Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.
Water is essential to human life. SDG 6 targets sustainable, universal, and equitable access to clean drinking water and sanitation. Researchers from EUC are investigating issues in clean water supply, boil water advisories, and learning with Indigenous leaders in water governance.
Jurisdiction Back: Infrastructure Beyond Extractivism
The IBE project is a SSHRC-funded Partnership Grant led by Dayna Nadine Scott (Osgoode/EUC, York University) and Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark (CIRCLE, University of Victoria), in partnership with the Yellowhead Institute, the Department of Geography and Planning at University of Toronto, and the University of British Columbia. The IBE project aims to develop an agenda for fundamentally re-making socio-technical systems for an anti-colonial and radically-just transition. It systematically documents and evaluates ongoing work of reclaiming Indigenous lands, waterways, foodways and lifeways to determine which strategies and approaches have the most success.
Zaagtoonaa Nibi – We Love the Water
Deborah McGregor is at the forefront of Indigenous environmental justice research in diverse contexts, including water justice and governance. Her most recent publication, “Zaagtoonaa Nibi (We Love the Water): Anishinaabe community-led research on water governance and protection”, supports Indigenous water governance, leadership and security. Understanding our relationships with, and responsibilities to water are integral for more sustainable and just water-systems.
Understanding Anishinaabek G’giikendaaswinmin (knowledge) on N’bi (water) in the Great Lakes Territory for Water Governance
PhD alumna Sue Chiblow’s research on N’bi Kendaaswin (Water Knowledge) focuses on three sub-themes: water governance and gender; Anishinaabek laws; and reconciliation and relationships with water. Her work is directly related to environmental justice for Anishinaabek Peoples and to the revitalization of Anishinaabek law. She has been instrumental in the development of the Water Declaration of the First Nations in Ontario. The Declaration lists articles on First Nations relationships to the waters; conditions of our waters; the right of water and self-determination and; right to waters and treaties.
Predicting riverbeds in Nigeria using machine learning algorithms and ‘eyes in the air’
Adeyemi Olusola is a river catchment scientist with a strong focus on river dynamics and human impacts on river catchments, as well as extreme events and reach-scale classifications. He is a physical geographer with a special interest in fluvial geomorphology and ecohydrology as well as GIS/remote sensing. His study on River sensing: Inclusion of red band to predict reach-scale types using machine learning algorithms aims to understand the role of satellite sensors in predicting riverbeds using machine learning algorithms (MLAs).
Climate change and differing lake characteristic’s impact on cyanobacteria bloom formation in oligotrophic systems
Cyanobacteria, commonly referred to as Blue-Green Algae, are a ubiquitous photosynthetic bacteria that under the right conditions – high light, warm temperatures, high nutrient concentrations, high thermal stability, low surficial sediment redox– cyanobacteria are able to rapidly proliferate, forming dense populations or blooms. Freshwater blooms are detrimental to environmental and human health due to the production of liver and nerve toxins and unpleasant taste and odour compounds by some strains. Rebecca Gasman’s research uses a combination of methods to better understand the formation of cyanobacteria blooms in oligotrophic systems.
Exploring how projects of global health intersect with processes of urbanization
Drinking water quality is paramount for public health but progress towards access to good quality drinking water for all remains a critical issue around the world. The challenge of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) is felt acutely in informal settlements in the Global South where inadequate water and sanitation contributes to a range of physical and social inequities, from stunted growth to chronic diarrhea, to increased rates of sexual violence faced by girls and women. Hillary Birch studies how global health projects in water, sanitarion and hygiene (WASH) are implicated in challenges of urban water management. She is working to better understand how urban water quality is contested and negotiated across scales by WASH interventions that seek to improve access to water for the purposes of hygiene and health promotion, including the institutional and infrastructural effects of these contestations for urban water management.
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