Don’t leave the tap running needlessly around Gemma Dunn. She’ll get anxious. If that happens, pour her green drink. She’ll feel better.
Water is Dunn’s obsession. How it flows, the environment around it, what drifts in it, who needs it, who wants it and its future. The term she uses is “water security.”
Dunn is part of a team of researchers in the Program on Water Governance at the University of British Columbia who are conducting a four-year, cross-Canada study on water management.
“We’re looking at everything,” says Dunn, a native of London, England, before landing in Vancouver in 2001. “The things affecting the source, water quality, how it’s supplied to people. The study’s not just for academics but for communities and industry to use as well.”
When she’s not conducting tests and compiling stats, Dunn takes on contracts for industry through her consultancy, Ishka (that’s Gaelic for “water”). She also sits on the board of Connecting Environmental Professionals (CEP), the Vancouver chapter of Young Environmental Professionals, a national network of people employed in green circles.
CEP organizes Green Drinks, a informal social occasion held monthly at the Steamworks Brewing Co. in Vancouver, which is open to anyone with an interest in environmental issues. Green Drinks started in London, England, in 2001 and the movement quickly evolved into a world-wide phenomenon with thousands of enthusiasts in 420 cities.
Hubs of activity like CEP and Green Drinks are a positive indication of how the environmental movement in flourishing. The matter of water, naturally, flows through the action.
Dunn earned her masters degree at the Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine in London in 1998. While doing her graduate studies, she worked on a British / European Union project to present water concerns at the United Nations in New York. It was a lesson in the politics of international negotiation.
“I was very disappointed in how it turned out,” Dunn says. “In that forum, important things get diluted.”
Issues of water security, however, have since been given a higher profile at the UN. In October, Canadian water activist and author Maude Barlow (Blue Gold, Stoddart, 2002) was named the organization’s first senior water advisor by General Assembly president Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann.
Barlow’s bottom line is that access to water is “a human right.”
Dunn sees Barlow’s appointment as true progress, recognition of the scale of water security issues. Over 40,000 people die from diseases related to bad water every week, according to the UN.
“It’s just a not a tree-hugger issue anymore,” Dunn says. “It’s become mainstream.”
Americans use the most water per capita among OECD countries but Canada is next at
1,600 cubic metres of water per person per year — that’s double the average is France, and about eight times more than Danish consumption.
It was a statistic that Dunn happened upon in National Geographic that inspired her water obsession.
“It said that if all water on the planet were fit into a quart jar, only one teaspoon would be available for human use.”
Dunn’s children are beginning to understand that they can’t let the tap run while they brush their teeth.
— Tim Carlson
LINKS:
www.watergovernance.ca/
www.greendrinks.org
www.cepvancouver.org/
www.yepcanada.ca
Water is Dunn’s obsession. How it flows, the environment around it, what drifts in it, who needs it, who wants it and its future. The term she uses is “water security.”
Dunn is part of a team of researchers in the Program on Water Governance at the University of British Columbia who are conducting a four-year, cross-Canada study on water management.
“We’re looking at everything,” says Dunn, a native of London, England, before landing in Vancouver in 2001. “The things affecting the source, water quality, how it’s supplied to people. The study’s not just for academics but for communities and industry to use as well.”
When she’s not conducting tests and compiling stats, Dunn takes on contracts for industry through her consultancy, Ishka (that’s Gaelic for “water”). She also sits on the board of Connecting Environmental Professionals (CEP), the Vancouver chapter of Young Environmental Professionals, a national network of people employed in green circles.
CEP organizes Green Drinks, a informal social occasion held monthly at the Steamworks Brewing Co. in Vancouver, which is open to anyone with an interest in environmental issues. Green Drinks started in London, England, in 2001 and the movement quickly evolved into a world-wide phenomenon with thousands of enthusiasts in 420 cities.
Hubs of activity like CEP and Green Drinks are a positive indication of how the environmental movement in flourishing. The matter of water, naturally, flows through the action.
Dunn earned her masters degree at the Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine in London in 1998. While doing her graduate studies, she worked on a British / European Union project to present water concerns at the United Nations in New York. It was a lesson in the politics of international negotiation.
“I was very disappointed in how it turned out,” Dunn says. “In that forum, important things get diluted.”
Issues of water security, however, have since been given a higher profile at the UN. In October, Canadian water activist and author Maude Barlow (Blue Gold, Stoddart, 2002) was named the organization’s first senior water advisor by General Assembly president Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann.
Barlow’s bottom line is that access to water is “a human right.”
Dunn sees Barlow’s appointment as true progress, recognition of the scale of water security issues. Over 40,000 people die from diseases related to bad water every week, according to the UN.
“It’s just a not a tree-hugger issue anymore,” Dunn says. “It’s become mainstream.”
Americans use the most water per capita among OECD countries but Canada is next at
1,600 cubic metres of water per person per year — that’s double the average is France, and about eight times more than Danish consumption.
It was a statistic that Dunn happened upon in National Geographic that inspired her water obsession.
“It said that if all water on the planet were fit into a quart jar, only one teaspoon would be available for human use.”
Dunn’s children are beginning to understand that they can’t let the tap run while they brush their teeth.
— Tim Carlson
LINKS:
www.watergovernance.ca/
www.greendrinks.org
www.cepvancouver.org/
www.yepcanada.ca
