Financing Watershed Security: Moving from Funding Projects to Investing in Healthy Watersheds
Healthy watersheds are essential infrastructure. They provide safe drinking water, help communities withstand floods and droughts, sustain biodiversity and agriculture, and underpin our wellbeing. Yet the organizations doing the long-term work of watershed stewardship often face a short-term funding reality: competitive grants and project-based funding make it difficult to retain staff, maintain monitoring programs, build relationships, and plan for the future.
How can watershed governance in Canada move from funding individual projects to investing in long-term watershed security?
That was the question at the heart of Financing Watershed Security: Assessing Promising Mechanisms Across Canada, a national bilingual webinar hosted by Our Living Waters on July 29, 2026. The event brought together funders, watershed leaders and practitioners from across the country to explore findings from new Our Living Waters research. The panel discussed what sustainable financing for watershed security could look like in practice.
Enabling Network Research & Collaboration
The webinar opened with remarks from Julie Wright, Director at Our Living Waters, who situated the discussion within OLW’s broader work to strengthen collaboration and collective action across Canada’s fragmented water governance landscape.
Natalija presented findings from research OLW conducted on behalf of the Alberta Coalition for Watershed Security, stewarded by Alberta Ecotrust Foundation. The research project examined funding models for watershed stewardship in Canada, drawing on desk research and 14 expert interviews. The research identified a fundamental mismatch between the long-term nature of watershed work and the short-term funding structures that often support it. A summary of the six models assessed and recommendations is below.
Lori Rissling Wynn, Director of Grants & Initiatives at Alberta Ecotrust Foundation, presented a funder’s perspective. Her work focuses on climate resilience, nature-based solutions, circular economy and watershed security. She shared how the Alberta Coalition for Watershed Security is taking a systems approach: mapping the watershed investment landscape, building the business case for natural infrastructure, and developing options for a sustainable watershed security fund tailored to Alberta’s context. A central lesson from Alberta is that no single sector can solve the watershed financing challenge alone. Government, municipalities, philanthropy, industry, private investment and Indigenous Nations each have different roles to play. The opportunity is to design a complementary financing system in which different sources reinforce one another, rather than creating disconnected funding streams. Indigenous Nations, Lori emphasized, are rights holders whose knowledge, stewardship responsibilities and leadership are essential to any durable watershed security model.
The panel also brought together perspectives from British Columbia, Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island and featured:
- Leanne is the Director of Strategic Programs and Partnerships at the Real Estate Foundation of BC (REFBC).
- Sébastien Cottinet, Directeur des politiques, Regroupement des organismes de bassins versants (ROBVQ)
- Angela Coleman, General Manager, Conservation Ontario
- Amy Weston, Managing Director, Nova Scotia Salmon Association (NSSA)
- Heather Laiskonis, Executive Director, PEI Watershed Alliance
High-Level Summary of Research Findings
OLW research fund that annual and project-based grants can constrain organizations’ ability to:
- retain experienced staff year-round;
- conduct sizeable and timely restoration projects;
- sustain monitoring, data collection, and analysis;
- build relationships with municipalities, landowners, and Indigenous partners,
- and undertake the less visible—but essential—work of coordination and trust building.
The research explored a range of funding models across Canada, with a focus on:
- Permanent Endowments for Watershed Security / Conservation Trust Funds e.g. BC Watershed Security Fund (WSF)
- Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) eg ALUS Canada, Natural Assets Initiative (NAI)
- User-Fees e.g. park admissions, permitting fees, water delivery fees, angling license levy
- Property Tax or Municipal Levies
- Environmental Damages & Penalty Funds
- Environmental Impact Bonds e.g. Carolinian Canada
- Project Finance for Permanence (PFP)
Across these models, several characteristics emerged as particularly important:
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- Multi-year commitments
- Short-term or annual grants create instability, high administrative burden, and staff turnover. Short-term funding was repeatedly described as incompatible with watershed realities, where restoration, monitoring, and governance occur over decades.
- Dedicated and diversified revenue streams
- Approaches like legislated funding mechanisms, environmental royalties, and endowments increase public trust because contributors can see where funds go and ensure they are not absorbed into general government budgets or reallocated during budget cuts.
- Subsidiarity, transparency, and arms-length administration
- Investment in collaboration and co-governance
- Funding core organizational operations, not only projects
- Multi-year commitments
Watershed governance is fundamentally about bringing people together, building relationships and creating the conditions for long-term stewardship. BC’s Watershed Security Fund is co-governed by a joint-executive that consists of the First Nations Water Caucus (FNWC), the First Nations Fisheries Council of BC (FNFC), the Real Estate Foundation of BC (REFBC) who act like a board overseeing decisions about the management, priorities, and allocation of the fund. The co-governance extends to working groups who also consist of external subject matter experts. The PEI Watershed Alliance coordinates funding and technical support across 25 watershed groups. This includes ArcGIS classes and instream chainsaw techniques as well as data sharing agreements to access provincial monitoring capacities for watershed groups save for certain restrictions.
Recognizing Indigenous Rights & Jurisdiction
Sufficient funding for convening, facilitation, and fostering collaboration is critical to building relationships with First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities, ensuring public engagement and trust, and fostering municipal collaboration. For example, Source Water Protection planning in Ontario required relationship building with municipalities and farmers, not just technical studies. In Manitoba, the Conservation District Act (1970s) now Watersheds Districts Act (2020) – have always existed through legislation. When the Act was changed to amend district boundaries, the province of Manitoba allowed for formal partnerships with Indigenous communities.
Cross Country Panel on Financing Watershed Security
The panel discussion revealed alignment across regions. Panelists repeatedly called for a shift from project funding toward long-term organizational and operational investment, alongside dedicated capacity-building resources. There was a clear demand for increased annual funding for watershed governance and stewardship overall. The conversation also underscored the value of diversified funds that can withstand political cycles, arm’s-length administration, and co-governance structures that enable Indigenous Nations and communities to shape priorities and decisions.
Looking five years ahead, panelists imagined a Canada where watershed-scale decision-making is better aligned with ecological realities; where diversified, regionally tailored watershed funds are established and strengthened; where watershed security is understood as essential public infrastructure; and where the public recognizes the connection between healthy watersheds, resilient communities and economic wellbeing. Lori captured the shift succinctly: watershed security should be treated not as a project, but as critical public infrastructure.
The message from the webinar was clear: Canada already has promising models, experienced organizations and growing public awareness. The next step is to connect these pieces through financing systems that are long-term, diversified, collaborative, place-based and co-governed.
Investing in watershed security means investing not only in restoration projects, but in the people, relationships, knowledge, co-governance and natural infrastructure that make healthy watersheds possible for generations to come.
The final report once published will be listed on our Publications Page.
