“Water is a matter of life and death” — António Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations
On the occasion of COP15, where representatives of countries from around the world meet in Montreal to discuss biodiversity – which is deteriorating and whose decline will only increase if the status quo is maintained – Canada, host country , will have a unique and privileged opportunity to demonstrate, before the international community, ambition and determination in the defence, protection and preservation of nature.
Canada should therefore come up with innovative solutions, and we are convinced that one of them must relate to water and the biodiversity that depends on it. Too often, water is pushed into the background of our thoughts on how to mitigate or combat the climate crisis, due to the fact that Canada has a significant quantity of this resource thanks to its lakes, its rivers, wetlands and aquifers.
The country has about 20% of the world’s freshwater reserves and 7% of the world’s renewable freshwater, for a population representing about 0.05% of the world’s population. The abundance of our water resources does not allow us to clearly see the negative repercussions that are constantly multiplying against it.
We are privileged to have plenty of water, such a precious and essential resource for life. This immense privilege, we owe it to the international community to manage and protect it adequately. However, we believe, and we note, that the actions of the government are insufficient in this regard.
Ecosystem vulnerability
In this sense, in Quebec alone, the St. Lawrence and our rivers are in a state of ecosystem vulnerability. In the St. Lawrence lowlands, the overall naturalness of our rivers is low, which deprives them of their ecological functions.
Moreover, the majority of species whose status indicator is closely linked to water are in a precarious situation. This, not to mention the state of our hydraulic infrastructures, which are constantly deteriorating, causing us to lose significant quantities of water, the water pollution of our rivers and our aquifers, which is on the rise, the state of water resources in other provinces and many other worrying factors.
The indicators are clear, we are facing a water crisis, which directly affects biodiversity, everywhere in Canada.
Concrete solutions and ambitious measures to improve the situation already exist and groups like ours have already exposed them widely. But to implement these solutions and these measures, the Government of Canada must invest more to better protect the St. Lawrence, our rivers, our rivers, our lakes, our wetlands and our aquifers, the quality of their water and the health residents from the adverse effects of climate change and toxic substances. We also need to do more for the species that live there and depend on it.
Partners
Governments must not fight this battle alone. This battle is also that of society as a whole. We want to be partners for our governments so that they can benefit from our expertise. Water is the subject we know best. We want to defend and protect this resource and, to do so, use our skills and knowledge, which are only growing. The capacity to innovate is great in Quebec, as is the culture of sharing sustainable solutions that we must be able to take advantage of.
We are privileged to have plenty of water, a resource so precious and essential to life.
Canada needs to be — and allow itself to be — more ambitious on water, because our future depends on it. The Government of Canada must therefore take advantage of COP15 to demonstrate its ambition and show the rest of the world that it is determined to tackle this crisis in such a way as to achieve the objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
*Also co-signed this text:
Dominique Monchamp, Executive Director of the Gaspé Beaubien Foundation
Jean-Éric Turcotte, General Manager of Strategies Saint-Laurent
Martin Vaillancourt, Director General of the National Group of Regional Environmental Councils of Quebec (RNCREQ)
Jean-Paul Raîche, co-president of the Quebec Network on Groundwater (RQES)
Alain Saladzius, co-founder and chairman of the board of directors of the Rivières Foundation
Mathieu Laneuville, President and CEO of Réseau Environnement
Jean Paquin, Vice President, Technology at SANEXEN, the environment division of LOGISTEC Corporation
Denise Cloutier, Senior Advisor, Water Interpretation Center (CIEAU)
Karine Dauphin, Executive Director of the Association of Watershed Organizations of Quebec (ROBVQ)