Expert Workshop on Freshwater in North America
The Program on Water Issues
March 03, 2002
- English
The Commission for Environmental Cooperation of North America (CEC) sponsored an Expert Workshop on Freshwater in North America on January 21, 2001. The workshop, hosted by the Program on Water Issues at the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto, brought together a small group of experts from Canada, Mexico, and the United States to discuss freshwater issues with a focus on groundwater.
The first session of the workshop focused on defining the issue. Participants identified the major threats to groundwater as being overuse, contamination, land-use changes, deforestation, population growth and climate change. They also identified where the greatest pressures on groundwater are found now and where they will likely be found in the future. Many barriers to integrated management of ground and surface water were identified, and these included legal, policy, institutional, technical, knowledge and educational barriers.
The second workshop session focused on moving forward. Participants identified a wide variety of actions that they felt were needed to move towards integrated management of ground and surface water. Many effective management approaches and tools were identified that were currently in use in North America and elsewhere. The participants finished by discussing potential roles for the CEC in integrated management of ground and surface water.