Opinion: The U.S.’s freshwater crisis could lead Washington to look northward. Is Canada ready to quench its thirst?

Peter McKenna is professor of political science on the College of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown, and the editor of Harper’s World, a group of essays on prime minister Stephen Harper’s overseas coverage file.

Our closest neighbour to the south has a major problem – and I’m not speaking about racial animus, gun violence or political polarization.

To place it bluntly, a big swath of the U.S. is working out of accessible water. And that’s placing the lives of tens of millions of Individuals at risk.

A lot of the American Southwest, particularly, has struggled over the past 22 years with a megadrought, the worst dry interval the area has skilled since no less than 800 A.D., in keeping with analysis printed earlier this yr within the journal Nature Local weather Change. Certainly, local weather change, rising populations and elevated industrial and agricultural utilization have solely exacerbated this drought. This extended spell of maximum dryness has adjusted the best way folks reside, in keeping with Teri Viswanath of CoBank ACB, which is part of the U.S. Farm Credit score System: “Given the size and depth of drought situations within the west, there’s a rising sense that low hydro availability is the ‘new regular.’ ”

Within the desert state of Nevada, for example, the federal government is paying owners to take away grass from their properties (and thus the necessity to water it) and to switch it with crushed stone. Nearly each on line casino resort on the Las Vegas Strip has indicators posted about conserving water and reusing bathtub towels, in order to chop down on washing.

In close by California, Governor Gavin Newsom has pled with residents to voluntarily scale back their water utilization by 15 per cent, however the name was a flop. So long as folks may get water from their faucet, many felt that there was no have to implement such a draconian measure. However in June, the US Drought Observatory reported that greater than 97 per cent of the state was in “extreme, excessive or distinctive” drought situations. Lots of the area’s very important water reservoirs are at half-capacity or much less.

In Might, strict water laws for roughly six million southern Californians went into impact. The Metropolitan Water District (MWD) of Southern California is now aiming to cut back water use by an unprecedented 35 per cent. “We have now not had the availability to satisfy the conventional calls for that now we have,” stated MWD common supervisor Adel Hagekhalil, “and now we have to prioritize between watering our lawns and having water for our youngsters and our grandchildren and livelihood and well being.”

If a Californian have been to violate the MWD’s restrictions on garden watering, she or he would initially face a warning letter, to be adopted by escalating fines. Based on the Los Angeles Times, the town’s water and energy division “will ramp up patrols to search for folks violating or losing water.” And the likelihood exists of a full outside ban on watering being imposed in September if issues don’t enhance.

In June, the Biden administration additionally launched an Motion Plan on International Water Safety, placing the problem amongst its high overseas coverage priorities. In addition to pledging to defuse potential conflicts over entry to scarce water assets in numerous areas of the world, the plan calls for brand new efforts to make sure that there’s sufficient water to assist well being care techniques and ample provides of meals. “A lot of our most basic nationwide safety pursuits rely upon water safety,” U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris stated on the announcement.

And so politicians and authorities officers in Ottawa have a number of questions to contemplate if the U.S.’s water disaster continues to be this pressing.

Do now we have further water to spare for our American pals? What may Canada extract from the U.S. in alternate for us diverting large volumes of contemporary water southward?

Over time, numerous engineering proposals have been floated to divert important sums of Canadian freshwater southward. None of them have succeeded in getting off the drafting board. However ought to that change, given the looming disaster within the U.S.? What infrastructure could be wanted to make it occur?

And what would the geopolitical implications be, if the U.S. got here knocking on our door about water exports, and Canada unequivocally stated no? Would it not doubtlessly contain navy motion?

If the U.S. goes to make a seize for our water anyway, ought to Canada not attempt to get one thing for it? On this new, extra delicate period of U.S.-Canada relations, Ottawa might wish to think about using water as leverage to safe an finish to U.S. border impediments and its contingency safety legal guidelines, corresponding to commerce tariffs and countervailing duties.

There may be one different key query, too: If Canada decides to show the faucet on, will we have the ability to flip it off later, if we modify our thoughts? I wouldn’t financial institution on that wishing properly.

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