WC131 JulyAugust 2023 - Magazine - Page 35
While we had consulted the wider water community for
input into the design of the network, these consultations had
failed to include the very people these groups were supposed to
be serving.
Water-health infrastructure improvement in rural communities involves energy, connectivity, education, health, food, fish
habitats and spawning, animal migrations, and the social and
cultural effects of situating new villages; without all of which
the well-being of the communities and environment is compromised. In order to uphold a holistic view, we had to figure out
how to transfer evidence between separate scientific fields and
disciplines, as well as Indigenous science and laws. Which is no
easy task, since there are legislative and other gaps in Canadian
law which may not currently meet the expectations of Indigenous peoples with respect to the protection, preservation, and
dissemination of their cultural expressions. For example, under
current Canadian copyright law, the concept that copyright in
works may be automatically owned by an Indigenous community upon creation of such works does not currently exist.
A new model
Guided by these learnings, we were convinced that we needed
to develop a new value creation model. The underlying
challenge haunting Canada and other member states of the
Paris Agreement, UN Sustainable Development (SDGs), and
the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples (UNDRIP) is the lack of a value co-creation framework
that leverages distinctive Indigenous and other intrinsic values,
such as human rights, sustainability, data sovereignty, privacy,
collective health, education, biodiversity, clean energy, access to
drinking water and sanitation, equity, diversity, and inclusion
(EDI)—and a voice to be heard—to achieve business success
and economic prosperity. Tackling Indigenous communities’
problems, therefore, requires the adoption of innovative models
of collaboration between Indigenous peoples, communities,
Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars (in Indigenous and
non-Indigenous science, law, business, and government),
NGOs, and academic institutions and communities.
Rural and Indigenous communities want to build or buy
solutions to their problems. They want to own these solutions,
and they want to be confident about the decisions they’ve
made, and take pride in them. More deliberate short- and longterm actions must be implemented to achieve resolutions that
deliver desirable outcomes for Indigenous peoples and rural
ecosystems. Otherwise, as occasionally portrayed by media
coverage of rural drinking water-related incidents worldwide,
many of the conventional solution technologies fail to cope
with unique challenges of rural environments, leading to regret
or a lack of confidence in community leaders’ future decisions.
WAT E R C A N A D A . N E T
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