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Cities like Calgary, Edmonton and Saskatoon risk losing their rivers altogether or enough to cause serious harm. According to Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria's School of Earth and Ocean Sciences:
"Its a huge problem. These glaciers are basically toast. They won't be around by the end of the century, or they'll be around in such insignificant amounts that it won't be a big source of water. You've got to start thinking about adaptation here."
Tim Barnett of La Jolla, CA's Scripps Institution called them "fossil water and when it's gone, it's gone. If you really are glacier-fed in a warming world, you're up the creek without a paddle, no pun intended."
Maude Barlow agrees calling a dwindling global water supply the new century's most threatening ecological, economic and political crisis, one not properly being addressed.
"There is no water (surplus) in the Great Lakes. The only place one could go (for what's needed) is up north and all those rivers are flowing north, so you'd have to be undertaking huge engineering projects to reverse the flow" (south). So this notion that we have lots of water sitting around is absolutely false."
Barlow and others worry whether Canada can ban bulk exports because WTO and NAFTA define water as a tradable good. NAFTA also calls it an investment, and a provision in the agreement requires "proportional sharing" of energy resources.
America considers water among them so could cite Canada for a violation if it won't sell. In addition, under NAFTA's Chapter 11, US corporations could sue for financial losses. In 2001, a California company sued the Canadian government for $10.5 billion because British Columbia banned commercial bulk water exports.
WTO provisions prohibit export controls for any "good" that by definition includes water. Imposing them could be challenged as a non-tariff barrier - even for sound environmental reasons and a resource as vital as water.
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