WCELA joins Information Accord

The West Coast Environmental Law Association joined a wide range of organizations endorsing a BC "Electronic Highway Accord" publicly released September 17 at a video-teleconference in Vancouver, Victoria and Prince George. Partners in the Accord include community groups, libraries, unions, BC Tel, cable companies, universities, information industry representatives and the BC government. The Accord was negotiated primarily at a large, multisector meeting in June. WCELA's Bill Andrews participated as one of the representatives of the BC Information Access Coalition.

The goal of the Accord is that, "All British Columbians have affordable electronic access to networks and services enabling them to communicate, learn, work, be entertained, and prosper in an information-based society." It is especially important to the Information Access Coalition that one of the Accord's stated objectives is "universal affordable access to the Electronic Highway."

The Accord commits the parties to:

• replacing party telephone lines with individual digital access, province-wide, by 1997;
• extending basic phone service to all unserved communities;
• making Internet connections available at reasonable cost across the province;
• equipping all BC libraries with terminals to increase public access to Freenets and the Internet; and
• creating 30 new Freenets in BC in the first year of the Accord.

Comment: Better public access to the Internet is a crucial link in West Coast's strategy of providing free environmental legal information and education to the public via ELIB, our information resource on the Internet.

The Accord is available on the Internet at http://brahma.gs.gov.bc.ca/cio/the_ehwy.htm.

- Bill Andrews

Preventing Oil Spills - Citizens' Committee Report Released

The BC Citizens' Advisory Committee on Oil Spill Prevention and Response released its 1995 annual report last week. The Report recommends:

• conducting a comprehensive risk analysis of the shipment of oil within the Georgia Strait/ Puget Sound area, to attempt to get some accurate figures about the costs of responding to a major spill in the region (the response to the Exxon Valdez spill has cost over $2 billion to date);
• establishing a working group of key wildlife rescue and response training organizations to produce an integrated cohesive system for rescue and rehabilitation of BC wildlife impacted by oil spills; and
• eight other steps to prevent oil spills in our marine environment.

For more information, please contact Linda Nowlan at 604-685-3173. To obtain a copy of the report, please call West Coast at 604-684-7378.

Caribou Alert!

The Porcupine caribou herd is again at risk from exploration in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, after the U.S. Senate passed a bill last week which opens the coastal plain of the Refuge for oil and gas drilling. The caribou range across the Yukon/Alaska border.

Both President Clinton, who has vowed to veto the bill, and Prime Minister Jean Chretien oppose the development, since it has the potential to seriously disrupt the calving grounds of the caribou.

"This proposal would be the equivalent of damming the Grand Canyon for hydro power," Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said earlier last week. "This proposal would be the equivalent of opening Yellowstone National Park to geothermal drilling. This proposal risks the destruction of the American Serengeti, the greatest pageant of migratory wildlife on this entire continent."

What can you do? Write to Prime Minister Chretien and ask him to again convey the opposition of Canadians to any activity which would harm the caribou. About 67% of Americans in a recent CNN poll opposed oil exploration in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. Let's add some Canadian support for the caribou. Write to Prime Minister Chretien at the House of Commons, Ottawa, K1A 0A6, no postage needed.

Oceans Act - Translating the Vision into Law

West Coast lawyer Linda Nowlan recently testified by videoconference from Vancouver before the Parliamentary Committee on Fisheries and Oceans on the new Oceans Act. Our suggestions for changes to the Act are designed to give more strength to the vision shown by Fisheries and Oceans Minister Brian Tobin, in a document called A Vision for Ocean Management, released last June.

Minister Tobin stressed the need for conservation and long-term sustainable resource use. He stated we had come to a turning point, and that we "must turn away from partial, ad hoc and short term expedient measures which have resulted in resource over-exploitation and environmental degradation. We must translate our responsibility and good intentions into a policy which will result in sustainable use of resources and environmental protection."

The Oceans Act needs some adjustments if it is to match this vision. The Act currently contains no purpose section, and changes are required sections on an oceans management strategy, environmental quality guidelines and marine protected areas.

For a copy of our brief on the Oceans Act, please call the West Coast office at 604-684-7378.

Growing ocean pollution problem tackled

From an Associated Press story -More than 100 countries agreed on Friday, November 3 to establish guidelines for increased protection of the world's oceans from land-based pollution.

Delegates from 102 countries met at a United Nations conference in Washington, DC, on protecting the marine environment. Although no new legally binding commitments were established, the delegates acknowledged that persistently toxic organic pollutants - such as DDT, PCBs and dioxins - are a major threat to marine life because of their long-lasting toxicity and the fact that they travel widely in the oceans.

The delegates to the two-week conference also urged the development of a legally binding global treaty for the reduction or elimination of these chemicals, and in some cases, an end to their manufacture.

Freshwater: Abundance and Scarcity

Seen from space, the earth is the water planet. Water, indeed is the very essence of life on it. Yet although 70 per cent of the globe's surface is covered by ocean, less than 3 per cent of the world's water is fresh, and more than three quarters of that is frozen, mainly at the poles. Ninety eight per cent of the remaining freshwater lies underground. Only about a hundredth of a per cent of the world's total water is easily available to terrestrial life, including man.

Nevertheless, there is plenty of it - or there would be if it were more evenly distributed. The "great pump" of the world's hydrologic system, which makes the planet habitable, causes over 113,000 billion cubic meters of fresh water to fall on the land each year as rain and snow - enough to flood the continents 80 centimeters deep, and more than enough, in theory, to meet all foreseeable needs.

Unequal distribution

The world, however, is divided into water "haves", areas which receive enough water for vegetation to thrive, and "have nots", which do not. Iceland, for example, gets enough rain and snow to provide every one of is 250,000 people with 674,600 cubic meters of freshwater every year; Kuwait, with seven times the people, gets scarcely a drop to share between them. In Israel and Saudi Arabia, roughly 4,000 people compete for every 1 million cubic meters of water. In France and India, the same amount is shared between 350 people; in Sweden and Malaysia, it is split among about 100. And of course there are vast differences in rainfall within individual countries.

About 2 billion people in 80 countries around the world live in areas suffering from chronic water shortage and, as human and animal populations grow, the crisis will get worse. By the end of the 1990s, Egypt will have only two thirds as much water for its inhabitants as today, Kenya only half as much.

By then, six of East Africa's seven countries and all five of the nations of the South Mediterranean coast will face severe shortages. Poland, Israel - and arid parts of the United States - are also approaching a critical situation.

Changes in the global climate, brought about by the greenhouse effect, are likely to cause great disruption. One study suggests that the entire western US - much of which is already short of water - could find its supplies cut to 40-76 per cent of present levels.

Groundwater

Groundwater is also unequally distributed, only a little of it is economically exploitable and tapping it consumes liquid capital. The vast Ogallala aquifer, which lies under eight of the states of the US Great Plains, is being so depleted that water tables are falling by up to a meter a year. A quarter of all US irrigated cropland is kept watered at the cost of depleting groundwater supplies, and some areas have already had to be abandoned.

The same is happening in the Third World. Bangkok's water table has plunged 25 meters since the late 1950s and saltwater has penetrated its wells. The pumping of water for agriculture in Tamil Nadu, south India, has caused its water table to fall by the same amount in a decade.

In the north of the country, the number of villages short of water in the state of Uttar Pradesh has risen from 17,000 to 70,000 in two decades; out of 2,700 water supplies provided by the Government, 2,300 have simply dried up.

Surprisingly, little water is drunk; only about 5 per cent of worldwide consumption is for all domestic uses. About 75 per cent is used for irrigation, and the remaining 20 per cent or so in industry. Countries which use little water usually consume high proportions for domestic purposes while dry countries often use great amounts for irrigation. In developed countries as a whole, two fifths of the freshwater is consumed by industry; in the US, half is used by factories and power plants, in Eastern Europe up to 80 per cent. In the Third World, 85 per cent is used to grow food; in India 93 per cent goes to irrigation.

New sources

Freshwater consumption is bound to grow with rising populations and affluence. There are two ways of trying to meet it: finding new sources and using water more efficiently. Only about 3,500 billion cubic meters of the 113,000 billion that fall as rain are used. But about two thirds of the rainfall evaporates back off the land, leaving some 41,000 billion cubic meters to flow down to the sea. Most of this runs off the land after storms and floods, leaving only 14,000 billion cubic meters as a steady flow that is reasonably easy to exploit.

Saving water

Reducing water offers much more potential. Only a little over a third of the water used in irrigation actually helps the crops to grow; the rest is wasted. If such waste around the river Indus in Pakistan could be cut by just a tenth, another 2 million hectares of cropland could be irrigated. Improving the flow of irrigation channels can cut water wastage by 40 per cent. Using sprinklers to spray the water over the crops can reduce it by 70 per cent.

Pricing properly

Charging realistic prices for water would aid conservation. Water is usually heavily subsidized, particularly for irrigation. In many developing countries, the farmers who benefit from irrigation systems pay back only a tenth to a fifth of their costs. In California's giant Central Valley irrigation project, the farmers have only paid back 5 per cent of the costs over the last 40 years.

Farmers have little incentive to save water, particularly when, as in many countries, they are charged according to the amount of land they irrigate, regardless of how much water they use.

Using water resources more efficiently - and proper pricing - will be needed to deal with the water crisis, which is likely to grow worse in an increasingly thirsty world.

This article was reprinted from the World Wildlife Fund's Atlas of the Environment. This book is available from the Word Wildlife Fund for $35.95, at 1250 - 24th Street NW, Washington, DC, 20037, USA. Telephone: 202-293-4800.

WCELRF Newsletter (ISSN #0715-4275), copyright 1995, is published by the West Coast Environmental Law Research Foundation (WCELRF) and represents the work of the West Coast Environmental Law Groups. WCELRF does research and education and maintains an environmental law library. West Coast Environmental Law Association (WCELA) provides legal representation and promotes law reform. The West Coast Environmental Dispute Resolution Fund Society (WCEDRFS) provides assistance and funding to citizens to help solve environmental problems in their communities. The mission of the West Coast Environmental Law groups is to provide legal services to protect the environment and to foster public participation in environmental decision-making. We are grateful to the Law Foundation of British Columbia for core funding of West Coast Environmental Law. Donations to WCELRF and WCEDRFS are tax creditable. This issue was produced by Bill Andrews, Morgan Ashbridge, Chris Heald, Ann Hillyer, Patricia Houlihan, Catherine Ludgate, Alexandra Melnyk, and Linda Nowlan.