Webinar Date & Time

Tuesday April 23rd, 2013
9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. PT (12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. ET)
**please note your timezone**

This is the fourth webinar in the POLIS Water Sustainability Project’s 2012/2013 Creating a Blue Dialogue webinar series. View archived webinars from past seasons.

**SPACE IS LIMITED**
To register email Laura Brandes at communications@polisproject.org

Webinar Summary

Problem-solving ways to adapt to water scarcity is becoming an increasingly real issue, both globally and in North America. However, this problem‐solving is often challenged—and sometimes even halted—when legal entitlements (or “rights”) to water are exerted. Legal entitlements can undermine attempts at progressive water management approaches that, for example, address increased water scarcity due to over-allocation or a changing climate. In this webinar, the guest speakers will discuss how our historic reliance on individual “rights” to water is, in fact, often at odds with the on-the-ground responses of licence holders to water scarcity: when faced with scarcity, licence holders will frequently forego their legal entitlements in favour of negotiated, local solutions in their watershed. Using the Klamath Basin Agreements of 2010 as an example of a recent, complex and comprehensive approach to resolving problems with water scarcity, the speakers will discuss the gap between on-the-ground practice and legal concept in theory.

Guest Speakers

Deborah Curran
Hakai Professor in Environmental Law and Sustainability & Program Director, Environmental Law Centre, University of Victoria Faculty of Law

Glen Spain
Northwest Regional Director, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations

Pre-Webinar Reading Material

Discussion Paper—When the Water Dries Up: Lessons from the Failure of Water Entitlements in Canada, the U.S. and Australia by Deborah Curran & Oliver M. Brandes

Workshop Proceedings (June 2013)—When the Water Dries Up: Lessons from the Failure of Water Entitlements in Canada, the U.S. and Australia

Associated Press. (2013, April 4). Remove all four dams on the Klamath River, environmental analysis recommends. The Oregonian.

All documents on the Klamath Dam Removal and Restoration Settlement proposals