The Steele Springs Waterworks District (SSWD), north of Armstrong, has some water quality issues.  A couple of representatives from the district, which supplies water to 58 households, recently presented an open letter to the Water Stewardship Council of the Okanagan Basin Water Board (SSWD 2014 05 Steele Springs Nitrate Story) .  In brief, nitrate levels in the Steele Springs water source have reached a level that is above the 10 ppm that is considered safe for drinking water, and the people connected to the system want something done about it.  I chatted briefly with friend and colleague Dr. Craig Nichol (Craig’s website), who pointed out that this is not the first time that Steele Springs has had issues, and a quick internet search reveals that Steele Springs has had boil water advisories in the past.

Where is Steele Springs?  The SSWD has five water licences, the oldest of which was issued in 1894, all of which are attached to one point of diversion (POD).  I used the provincial government’s mapping website (iMap BC) to find the point of diversion.  I built the image below using information from this site.  The district draws its water from a spring in the upper bank of a gully above Deep Creek.

Another way to look at the location of Steele Springs is with a Google Earth(TM) image.  The image below is a perspective image created by Google Earth.  The gully through which Deep Creek flows and the location in the bank of that gully of the POD for Steele Springs stands out nicely.  What also stands out is how much of the land around the water source has been developed for agriculture.  Nitrate pollution of groundwater can be caused by animal waste being spread on the land, and the board of the SSWD feel strongly that this is the source of their water quality problems.

As an economist, I can’t comment on the validity of the case being made by the SSWD.  My smattering of university science courses may lead me to speculate, but this matter is too serious for my naive speculations.  What is known is that Steele Springs has high nitrate levels in the water, that spreading animal waste on the land can cause nitrate pollution of groundwater, that groundwater movement can transport pollutants from one location to another, and that groundwater movement can be relatively slow, meaning that waiting for pollutants in groundwater to be flushed out may take a while.

So, what should be done, and who should pay for it?

There are probably a number of things that could be done.  Changing agricultural practices in the areas that are impacting Steele Springs is the solution that seems to be preferred by the SSWD.  Can it be guaranteed that inappropriate agricultural activities won’t take place?  Do we have enough information to know which agricultural practices on which areas of land are contributing to the problem?  Is Steele Springs simply a vulnerable water source which will always be difficult to protect?  Could the water be treated in some way to reduce nitrate to a safe level?  Could SSWD tap a different water source, perhaps with a deep well or drawn from a location that is not as vulnerable to surface activities.  Are there other utilities nearby that could share a source, perhaps sharing the costs?  Could somebody (the regional district, the province, …) buy all the land that is potentially impacting on Steele Springs, and then rent it out with conditions on how it is used?

Moving to the who should pay question is where it gets complicated.  Is it fair to force best management practices on some farmers and not others?  Is it fair that some farmers, because of where their land is, have less freedom about how to manage their farms than others?  Is it fair to change the rules, to tell a farmer who invested in a farm business that she can no longer farm the way she was planning to farm because we learned that to do so will impact on groundwater?  Should we pay the farmer because we have taken this ‘right’ away from her, or should we just force her to change her practices, and bear the cost of doing so?

The BC Farm Practices Protection Act was created to protect farmers from nuisance lawsuits and local bylaws that could prevent a farmer from engaging in normal farming activities.  Farming operations do generate noise, odor and other inconveniences.  People unfamiliar with rural landscapes, particularly those new to such landscapes, can forget this and have sometimes made life difficult for farmers.  Thus, the act.  In effect, the act says that the non-farm community must bear the cost of dealing with the more unpleasant consequences of agricultural activities.

The BC Water Sustainability Act prohibits the introduction of a range of substances, including animal waste, into a stream or well.  When mentioning wells, it speaks about substances entering one well impacting other wells or aquifers and streams that are connected to the well.  This act seems to place the onus on the polluter to pay the costs of protecting surface waters and groundwater from pollution.  So, does this mean that farmers who happen to be farming on land that impacts groundwater need to change their practices so that the groundwater is not impacted?

This leaves us with a conundrum.  Steele Springs has a nitrate problem, and it will cost the SSWD a considerable amount of money to deal with this problem.  Nitrates seem to be a new problem.  For a water system that includes licences dating back over 100 years, it seems unfair that they have to pay to fix a problem that was not of their doing.  The farmers, who may be contributing to the problem, do not seem to be doing anything that isn’t part of ‘normal farming practices’.  Forcing one group of farmers to adopt more costly practices when other’s don’t have to also seems unfair.  Is there a solution that is fair to all involved?  I’m sure the SSWD, the Regional District of North Okanagan, and the agricultural community would all like to find one.

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The proposed changes to the Agricultural Land Commission are being spun as for the benefit of farm families (press release).  It is hard to argue with someone who claims they are doing something because they want to help struggling families.  However, should the issue of protecting agricultural land and the issue of helping struggling families be linked this way?

Compassion: sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it (www.merriam-webster.com).

Compassion is probably one of the best human qualities.  I don’t think there are many people who don’t feel for struggling families, families that are having difficulty making ends meet.  I think many of these people would like to be able to do something about it.  The question then is what to do.

Sustainable:  of, relating to, or being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged  (www.merriam-webster.com).

How do we reconcile compassion with sustainability?  Should we order things?  For example, if a family is struggling to make ends meet, should we overlook any damage that they are doing to the environment?  Should we allow them to damage the environment as a way of dealing with their struggles?  If there is a poor family living in an old house with a leaking septic system next to our drinking water source, should we be compassionate and just overlook this threat to our drinking water?  If that family can’t afford to pay, who should? In general, we won’t tolerate this.  We will order them to repair their septic system, and if that isn’t possible, end up taking possession of the property, evicting the family, and either repairing it or demolishing it.  While the whole legal process is complicated, actions like this are taken (Mission Creek, June 2013).

http://daveginsberg.net/SpaceshipEarth/

Should sustainability come first?  Should the first condition be protecting that which is important for the environment and long term well-being of humanity and life on earth? Should compassionate actions be conditional on not compromising sustainability?  Almost fifty years ago the late Kenneth Boulding argued that we are moving from a frontier economy to a spaceship economy (The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth).  In a frontier economy, there is always more space and there are always more resources on the frontier.  In a spaceship, everything must be conserved if we are to survive.  In a spaceship, compassionate actions cannot be allowed to compromise the survival of the passengers.

How does this relate to the Agricultural Land Reserve?  Do we need to protect our agricultural land because we (or some future generation) won’t be able to survive without it?  Probably not.  Here in BC we only grow about half of our own food (BC’s Food Self-Reliance), and our population is growing faster than our food production.  So, should we just abandon efforts to protect agricultural land here in BC?  MLA Bill Bennett, champion of the proposed changes, seems to think so (the Tyee, 3 April, 2014).

Mr. Bennett is right that farm markets won’t feed our growing population and they are not a solution to the food security challenges of poor families.  Farm markets tend to be expensive, selling ‘yuppy grub’.  The environmental benefits of farm markets and local food is not as clear as proponents assert (US Department of Agriculture).  If Mr. Bennett’s statement is correct, is his conclusion that the ALR should be weakened (or done away with)?

Community: a unified body of individuals

Indigenous: produced, growing, living, or occurring naturally in a particular region or environment

A few years ago I heard my UBC colleague Jeanette Armstrong speak, and one of the things she talked about was indigeneity.  She described indigeneity about connection with place, about living in harmony with the land and environment that we inhabit.  What I took away is that we can all learn to be indigenous.  Learning to be indigenous means cultivating our connection with the place we live, and there is little more fundamental to connecting with the place we live than working with the land to produce the food that sustains us.

In a modern economy we cannot all be farmers, and many people don’t want to spend their time gardening.  However, when agriculture takes place in our community, and when we support that agriculture in such a way that all in the community can at least share a bit of the bounty, then we are at least a little bit connected to the land.  As we continue to live in the same community, we absorb the cycle of life that we are embedded in, through seeing the activities taking place on the land and through the food we consume.

So, what about helping farm families?  If we want local food and we want families to be producing that food, then we should be helping families to farm.  If many farm families, through no fault of their own, are struggling, then we are clearly not helping families to farm.  However, I don’t see how enabling people who own agricultural land to do things other than farming is helping families to farm.  It is tough when land owners see large profits that they can’t get hold of because of the ALR rules.  It is even harder when a family desperately wants to stay on their land and in their community, but can’t make a living farming.  I think we have to be careful to temper our compassion with wisdom.  Simple solutions – families with farmland are struggling so let them use their land for other things – may be lacking in wisdom.

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A proposed land swap in Summerland has been in the news of late (Global News).  Town council is proposing to remove 80 hectares of agricultural land near the town and replace it with some arguably less productive land slightly larger farther away from town.  The town argues that it needs to grow to expand.  It further argues that developing closer to the core reduces sprawl, saves on infrastructure costs relative to growth further away, etc.

But why should Summerland grow at all?

The economy here in the Okanagan depends on growth.  The figure below plots data from BC Stats on the Okanagan Economy in 2012.  Construction, and large shares of Trade and Retail, and Financial and Business Services (which includes legal services and real estate) relate to bringing new people to the Okanagan.  When we stop building new homes and businesses and selling those to newcomers, people loose jobs and struggle to make ends meet.  But does it have to be this way?

The Okanagan will continue to grow.  It will continue to attract people because of its lifestyle and climate.  However, does that mean we have to spread this growth around to all the communities in the Okanagan.  Why should Summerland (or Osoyoos or Oliver or Armstrong) grow at the same rate as Kelowna or Vernon?  Is it possible that some parts of the Okanagan, some communities, have enough people already, and that it is better to concentrate the growth somewhere else?

I think that politics is a big part of this.  More numbers from BC Stats show how the population of the three regional districts in the Okanagan have changed over the last three decades.  In the early 80’s, the Central Okanagan already had the largest population of the three regional districts.  That wasn’t true thirty years earlier, before the first bridge.  Going forward to the present, and the Central Okanagan has more people than both other regional districts combined.

Why does population matter?  Kelowna is big, busy, congested, noisy and at times downright unpleasant compared to Penticton.  It is in such a state that the premier is looking to help by building a second bridge across the lake.  But this is the rub.  Because Kelowna is big, it gets more money from the provincial government.  It has a bigger market, so business finds it a more attractive place to be.  Given how our water rights system works too, as Kelowna grows, its claim to the scarce Okanagan water also grows.  That is the consequence of a first in time, first in right system of water rights with a use it or loose it provision.  From a political perspective, from an ability to secure resources and exert influence, communities that don’t grow get left behind.

So back to the question, should Summerland grow?  Listening to some of the proponents of the land swap, Summerland must grow.  Should Summerland grow isn’t even a question they are considering.  Maybe it should be.  Maybe we should be looking at the Okanagan as a whole and deciding where the best place to accommodate more people is.  Maybe some parts of the Okanagan are already ‘full’ and should not grow.  I won’t answer the question for Summerland, but I will pose it, and I hope that there are people willing to seriously consider it.  Of course, that also means we have to learn to work together for the good of the valley as a whole, not just for ourselves or those in our neighbourhood.

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The provincial government says it is ‘improving’ the Agricultural Land Commission.

Modern government speak is interesting.  When I want to change the way my course is organized while that course is underway, I don’t describe what I want to do as an improvement.  Until I’ve had a chance to hear from everybody in the class, I don’t know if it is an improvement.

I like to believe that our government represents all of us and respects all of us.  The very fact that we disagree about who should lead us during an election should, I think, make the winning party humble enough to remember that what they want to do isn’t supported by everyone.  I guess the honest statement would be ‘The governing Liberal Party thinks that its changes are improving the Agricultural Land Commission.’

So what are the proposed changes?  The government press release can be found here.  They are making four main changes to the way the Agricultural Land Commission (ALC) makes it decisions about applications for changing the use of land in the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR).

1. Increase opportunities for farmers to earn a living and continue farming their land,
2. Recognize B.C.’s regional differences to better support farming families,
3. Improve land use planning coordination with local government,
4. Modernize the Commission’s operations.

The press release states that these ‘improvements’ will protect farmland and support farmers.  There is nothing in these changes that enhances the protection of farmland.  All the changes focus on strengthening regional input into land use decisions and facilitating new activities on agricultural land.

Allowing non-agricultural uses on agricultural land is not a new idea.  What can we learn from history?  Gravel is a valuable commodity in the rapidly growing parts of the province.  In river deltas, such as the Fraser Valley, there are large gravel deposits under farmland.  In principle, we could peel back the topsoil, mine the gravel, fill the hole with some other material, and then put the soil back.

The image above is a screen capture from the maps provided by the City of Chilliwack.  The diagonal green lines identify lands that are part of the ALR.  The blue line defines one parcel of agricultural land.  Half of the parcel is a lake, an abandoned gravel pit.

I grew up on a dairy farm nearby.  The plan proposed at the time was that the soil would be moved aside, the gravel removed, the hole filled with sand, and then the soil returned.  My late father was convinced that it would never be rehabilitated.  Something like twenty years later, there is a dike of stockpiled soil surrounding a pit filled with water.  My father was right, and the rehabilitation has not happened.

The promise was made.  Why didn’t the reclamation happen?  In a 2005 application by the City of Abbotsford to remove lands from the ALR, it estimated reclamation costs at between $20,000 and $50,000 per acre (letter here).  This pit covers almost fifteen acres.  It would cost at least a quarter million, and perhaps as much as three quarters of a million dollars to rehabilitate this site.  Once the gravel has been mined, then there are no further revenues from this site.  This creates a pretty strong incentive to avoid paying the rehabilitation costs.  Sometimes companies declare bankruptcy.  Sometimes they just ignore the rehabilitation until someone tries to enforce the original deal, and then claim they don’t have the money and will go bankrupt if forced to clean up the site.  There are plenty of excuses that the mining company can use to avoid the rehabilitation that they have promised to do.

This challenge is not new.  Mining operations in the US are required to post a performance bond sufficient to cover the rehabilitation costs of the mine site (Cornell University Law School).  They learned through bitter experience that mining companies had this nasty habit of disappearing after they have removed everything of value from the site.  The way to deal with this is to require a mining company to post the money up front.  That way, no matter what happens to the company, the government has the funds to rehabilitate the site.

Within the details of the changes is entrenching the role of regional boards.  These regional boards have a rather checkered history of protecting agricultural land, as documented Ryan Green.  Ryan found that when the regional boards were created, exclusion rates increased.  Regional boards responded more to the undefined ‘community need’ as justification for exclusions.

We have an agricultural land reserve in this province because we have decided that protecting our ability to grow food here should be protected.  Not everyone agrees that we should protect agricultural land this way, and land owners often can’t cash in the same way they could if the ALR didn’t exist.  However, the public at large is strongly supportive of the ALR.  We need to recognize that if we are not careful in how we implement these changes, it may amount to little more than creating new pathways to get land out of the ALR.

I think we can follow the example of US mining law.  Allowing non-agricultural uses of agricultural land – gravel pits, RV parks, etc. – should be accompanied by a performance bond.  This bond should be sufficient to pay for the cost of rehabilitating the site to its former agricultural capability or higher.

Will requiring a performance bond make it harder for owners to develop alternate uses?  Yes it will.  If what they are proposing has a good chance of success, they can certainly find a bank or other partner willing to help finance the bond.  If the venture has little chance of success, then requiring a performance bond may make it untenable to being with, which is a good thing.  If the venture goes ahead and then fails, the funds are available to clean up the mess.  Requiring a performance bond will help filter out those proposals that don’t make financial sense.

One more thing to consider is land with such a performance bond that is subsequently taken out of the ALR.  One point of a performance bond is to prevent development on agricultural land which destroys the agricultural value of the land.  The aim is to stop these developments being one step towards an exclusion from the ALR.  The bond should therefore be forfeit if the land is subsequently excluded.  The ALC would use these funds to support rehabilitation elsewhere in the ALR.

Requiring a performance bond and having the owner forfeit the bond if the land is removed from the ALR will help reduce speculation.  Land owners who want to get their land out of the ALR need to convince the ALC that, at the least, there will be no net negative impact on agriculture in BC.  The first thing owners often try is simply not using the land.  After a number of years, the owner will argue that this land has not been farmed for a long time, so taking it out of the ALR won’t have any net impact on agriculture.  To accelerate the process, the owner may try to degrade the agricultural value of the land.  Then the owner can argue that the land isn’t suitable for agriculture anyhow, and should be taken out of the ALR.  A performance bond won’t do anything to stop owners from not using their land or making it available to farmers.  However, it can reduce the incentive to degrade the land, if the bond is forfeit should the land actually come out of the ALR.  The cost of the owner’s effort to accelerate the exclusion is higher, reducing the likelihood owners will make such choices.

Providing land owners with greater flexibility is generally a good thing.  However, we in British Columbia believe that protecting farmland is in the public interest.  I hope we can learn from our own past experience and from elsewhere to ensure these changes do in fact protect farmland.  I think that a performance bond for uses that degrade agricultural land is one way of doing so.

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http://www.sparklesandcrafts.com/2012/11/whats-in-your-closet.html

One of the great benefits of working with people from different countries, different cultures, or even different disciplines, is encountering new perspectives.  Our minds organize the facts we collect using a framework that develops and/or is simply absorbed from our culture, our media, our education, and our disciplinary training.  Our minds are very good at building a framework that works, and because it works, we seldom see any need to change it.  However, like a closet organizer, there is usually a bin somewhere in the closet where we put those things that don’t quite fit. I find it rewarding when I find a new (to me) framework that does a better job than the one I’ve been using to date.  The sustainable livelihoods framework, which I encountered while doing background reading for our work in Nepal, is such an example.

The basic idea of the SL framework is that people, either as individuals or collectives like households, have a set of tools that we used to sustain and enhance our livelihoods.  The SL framework proposes that these tools can be organized into five different categories.  These are:

1. Financial capital.  This is the easy one.  It is just the money we can access.
2. Physical capital.  The built things that we use – house, car, computer, clothing …
3. Human capital.  Our education, experience, skills, etc. that lets us make good use of the other forms of capital.
4. Natural capital.  Those things that are provided by the natural world which we use.
5. Social capital.  The networks and relationships that support us and allow us to make better use of the other forms of capital.

The tools we have in these different categories are what create the options we have to respond to the situations we find ourselves in.  A person with carpentry skills (a type of human capital) and no tools (physical capital) has less job opportunities than a person with the same skills and tools as well.  If the carpenter without tools has enough money (financial capital), they can buy the tools and thereby open up more job opportunities.  Someone with carpentry tools but no carpentry skills won’t have many carpentry job opportunities.  They can get some training and thereby develop carpentry skills, investing in building human capital.

Many of the capital assets – tools – that the rural villagers in Nepal had access to were very specific to where they lived.  The buildings, farming tools, quality of the land, the relationships with other villagers, etc. are only useful within the village.  This can make people very vulnerable to local environmental change.  How will villagers respond to a drought, a landslide, a pest outbreak?  If we want to help, what should we do?

Thinking about the situation of the rural household and how that situation is changing helps highlight the way that the options available to the household are changing.  Due to climate change, traditional ways of interacting with the environment may no longer work the way they once did.  New skills and adaptive technologies can help.  Economic growth and job opportunities elsewhere leads some to migrate away.  This means less local labor and weaker social networks.  Collective projects, such as irrigation systems, become harder to build and maintain.  Should we try to sustain the village, or should we help by providing education that makes it easier for people to move away and get employment elsewhere?

I think the sustainable livelihoods framework also provides a useful way to think about Okanagan issues.  Okanagan farmers have a combination of skills (human capital), equipment and facilities (physical capital) and a farm community (social capital) that they use to make the most of their land (natural capital).  Unfortunately for the farmer, many of these tools have little value outside of agriculture.  Over the decades a farmer works her land, she develops a relationship with that land that makes her a better manager of that land than anyone else.  She has made a large investment of time and attention to build this relationship, and it serves her well in how productive her farm is.  She has relied on others in the farm community to help her develop these skills and she in turn has helped younger farmers in the same way.  Take her away from the farm, and these skills have little value.  Take her out of the farm community, and that continuity of information flow between the generations is diminished.  Farmers have a tremendous investment in their relationship with their land and in their community, an investment that they know is worth a lot less outside of agriculture.

http://www.syilx.org/

Like farmers, our Syilx friends here in the Okanagan also have a unique ‘portfolio’ of livelihood ‘capital assets.’  The Syilx culture developed over many generations of living in relationship with the land.  It is through the Syilx community (social capital) that skills and knowledge (human capital) about the relationship with the land (natural capital) are transferred between the generations.  This culture and the skills and knowledge do not fit easily into the framework used by most of us who have not been schooled in the ways of the Syilx people, and thus these skills and this knowledge are not much appreciated outside of the Syilx community.

Understanding that the Okanagan is occupied by different communities is valuable.   If we are going to make changes to the way we manage water and other resources here in the Okanagan, we need to appreciate that these changes can affect these communities very differently.  Some approaches that may seem obvious on paper or work well elsewhere might have serious negative effects on people here.

For me, the sustainable livelihoods framework makes it easier to appreciate that for people within these communities, some of the tools that they have may only be useful within their community.  A new framework does not change the situation, but it may provide a new way to describe the situation and thereby to more effectively communicate the issues.  A critical step in finding new ways of doing things that improve the situation for all is talking, and I hope that bringing this framework to the conversations here in the Okanagan, helps improve communications.

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I have been participating in a partnership project involving the Nepal office of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and the Okanagan Sustainability Institute (OSI) here at UBC.  The project, “Preparing for an Uncertain Water Future in Nepal through Sustainable Storage Development,” was funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).  CIDA no longer exists as an independent agency, being integrated into the department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada. This places support for international development more directly under ministerial control, and integrates that support with other foreign policy goals of the Canadian government.

Nepal is a small country sandwiched between India on the south and China on the north.  Its northern border joins some of the highest peaks in the world, including Sagarmatha (Everest), the worlds highest at 8,516 meters.  Nepal is a small country, less than 900 kilometers long and less than 200 wide.  Along the southwest border with India, elevations range between 60 and 180 meters above sea level, while most of the northern border with China is above 4000 meters, sometimes substantially so.  The cordillera is punctuated in a couple of places by deep canyons, the floors of which are only 2000 meters above sea level, draining part of the Tibetan plateau.  This elevation change occur over distances of less than 200 kilometers, the most extreme on earth.

The images below show a horizon, simulated by Google Earth, as viewed from about 800 meters above Calgary and above Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal.  Calgary sits at about 1100 meters above sea level, while Kathmandu is slightly higher at about 1300 meters.  From Calgary, the 2970 meter peak of Mount Cornwall is just over 70 kilometers away, while from Kathmandu, the 7104 meter peak of Pabil is almost 80 kilometers away.  The fact that Pabil rises almost four kilometers farther up substantially changes the horizon!

Nepal is a developing country, with more than 26 million people in an area that is less than five times the size of Vancouver Island, or about two and a half times the size of Nova Scotia.  It has a gross domestic product (GDP) of about $1,200 per capita, when measured in terms of purchasing power (less than $750 at currency exchange rates). Here in British Columbia, our per capita GDP is more than $47,000.  Nepal’s population has been growing at close to two percent per year for most of the 21st century, with a drop during the civil war in 2009.  Life expectancy is less than 70 years, and more than 40% of the population is illiterate.  It also falls in the worst 30% of countries in terms of corruption.  Life expectancy in Canada is over 80 years, and we rank in the top five percent of the least corrupt countries.

Temple complex along the Bagmatti river in Kathmandu.

Nepal has abundant water resources, having 7,296 m³ per person per year of renewable water.  The US has renewable water of 9,847 m³  and Canada has 87,255 m³.  However, Nepal lacks the resources to both make full use of the water it has and to protect the quality of that water.  In urban areas, water supplies are often inadequate and not safe to drink.  During the monsoon, flooding and damage to infrastructure can be substantial. Months later, many communities face water shortages.  Within this context, our project sought to help identify those storage technologies that would best help rural Nepali people sustain their livelihoods in the face of the many challenges that they face.

What can we learn about water management in the Okanagan by working with people in Nepal?  In spite of the substantial differences between Nepal and Canada, there are some similarities that stand out.  Nepal is a mountainous country with snowfall serving an important role in sustaining dry season streamflow.  Like the Okanagan, climate change will likely reduce snowfall and increase rainfall, leading to higher spring (monsoon) peaks and less water during low flow periods.  Nepali communities, like communities throughout the world, struggle to find ways to work together on projects valuable to the community. Government intervention aimed at helping Nepali communities has sometimes had serious unintended consequences, a story not unfamiliar in Canada.  Many of the challenges that Nepali academics and government officials identify – lack of communication between disciplines, lack of coordination and cooperation across departments, overlapping and confusing jurisdiction, public apathy and ignorance – sound surprisingly familiar.  And, fundamentally, people in Nepal and people here in the Okanagan are looking for ways to sustain and enhance their quality of life in a complex, changing world.  Over the next few months I hope to provide a bit more detail on the ways I think working in Nepal has provided insights valuable to water management here in the Okanagan.

Woman with basket. Taken in hills north of Melamchi Bazar, north-east of Kathmandu.

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Recently the way agricultural land is managed in British Columbia has been in the news quite a bit.  The lightening rod was the revelation that Agriculture Minister Pat Pimm and the mayor of Fort Saint John may have inappropriately tried to influence the proceedings of the Agricultural Land Commission (ALC) (B.C. Agriculture minister …).  Ironically, after the ALC rejected the application to remove land near Fort Saint John from the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR), the owner went ahead with the development anyhow, claiming that with the support of the minister, he would be successful on a re-application (Rejected by ALC, …).  Anyone who has lived in or visited BC over the years will have seen the ongoing growth of our cities, and the progressive development of agricultural land.  Excepting the appearance of inappropriate political interference, applications like this one routinely come before the ALC, and agricultural land continues to be developed.

Protecting agriculture and agricultural land is a ‘motherhood’ issue around the world.  A simple Google search for ‘protecting agricultural land’ returns almost nine million results.  One can refine this search for pretty much any country or region in the world and continue to get many results.  Everywhere, people are concerned that ongoing population and economic growth is gobbling up scarce agricultural land.  Most of these places are also trying something to slow this change.

In British Columbia, we created the Agricultural Land Reserve in 1973 (History of the ALR).  The ALR was created to protect the capacity of the province to grow food.  It was not set up to protect land that was being farmed, but to protect land that could be farmed, in case we needed it in the future.  Land throughout the province was classified according to its agricultural capacity, and pretty much all high capacity land was put into the ALR.  This meant that the land could not be used for purposes other than agriculture, full stop.

Well, not quite full stop.  As real estate agents say, what matters is “Location, Location, Location.”  Some land that is really good for agriculture is also really good for other things, like growing houses or highways.  It is inevitable that as our economy and population grow, some land that once was best used for agriculture is now best used for something else.  The challenge is figuring out what the best shape of our landscape is, and transitioning land from agriculture to other uses (and sometimes from other uses to agriculture) such that society as a whole is made better off.

With the ALR, the job of figuring out what land to allow out of the ALR was left to the ALC.  The mission of the ALC is to “Preserve agricultural land and encourage and enable farm businesses throughout British Columbia (ALC)”.  It is not the job of the ALC to figure out what the best use of the land is.  It is the job of the ALC to protect agricultural land and agricultural businesses.  So whose job is it to balance all the different needs of society and figure out the best use of our land base, and particularly of our scarce agricultural land?  This has been the dilemma since the inception of the ALR, and no good solution has been found.  Things generally stumble along under the radar until a controversy, such as this recent situation, brings the issue to the public.  That launches a review and some changes to the mandate or procedures.  Then things go quite again until the next controversy.

Ever since the creation of the ALR, there have been vocal critics that insist it was a stupid idea to begin with and should be abolished (BC Business).  They argue that the ALR is an unfair limitation on what private land owners can do with their own land.  They also argue that the pattern of land use that results from a free market is consistent with the best use of the land, and that no government actions can improve on that.

Is the free market, where land owners and developers figure out what to do with land, unfettered by controls or regulations, really consistent with what is best for society?  This would be true if nothing anybody did with their own land had any impact on their neighbours.  We know this isn’t true.  When I start my lawn mower, whether or not I rake my leaves, how late I leave my stereo turned up, what I burn in my fire place, etc. all impact on my neighbours, and their actions impact on me.  Only those who consider private property rights absolute above all else argue that neighbours just have to accept these impacts.  Most people are quite happy to accept rules, such as noise bylaws and zoning rules, that limit all of our choices and thereby contain these adverse effects.

What ways does agriculture impact its neighbours?  Agriculture has many positive influences that are largely lost when the land is developed for urban uses.  There is of course the loss of local food production.  While many of us don’t buy much locally produced food, we seem to value knowing that if we want to, we can.  Some recent research highlights how much the public in BC supports the ALR, and an important reason is wanting local food production (Androkovich et al, 2008).  Agricultural land also provides valuable habitats that built up areas don’t.  Perhaps more importantly, it provides landscapes that we enjoy being close to.  Many research studies have shown that people value living near open space, much of which is agricultural land (McConnell and Walls, 2005).  Our communities become less pleasant places to live when farmland and open space is replaced by the built landscape.

Watercolor by B.J. (Bernie) Cattani, #24 – 3333 South Main St. Penticton B.C. Canada V2A 8J8. Phone 250 493 4099

The amount someone can afford to pay for a piece of land is determined by the size of the loan they can afford to finance from what they earn using the land.  If you are a landlord, that part of the rent you have left after expenses must cover the mortgage payments, with enough of a margin to deal with those times when you can’t find a tenant, or other things go wrong.  Likewise, if you are a farmer, the most you can pay for that mortgage is what remains after paying all the costs of growing the crop, with a margin for those times when the crop doesn’t grow.  Since nobody pays the farmer for being there ‘just in case’ people want to buy local food, nor for the deer that people like seeing on farmer’s fields, nor for the beautiful landscape that farmers take care of, farmers may not be able to make a living from their land, even though as a society we are better off if they do.  Somebody who wants to develop the land will be able to pay more for it than a farmer can.

If the ALR works well, then the only thing agricultural land can be used for is agriculture, and the prices it will sell for is that which farmers can afford.  However, the ALR isn’t perfect, and people who are able to get their land out of the ALR can make a lot of money by doing nothing but getting a ruling in their favour.  This profit opportunity is the big problem with the ALR.  Anybody who owns land in the ALR that could be sold for a lot more out of the ALR will be tempted to get it out.  The fact that they may be able to get it out means they will pay more for it even when it is in the ALR than can be justified by farming income.  So, farmers can’t afford to buy farmland.  Speculators buy it, gambling that they will be able to get it out, and do what they need to grease the wheels and increase their odds of getting it out.

How do we fix this?  Can we?  Should we?  The how is easy.  We need to get rid of the profit potential for getting land out of the ALR.  If this profit opportunity is gone, then the political pressure coming from land owners will disappear, and planners can do their work to figure out how to best manage the growth of our communities.  Now, moving from this simple answer to the specific ways to do that gets harder.  The city, district or province could charge a tax equal to the difference between the assess agricultural value of the land and the assessed non-agricultural value for land taken out of the ALR.  The city, district or province could buy the agricultural land, change the zoning, and then sell it for development purposes.  The difference would go into the revenues of the relevant authority, rather than to the land owner.

Rather than taxing away the profit potential, we could instead try to increase the value of keeping land in agriculture.  The various supports for agriculture, the reduced property taxes for land that is being farmed, etc. are efforts to do that.  The suggestion of an agricultural water reserve in the proposed Water Sustainability Act is a similar effort to make agriculture a bit more viable.  These help, but don’t seem to do enough.  They also tend to be broad policies for all of agriculture, rather than focusing on those farms that are at the urban fringe.  Another approach to making farming profitable would be for the city, district or province to buy the land and then rent it out for farming uses.

Now should we?  This is the really hard question.  Many people dream of getting rich through real estate.  Shutting this door is probably not going to be an easy sell politically, especially for people who spent a lot of money to get into this game.  Likewise, anything that sounds like higher taxes isn’t going to get too far with the current political climate.

Is it fair?  Most of the value from the development that a parcel of land has is because it is in the right place.  Often that right place is a consequence of growth that happened before.  The owner didn’t pick up the land from somewhere else and move it to where it is valuable.  She got lucky that the city grew the way it did, and won the real estate lottery.  So, from this perspective, it is only fair that the community as a whole reap this benefit, as it is the very existence and growth of the community that created this value.  However, we all want to have the opportunity to win the real estate lottery, so as logical as this argument may be, I’m not sure how well it will fly.

So, there are some very good reasons to manage development and protect some of the things that agriculture in particular provides to our communities.  However, the current ALR creates very strong incentives to try and undermine it.  Do we have the courage to try something very different, or do the majority of us want to keep open the possibility of scoring our own million dollar cheque by gambling on real estate?

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The proposed Water Sustainability Act contains a more specific policy idea, Water Sustainability Plans.  These plans are something of an update and expansion of the Water Management Plans enabled under the current Water Act (www.bclaws.ca).

A Water Management Plan is potentially a powerful tool to enable communities in a watershed to develop a legislatively recognized and enforceable plan that can require much stronger restrictions on water allocation than exist without a plan.  However, the planning process, whereby affected parties in the area to be covered by the plan must agree on a plan, has so far not lead to any plans which have been approved by the Lieutenant Governor in Council. This is the requirement for a plan to come into force.

It doesn’t take much thought to realize that the most appropriate management unit for water is the watershed. While figuring out the appropriate boundary for the watershed may be complicated by the fact that groundwater and surface water don’t always move the same, the concept remains. In physical terms, the impacts of decisions made by one water user in a watershed are felt elsewhere in the watershed. Water used upstream is not available downstream. Water polluted upstream has its impacts downstream. The best way to manage a watershed is therefore about managing these interconnected impacts in such a way that the greatest good is realized.

It is also pretty obvious that those who live in a watershed are those who directly reap the benefits and endure the consequences of decisions made in the watershed. The ‘greatest good’ is therefore a question of finding that way of managing the watershed so that the overall benefits are as large as possible and shared among those in the watershed in a way that is fair and acceptable to all. Often these benefits and consequences are known only to those who experience them, and they may be very difficult to describe in a way that enables a calculation of tradeoffs. What is required therefore is a dialog among those in a watershed to identify what is the best way to manage the watershed in the interest of all. This dialog also must continue, as experience teaches us about impacts that we didn’t previously realize, and management needs to respond to this evolving understanding of the watershed.

I think that there is an awareness of these facts that is evidenced by the public engagement that has accompanied the Water Act Modernization. I think it is also frighting for those who make long term investments (e.g. mines, mills, farms, property developments, …). A flexible, adaptive plan that responds to changes in both scientific information and public values introduces uncertainty, something those who make long term investments don’t want. It is not surprising therefore that those with such long term investments at risk won’t be seriously interested in a dialog where they are not assured up front that their interests are protected, or if not protected, that what they may gain from participating is more than any adverse consequences on their investments.

If a Water Management Plan creates uncertainty for large investors, and if that plan won’t be developed unless all the affected parties are on side, then the best thing for a large investor to do is to stay out of the process. Optics may demand attending, but that is all. It is probably not unfair to say that this is why there are so few approved Water Management Plans in the province. Does the new Water Sustainability Act, and the proposed Water Sustainability Plans, change this?

There is one policy proposal that may add some impetus for people in a watershed to work together, Area-based Regulation. The Water Sustainability Act proposes to enable implementation of additional restrictions on water allocation and use in areas where there are particular concerns. Perhaps the threat that Victoria may decide itself how to deal with emerging concerns in a watershed may lead those in that watershed to work together. In other contexts the threat of government action has encouraged interested parties to work together were previously some of those interests were happy to let the status quo continue.

One large issue that is mentioned in the proposal is financing Water Sustainability Plans. The process of negotiation will be time consuming and expensive. Implementing the plan will also be costly, both at the start and likely on an ongoing basis. If a Water Sustainability Plan has within it a way to collect additional resources, then there may be a prize large enough that everyone in the watershed wants to play.

For example, suppose that a Water Sustainability Plan was being contemplated that would create a Watershed Sustainability Committee. This committee would be charged with monitoring water levels and protecting environmental flows. It would have the authority to trigger additional restrictions on water use, such as those in the Fish Protection Act, in order to protect those environmental flows. The committee would be made up of representatives from the watershed, with First Nations members having key decision making positions. If irrigators are the largest water users in the watershed, and most likely to suffer should the restrictions be applied, they likely won’t support the contemplated plan. However, suppose that the committee was able to levy a property tax on residents in the watershed. Part of these revenues were used to help irrigators increase their water use efficiency. Further, some of the revenues were used to maintain a reserve fund, to make payments to irrigators in those situations where their water use was restricted. Now irrigators will both receive help to reduce their water use and will not suffer financially when their use needs to be restricted.

There are probably a range of ways that a Water Sustainability Plan can be implemented so that all affected parties are better off with the plan than without. However, one key element is that there be a revenue generating mechanism included which creates a means to support those who suffer the most from changing their water use. This funding needs to be sustainable, rather than vulnerable to changing political priorities in Victoria. Ideally, the revenue is generated within the watershed, to remain in the watershed. If Water Sustainability Plans can’t be created with the tools to ensure everyone in the watershed is better off with the plan, then it is unlikely everyone in the watershed will want to be part of the plan.

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In early August I had a biopsy done on a lump in my right breast, which turned out to be  cancerous. The lump was removed, together with all my breast tissue and a couple of lymph nodes, the day before I started writing this. As I start, the pathology of the removed lymph nodes has not been done, meaning I do not yet know if the cancer has been spreading beyond the breast tissue. This past month I have experienced anxiety like I have not known before. I interpreted pains, particularly in my abdominal area, as suggesting that the cancer had spread. I had an ultrasound to look for any abnormalities in my internal organs (none were found). I experienced muscle pains in my back and side that I had not experienced before. I found myself afraid that with each passing day, cancer cells were spreading along my lymphatic system from the breast lump, throughout my body.

I tried to console myself with the facts. The five year survival prognosis for male breast cancer caught before it reaches two centimeters in size is 96% (Prognoses and Stages). As my lump was sized at 1.3 centimeters, the odds were strongly in my favour. I learned that an aggressive cancer has a doubling time of 60 days. Being an analyst, I figured out that for a 1.3 centimeter diameter tumor to double in volume, it would end up with a diameter of 1.63 centimeters. In the month between diagnosis and removal, the tumor would not have grown enough to move me to the next stage (2 to 5 centimeter tumors), where the survival probability falls to 84%. That same analysis also shows this tumor would have around 2 million cells, meaning it had to double about 21 times.  Even it if is an aggressive cancer, the first cancer cell started growing there more than three years ago.  My surgeon, family doctor, and other experts assured me that this cancer had been caught early, and that this meant the prognosis was good. Further, they emphasized the fact that I am relatively young and in good health, which also stands in my favour. However, my anxiety continued, and my concern continues.

So what does this have to do with water, the subject of this blog? What it highlights to me is how hard it is to think about risky and uncertain situations. For my cancer, I can do the math and quickly conclude that my odds of dying in the next five years in a traffic accident are likely not dissimilar to the odds that this tumor has spread and will kill me. I traveled to and from the hospital in a car and was nowhere near as anxious as I have been about this cancer. I think that discussions and decisions around water related issues often tap into deep seated anxieties, anxieties that make it difficult for people to work together.

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Water is essential. It is essential to the riparian and aquatic habitats we want to protect. It is essential to farmers who grow our food. It is of course essential to our very survival. When people feel that something essential is threatened, anxiety takes over. This is particularly true where we don’t feel we have any control over those things that threaten our water. We worry about the safety of our tap water, and turn to bottled water. Bottled water costs hundreds to thousands of times what tap water costs, and is not itself perfectly safe either (see Center for Disease Control. However, when we buy bottled water, we feel we have a level of control. We are able to respond to our anxiety by doing something.

People are not very good at dealing with probabilities. Two simple experiments illustrate this again and again every time I use them myself in a classroom. The Ellsberg paradox (Wikipedia) shows that when people are faced with a risky situation – where they know the odds – or an uncertain situation – where they do not know the odds, most people try to avoid the uncertainty. The Allais paraox (Wikipedia) shows that when there is a small risk of a seriously bad outcome, people fixate on this situation and make choices to avoid it. The ironic thing about both of these paradoxes is that people change their behavior to avoid uncertainty or small probability undesirable outcomes even as the underlying situation does not change!

The Ellsberg and Allais paradoxes, and my own experience with cancer, emphasizes that rational explanations won’t get rid of peoples’ anxieties, and that people will try to take control where they can to reduce their anxieties, even when doing so doesn’t really address the source of the anxiety. If we are going to improve the way we manage water here in the Okanagan and elsewhere, we are not going to do so by using rational, fact based arguments to deal with peoples’ anxieties. Rather, we have to find ways to empower people to make choices through which they can lessen the sources of their anxiety. If we don’t provide these choices, others will certainly take advantage of these anxieties to offer them choices, even if these choices don’t genuinely help people.

As an example, maybe if our water utilities had a small budget set aside for consumer initiated water tests, people would feel more confident in their water supply. If they knew that were they worried about their tap water, they could call their utility, and the utility would send out someone to take a sample and have it tested, they would have more confidence when their utility tells them that the water is safe. This would cost more to the utility, but it may result in their consumers using less bottled water, and thereby saving much more money. Other solutions that empower people to be part of the process of addressing their anxieties may play an important part in getting people to work together. Those of us who work in academia or are highly trained experts may need to engage people more and find out what they are worried about, rather than simply telling them to stop worrying. I certainly felt more support from those who acknowledged my anxiety about cancer than from those who simply told me to stop worrying.

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