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Canadian Attitudes Towards Freshwater Usage and Conservation
By GreenCompany | March 18, 2009
A new study, the Canadian Water Attitudes Study, has found that 53 per cent of Canadians find freshwater as Canada’s most important natural resource. Much further back were forests at 20 per cent and farmland and agricultural lands at 14 per cent. Also finding their way onto the survey were Canada’s oil energy reserves and ocean fisheries.
Considering Canadians are some of the largest users of fresh water per capita, it’s surprising to see they under-estimate their actual water usage. Canadians on average use five times more water each day than they think they use, which shows a increasing need for conservation of the resource. Canadian water usage sees the average Canadian citizen use upwards of 329 litres of water each day for activities such as showering, laundry, toilets and drinking. Europeans who feel the water crunch more than their North American counterparts use half the daily amounts of water.
The Canadian Partnership Initiative of the U.N. Water for Life Decade has endorsed the study which was commissioned by Royal Bank of Canada and Unilever.
The current chair of the Canadian Partnership Initiative of the UN Water for Life Decade said of the findings, “On the one hand, Canadians appear to value water as a crucial natural resource and understand that conservation of this precious resource is critical. Yet unfortunately at the same time, they don’t seem to know how much water they use each day or where it comes from.”
The study also found that Canadians identify pollutants and potential mass bulk exports of water as the largest threats facing Canada’s freshwater supply. Strangely only six per cent of Canadians readily identify wasteful non-conserving usage of water to be a threat to their freshwater supply. To that, Shari Austin who is the vice president of corporate citizenship for RBC said, “It’s important for people to understand the value and vulnerability of our water resources, which is why we undertook this survey.” Under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), bulk water exports are a possibility.
Canadian attitudes towards conserving water according to the study has shown that some ninety-five per cent of those surveyed find it important to conserve freshwater supplies. A smaller percentage (86%) of Canadians answered that they are personally working towards conserving water, while 30 per cent of those who answered believe that business, industry and corporations in general are making substantial and meaningful efforts to conserve water. Regionally more Albertans answered that they were working towards conserving water than any other province.
If you want more information about the United Nations Water For Life Decade and/or the Canadian partnership initiative in support of the UN initiative see – www.thinkwater.ca
Category: Green News
Tags: bulk exports, business, conservation, corporations, freshwater, industry, nafta, natural resources, oil, united nations, water No Comments »