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Latest news about the Safe Drinking Water Team
“I think it is time for Indigenous leaders and communities to take a look at how much participation in resource extraction is too much and how to mitigate some of these things and push towards water conservation and other things we know will help to curb forest fires,” said Houle. A hot and dry spring has meant that there has been little precipitation to help firefighters battle the blazes.
Three main barriers impede access to safe services for many people in high-income countries, according to the new paper. First, systemic racism underlies inequities and limits access to resources, said the article. Historically marginalized people and low-income communities are more likely to lack access to safe water and sanitation. Those groups include minority racial and ethnic populations as well as Indigenous communities, migrants and people of colour, said the co-authors. In the United States, for instance, the authors found Native American households are 19 times more likely, and Black or Latinx households are nearly twice as likely, to be without functional water and wastewater access than households identifying as white. Second, changes to infrastructure financing, including a move to full-cost pricing in HICs, have reduced subsidies to people lacking services. Third, gaps persist because availability and quality of services are tied to housing and property ownership. Linking property to water and sanitation services is a policy choice that disadvantages groups including migrants, people living in poverty and people experiencing homelessness or in unstable housing, said the paper.
Securing a safe water supply for Earth’s growing population is a global goal that is reflected in the long-term sustainability plans of almost every nation. Creatively solving this problem is another matter altogether. University of Saskatchewan graduate student Bernd Steiger is using chemistry expertise and Saskatchewan-based waste to soak up contaminants in fresh water reserves. “This province can be considered the breadbasket of Canada with its large agricultural sector,” Steiger noted. “Agro-waste (such as the inedible part of a plant, for example) is a low-value byproduct of agriculture, and turning this waste material into specialty adsorbents can aide in generating additional wealth for the Sask. agro-economy, while also serving to address water security and sustainability goals.” Steiger’s work uses several principles of what is referred to as ‘green chemistry’ — a type of chemistry that avoids a need for conventional chemical or energy inputs.
The research these youth snorkelers are partaking in is part of an Indigenous-led project to map the coastal waters of Átl’ḵa7tsem, once polluted by industry, but now teeming with fish. For centuries, Indigenous communities have had their traditional knowledge and cultural traditions overlooked, if not erased. That’s reflected in the conventional maps of Canada.
Teassa MacMartin first came to study at the University of Manitoba as a mature student, with a one-year-old at home. Her son is now 10, and in just under a decade, she has obtained a bachelor of science in biological sciences, participated in UM’s Science Co-Op Program and is now pursuing doctoral studies in microbiology. MacMartin is also a Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Award Winner in the Community Impact category.
Water is life. Don’t mess with it. That’s the message from one Indigenous cultural anthropologist and water researcher: nothing can live without water, yet we’re destroying it at a rapid pace. In 2015, the federal government campaigned to end all long-term drinking water advisories in First Nations communities by 2020. Two years after that promised date, water advisories are still present in 94 First Nations communities, with Neskantaga First Nation, an Ojibwe community more than 430 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay, Ont., surpassing 10,000 days under a boil water advisory this week.
University of Saskatchewan (USask) PhD candidate Leila Eamen and her research team have developed a hydro-economic model that investigates alternative ways to allocate water resources from the Saskatchewan River Basin among the Prairie provinces to maximize economic benefits, such as a province’s gross domestic product. In Saskatchewan, where precipitation has been low and heat levels high in the summer of 2021, such a model has become extremely relevant as natural water supply dwindles.
