The banning bottled water debate in Vancouver offers a number of analytical angles for water research. The first angle is the issue of commodification and privatization of water. Selling bottled water may be perceived as akin to commodifying a natural resource. Another analytical angle can be examining the potential health-associated risk to consumption of tap water. The second aspect offers a lot of interesting research material and it may serve as the backdrop to our project. It could be argued that consumers often (but not always) drink bottled water because they feel safer. Sometimes a consumer may feel compelled to drink bottled water simply because he/she does not have access to tap water at the moment. An implicit assumption 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?

Dr. Rachel Black and I are in the early stages of putting together a research proposal for a study on cultural perceptions of drinking water in the Greater Vancouver area. We are still deciding on the geographical scale and the scope of the project, but we are primarily interested in understanding how do citizens of the Lower Mainland perceive the quality of tap water. We are still in early stages but I hope we can have a rough draft research proposal by the end of summer (fingers crossed). In the mean time, I’d be interested in hearing from readers as to how they perceived the quality of our tap water in the Vancouver area (or if you are outside, in your own region).

Virtual water is the amount of water that is embedded in food or other products needed for its production. For example, to produce one kilogram of wheat we need about 1,000 litres of water, i.e. the virtual water of this kilogram of wheat is 1,000 litres. For meat, we need about five to ten times more.[World Water Council]

Credit: Ianiv and Arieanna

People who are unaware of the negative environmental impact of excess water consumption argue that, after all, it’s *just* a cup of coffee and that we have enough water in the world. My question to them is - How much of the world’s water is available for human consumption? Yeah, I told you about that a few months ago, remember? 0.38% – not nearly enough to sustain our current consumptive patterns.

Credit: Snap(R)

I’ll be the first to admit (disclosure time) that I do enjoy a cup of coffee, particularly when it comes to meetings with colleagues, friends, clients or the like. But I always feel guilty about it, and I try to find ways to diminish my water consumption, all the time. Moreover, a vast majority of my research work is on wastewater recycling and water conservation. Furthermore, I work hard at educating the public about the current state of the world in regards to water scarcity and the need to recycle and reuse wastewater.

The concept of virtual water isn’t new, but it is a powerful tool that helps us understand how negative our consumption patterns are. I just hope that the great work that water-focused researchers (myself included) are doing to highlight the negative consequences of our day-to-day activities and over-consumptive patterns can resonate with the public. Please remember that water is VERY, very scarce, before flushing your toilet, before purchasing bottled water, before taking long showers. Thank you.

Traditionally, social science scholars have been preoccupied with issues of water availability, to the detriment of the study of polluted effluents. This attention is partially warranted given that according to the most recent statistics by the World Water Assessment Project, nearly 50% of the global population will be living in areas of high water stress (Revenga 2005, WWAP 2005).

Interestingly, the concept of the hydrological cycle (a natural science idea) seems to be somewhat absent in the mind of policy-makers and social scientists alike. For the past five years, I have been working (Pacheco-Vega 2005a, b, Pacheco-Vega 2008) on highlighting the closed nature of the hydrological cycle and the need to reduce the amount of water we pollute. Undertaking a global water balance allows us to understand the implications of water pollution, the morbidity associated with contaminated drinking water, the prevalence of waterborne diseases and the need for secondary and tertiary wastewater treatment.

UNEP/GRID-Arendal (2002), Urban water cycle, Available at http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/urban_water_cycle (Accessed 14 February 2009)

2008 was declared by the United Nations as the International Year of Sanitation, although it is quite clear that wastewater and sanitation aren’t the main focus of social science water research. However, as it can be seen from the urban water cycle graphic shown above, there is still a lot of room for improvement. All those wastewater streams can be improved in quantity (volume reduction at the source using ecological or low-water toilets) and quality (primary/secondary treatment at the source using domestic wastewater treatment plants).

If we are really going to accelerate progress towards the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target to reduce by half the proportion of the 2,6 billion people without access to basic sanitation by 2015, we need to start from the basics.

References and further reading

Benidickson, J. (2007) The Culture of Flushing: A Social and Legal History of Sewage. Vancouver, UBC Press.

Pacheco-Vega, R. (2005a ) “Applying the Institutional Analysis and Development framework to wastewater management policy in the Lerma-Chapala River Basin”. Presented at the UNU-INWEH/UNESCO-MAB-IHP International Workshop “Water and Ecosystems: Water Resources Management in Diverse Ecosystems and Providing for Human Needs”, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. June 14-16, 2005.

Pacheco-Vega, R. (2005b) “Institutional analysis within the Lerma-Chapala Region: New challenges for watershed management”. Presented at the conference “Institutional Analysis for Environmental Decision-Making: A Workshop”. Fort Collins, Colorado, USA. Jan 28 and 29, 2005

Pacheco-Vega, R. (2008) “Strengthening effective wastewater governance in Mexico: Is there a role for river basin councils?” Presented at the Environmental Studies Association of Canada Meeting, Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Congress, June 2008, Vancouver, Canada

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?