, such as democratic governance rights, active participation, transparency, accountability, and public-private collabor- ation and partnership. Implementing these ethical ideals and obligations in practice is shaped by a number of factors: Who participates in the decision-making process? Is participation active and involved in formulating options or is it passive and reactive to proposals that are already well-developed? What kind of information is open to the public? How do professionals interact with non-professionals? Is there respect for cultural diversity and traditional beliefs and practices? And finally, how is a balance determined between the needs of human development and the need to preserve our natural resources?

With these ethical orientations and practical considerations in mind, we offer the following principles of water ethics. In each case there is a meaningful application of the principle to the relationship between humans and water and the effects of the various technologies of water utilization (purification, sanitation, groundwater mining, agricultural irrigation, and the like). Similar principles have been formulated by the Waters of Wisconsin Project and by UNESCO's International Hydrology Programme (IHP), intercultural and interdisciplinary working group on the Ethics of the Uses of Fresh water and by the COMEST Sub-Commission on the Ethics of Fresh Water Use.

The Principle of Equal Respect for Human Dignity

This principle calls for the meeting of basic needs and the promotion of human health and well-being. It incorporates the underlying notion behind the framework of universal human rights. This is a fundamental principle of public health ethics; when construed in relational terms, the concept of human dignity is not at odds with respect for other creatures and for nature and thus is fundamental to environmental ethics as well.

The Principle of Equity and Proportionality

Meeting the needs and promoting the health of all persons is important, but equity and proportionate response are required in the face of limited resources to give priority to the least well off, those most immediately at risk, and those who are made vulnerable by past discrimination, exclusion, and powerlessness.

The Principle of Solidarity

Respect and equity should be pursued with a recognition of the limits of each individual's ability to determine the conditions of their own lives and of our mutual interdependency, and reliance on outside support, care, and assistance. The notion of solidarity and interdependence applies in a social context, among human individuals and groups, but it applies with equal importance and resonance in an ecological context, between human and biotic communities. In water ethics, solidarity reminds us of what may be called our "upstream and downstream interdependence."

The Principle of the Common Good

This principle calls for the recognition of situations in which the pursuit of rational self-interest by each individual leads to outcomes that are irrational and harmful to the interests of all individuals involved. The human interests served by water and by the biodiversity water makes possible are often not well served by behavioral strategies of individual interest maximization such as those fostered by libertarian property rights. Water and the technologies of its utilization often present "tragedy of the commons" type scenarios, for which a conceptualization of water as a common resource and sustainable water utilization as a common good provides the ethically appropriate response.

The Principle of Right Relationship or Responsible Stewardship

The principles of solidarity and the common good call for collective action in relationship to public health and water management. The principle of right relationship addresses the substantive content and effects of such collective action. The responsible course of action is closely tied with the actual properties and circumstances of what is being responded to. In the case of public health, for example, failure to correctly identify a pathogen and the administration of the incorrect vaccine or medication would constitute public health and medical malpractice; the right relationship between the physician and the pathogen and the biological facts of the patient had not been established. Similarly, the unsustainable use of an aquifer or the biological degradation of a watershed and its dependent ecosystems are forms of environmental malpractice. They do not establish right relationships between the human beings who use and affect water with artificial construction and technology, on the one hand, and the specific biological, chemical, and physical realities of water, on the other.

The Principle of Inclusive and Deliberative Participation

Just as the principle of right relationship and responsible stewardship addresses a substantive ethical standard for the content of public health and water management policies, so the principle of participation addresses the values inherent in the process of policymaking and decision making. Often the mechanisms and institutions of democratic governance are selective and rely on bargaining and interest maximization strategies by powerful, well-organized, and well-represented groups. This type of governance and decision making may not be well suited to the protection, conservation, and equitable distribution of common goods. More adequate governance mechanisms, from an ethical point of view, involve a deliberative and participatory process marked by transparency, universal access to information, inclusiveness, and individual and community empowerment so that all may take advantage of the open information and the participatory opportunities.

Ecologically informed and ethically responsible water management are essential for public health and are necessary to secure these resources for future generations of all life forms. Erring on the side of conservation is necessary in the face of our uncertainty regarding the regional impacts of global warming and many other factors in modern life. How do we assure that we consider our ecosystemic and intergenerational responsibilities adequately?

Perhaps a good place to start is for each of us to admit the following truth: "I am utterly dependent upon nature including its astonishing ability to provide fresh water. This is a dependence so deep that it maintains my life and that of every other living creature, not ultimately, but moment to moment, breath to breath, and in the case of water from sip to sip. This recognition of dependence leads to a second truth, namely that I am utterly responsible for maintaining that nature which so bountifully provides for life." This recognition entails a very strong ethical commitment.

Responsible behavior requires, at a fundamental level, acknowledgement that it is the diverse complexity (even seeming redundancy) of nature that provides for thriving and abundance and includes all living things and their landscapes, i.e., watersheds and water bodies. All water cannot be considered ours for human uses. This conclusion rests on ethical principles, particularly the principle of right relationship and responsible stewardship, but it also rests on creating the proper social and political motivation to produce ethical policy and practice.

Here we pose the question of the relationship between the motivations and commitments that lead a democratic society to support a public health system and to support a system of ecological conservation and protection. Are not appeals to security, safety and shared interests analogous in the two cases? To support a public health system each individual must value not only their own health, but the health of others-it is more rewarding and fulfilling to live in a healthy society than an unhealthy one. Similarly, to support a system of environmental sustainability and conservation each individual must value not only their own comfort and convenience, but also the flourishing, diversity, and beauty of nature. To live in healthy ecosystems is more rewarding and fulfilling than to live in unhealthy ones.

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Principles of Water Ethics | Center for Humans & Nature

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The significance of water for life and health is fundamental and can scarcely be overstated, and hence the pertinence of ethics to water utilization and management is clear in a general sense. It is important for everyone involved in water resource management and in public health to have a well-reasoned understanding of the moral values and obligations that correspond to that significance.

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That Time Coca-Cola Tried to Sell Bottled Tap Water in the UK and the Hilarity That Ensued

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→Subscribe for new videos every day! https://www.youtube.com/user/TodayIFoundOut?sub_confirmation=1 →How "Dick" came to be short for 'Richard': https://youtu.be/BH1NAwwKtcg?list=PLR0XuDegDqP2Acy6g9Ta7hzC0Rr3RDS6q Never run out of things to say at the water cooler with TodayIFoundOut! Brand new videos 7 days a week! More from TodayIFoundOut Why are Carbonated Beverages Called "Soft Drinks"?

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Helene, this is the trailer to that movie

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Helene, this is the trailer to that movie

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http://www.midwayjourney.com Using space narration and stunning imagery, Chris Jordan's feature film Midway explores the plight of Laysan albatross plagued by the ingestion of out plastic trash. Both elegy and warning the film explores the interconnectedness of the species, with the albatross on Midway as a mirror of our humanity.

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The Problems We’re Not Solving By Banning Bottled Water

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The Problems We’re Not Solving By Banning Bottled Water

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Earlier this year, researchers released a study examining the University of Vermont's precedent-setting bottled water ban established in 2003. The results: an 8 per cent increase in plastic bottle waste on campus, as well as a 25 per cent increase in the greater campus consumption of sugary, high-calorie drinks. Students simply replaced their bottled water purchases with higher levels of bottled pop and sports drinks.

Since reducing waste was an explicitly stated goal of UVM's decision to ban the bottle, these are clearly unintended consequences. But a closer reading of the ban's story reveals a more complex set of motivations was at play. For the University, this decision wasn't only about waste.
Sustainable water conveyance
According to UVM, its bottle ban was directly connected to the development of a more "sustainable beverage system" on campus. Waste reduction was one factor, but the ban clearly didn't measure up on this goal, because it was aimed at only one source of waste.

Sustainable water use was also one of the objectives-and an important one. Using a litre of water-whether for bottling, watering a lawn, or irrigating crops-means that it can't be used for something else, and that includes supporting healthy ecosystems. The impacts of depleting and diverting our global water supplies are many and great: soil degradation, water quality deterioration, decline in freshwater species, limited access to drinking water. And of course, with the degradation of our freshwater resources, we also lose the economic benefits they afford us.

So should we be concerned about the environmental (and social and economic) costs of taking water out of an ecosystem in order to sell it in a bottle? Yes.
But if our concern stops there, we are missing the boat, especially in Canada, where our water use is among the highest in the world. Banning bottled water is unlikely to change that.
A public resource, rather than a private one?
The UVM approach seemed also be connected to social values. The ban coincided with the campus' decision to end its exclusive contract with Coca-Cola and increase investments in "safe, clean [municipal] drinking water across campus for free." As a student leader of the ban explained: "We wanted people to be aware of the privatization by companies of public water resources."

But if we are concerned, philosophically or otherwise, about a company profiting from selling water contained in a plastic bottle, shouldn't we be equally concerned about profits gained from selling water contained in a t-shirt, hamburger, cup of coffee, or any number of the products we buy, in which hundreds of litres of water are embedded?

Banning bottled water seems to miss an important point. We "buy" water in much greater quantities all the time through our purchases of everyday products. And we do so without paying the true environmental, economic, and social costs of that water use. This is the problem that policy needs to solve.
The Case for Ecofiscal Policy
The price we pay for our water needs to better match the costs of using it. This is true both in terms of the water we buy (whether in bottles or embedded in other goods) and what we take from the tap. "Ecofiscal" policy seeks to square that circle.

Imagine policies that price water use according to its costs, including the infrastructure that brings it to your tap, the costs of water as a resource, and the environmental costs of withdrawal. Sure, this is complex. For example, the opportunity costs of pulling water from one place will be different than pulling it from another. But smart policy can move us in the right direction.

One result of such policies is almost certain: buying a bottle of water will get more expensive. But so will buying a t-shirt, filling up a bathtub, watering a lawn, or installing a public water fountain. This market signal will shape more sustainable choices and drive innovation toward smarter water use in all its many forms.

Of course, pricing water on the scale we're talking about is not as simple or straightforward as banning bottled water. But nothing worth having comes easy-and that includes good policy.

Jessie Sitnick is Communications Director of Canada's Ecofiscal Commission. Dale Beugin is Research Director of Canada's Ecofiscal Commission. This article is based on a three-part blog series originally published on Medium.coms

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The Problems We're Not Solving By Banning Bottled Water - Water Canada

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Earlier this year, researchers released a study examining the University of Vermont's precedent-setting bottled water ban established in 2003. The results: an 8 per cent increase in plastic bottle waste on campus, as well as a 25 per cent increase in the greater campus consumption of sugary, high-calorie drinks.

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Feature Article – Water for Sale? A Look at the Complex Issue of Bulk Water Export

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Feature Article – Water for Sale? A Look at the Complex Issue of Bulk Water Export

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Feature Article - Water for Sale? A Look at the Complex Issue of Bulk Water Export | Policy Horizons Canada

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Corporate Water Stewardship - retrieved from RRU library

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Corporate Water Stewardship - retrieved from RRU library

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I think we can build models from this

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CBC write up + 2 interviews,  good front end info, provincial gov. input

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CBC write up + 2 interviews,  good front end info, provincial gov. input

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Criticism against Nestlé is picking up momentum once again as drought plagues B.C., wildfires rage in parts of the south coast, and residents are facing water restrictions.

Nestlé Waters Canada bottles roughly 265 million litres of water from B.C. every year.

Starting in 2016, it will have to pay $2.25 per million litres due to new regulations. Currently the company and other corporations take the water for free.

"It's simply scandalous that a company like Nestlé can take hundreds of millions of litres of groundwater at basically pennies at the same time as other B.C. residents are being asked to conserve water because it's in the middle of a drought," said Liz McDowell, campaign director of an online petition opposing the new regulations.

Nestlé Waters Canada defends its water use, noting it is not withdrawing water from rivers, lakes and streams that are currently affected by drought. Instead, the company draws its water from a groundwater aquifer, said corporate affairs director John Challinor.

"We withdraw less than one per cent of the available groundwater in the Kawkawa Lake sub-watershed," he said in a written statement.

"Each year we publicly report on our withdrawals and monitoring data in an annual hydrologic monitoring report. These reports conclude that Nestlé Waters Canada has had no negative impact on the Kawkawa Lake sub-watershed in the 15 year history of our operations."

The Kawkawa Lake sub-watershed is near the District of Hope, where stage four water restrictions are prohibiting outdoor water activities and watering of lawns.

Petition gathering thousands of signatures

McDowell says the $2.25-rate is much lower than those set in other parts of Canada. Her petition, which began earlier in the year and has now gained more than 160,000 signatures, is urging the B.C. government to set a much higher water rate to encourage conservation.

"We're fortunate we do have groundwater reserves at the moment, but in California, after two, three, four drought years in a row, their groundwater reserves are actually running dry," she told On the Coast's Stephen Quinn.

"In B.C., right now we're in a position where we can actually stop and think responsibly and make sure we can preserve our groundwater for years to come."

McDowell says she will present the petition to Environment Minister Mary Polak once it reaches 200,000 signatures.

Government defends water fee

In an interview with Stephen Quinn on The Early Edition, Polak insisted that the province is not selling water but just charging a fee to industry for "accessing" the water for free.

She says raising fees could raise legal questions about who owns the water in the province.

"That's a dangerous thing in these days when water is fought over around the world and we see what's happening in California," she says. "We will never sell that right of ownership. We will allow access but it is tightly controlled."

This has been the norm in B.C. for generations, Polak says. Water is not treated the same way as other resources, such as minerals or oil and gas, which have become a source of revenue for government.

"What would happen if you start to generate a profit, start to generate revenue from water? What behaviour does that create in government?"

Nestlé not treated differently

A higher fee for industry would probably not affect Nestlé's ability to do business in B.C., she says, but would more likely affect dozens of smaller local bottled water companies that employ people and are "good clean businesses."

The way to control water use by industry is never going to be money, she says. Instead, she points to strong laws and regulations, such as the new Water Sustainability Act coming into effect in 2016, which regulates groundwater use and gives the provincial government the authority to step in with mandatory restrictions on all industry in cases of drought.

Nestlé is treated no differently than any other industrial operation in B.C., she says

"It's a straw man that is set up by folks who are, and I understand why, folks who are concerned about Nestlé as a company.

"If we want to talk about preserving water, it's about making sure we have strong laws to regulate how much anyone can use - whether they're Nestlé or anyone else - and ensuring that we never open to allowing multinational corporations to come in to British Columbia and actually buy ownership of some water.
Listen to the interview: Renewed criticism against Nestlé sparked by B.C. drought

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Environment Minister defends charging Nestlé $2.25 per million litres for B.C.'s fresh water | CBC News

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Criticism against Nestlé is picking up momentum once again as drought plagues B.C., wildfires rage in parts of the south coast, and residents are facing water restrictions. Nestlé Waters Canada bottles roughly 265 million litres of water from B.C. every year. Starting in 2016, it will have to pay $2.25 per million litres due to new regulations.

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Case Study - Bottled water(Nestle) in British Columbia

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Case Study - Bottled water(Nestle) in British Columbia

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On this note: Comment which case study you prefer to study and why?

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