Watershed governance – the ways decisions are made and upheld within a watershed – informs how well our water is managed. Most of the 25 major watersheds in Canada do not fit into one province or region, but are commonly dissected by these political boundaries. The unintended result: no one entity is typically in charge of the watershed as a whole. Instead, small pockets of the watershed are managed independently with inadequate consideration for the other parts. Too often we see decisions in one area literally flow downstream to impact another. What’s lost is governance that supports the ecological integrity of the entire watershed.

In order to overcome this fragmentation, a formal mechanism is needed to drive levels of government towards governing at a watershed scale. These mechanisms may take one of many forms, such as a watershed institution or transboundary water board; an interjurisdictional watershed agreement or policy; or a common vision or framework for the whole watershed. As a case study in good watershed level governance, take a look at the Mackenzie River Basin Transboundary Waters Master Agreement. 

To gain data for this impact measure, we conducted a desktop assessment of Canada’s 25 major watersheds, searching for the existence of a mechanism to support watershed governance. 

Please note, there are a number of limitations to acknowledge from this research:

• There are many types of ‘watershed governance mechanisms’ to consider across the country, and in order for us to ‘count’ one, it needed to fall into one of the following categories: 
  • Watershed Institution or Transboundary Water Board; 
  • Interjurisdictional Watershed Agreement or Policy; or, 
  • Common Vision or Framework for the Watershed. 

We used our best judgement to include and ‘count’ or exclude and not ‘count’ different mechanisms, and recognize that not all may agree with each decision made.

• Our accounting of watershed governance mechanisms does not include a detailed analysis of how qualitatively effective the mechanism is at supporting watershed governance or the ecological integrity of the whole watershed.
• Canada is a large country, and conducting a desktop assessment into all its watersheds is likely to contain errors, and potentially missed watershed governance mechanisms. As always, if you see any errors or omissions, please let us know through email (info@ourlivingwaters.ca).

Last updated January 2019