NWT - The Department of Environment and Natural Resources is set to unveil its Water Stewardship strategy early this month to collect feedback and prompt adjustments to the territory's water management policies.

A report released in late October by World Wildlife Fund-Canada highlights climate change, industry development and tributary flow as future threats to the Mackenzie River. - NNSL file photo

The scheduled release date for the first draft of the stewardship strategy falls just after World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Canada published its Rivers at Risk report last week. The report highlights the Mackenzie River among nine other rivers across the country for a look at the future of Canada's freshwater systems.

Climate change and further Northern development are expected to have major impacts on the Mackenzie River, the report says. It emphasizes the need to protect the river by implementing strong trans-boundary agreements between NWT, the Yukon, B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Tony Maas, director of WWF-Canada's freshwater program, said the report doesn't necessarily pinpoint the worst rivers in the country.

"We picked 10 rivers that we see are of national significance or help us to illustrate that point, the Mackenzie being important because of (its) trans-boundary nature," he said from his office in Toronto. Maas said his organization supports the GNWT's efforts to develop a water management strategy, calling it a "major step in the right direction" but that the federal government needs to step forward as well.

"A strategy on paper is great, but it doesn't go a long way until we have resources to implement it," Maas said. "The impact on the Mackenzie existing in the future originates upstream in the tributaries (such as the Athabasca and Peace rivers) so dealing with those issues presently and down the road, I think, really comes down to developing what we call an integrated river basin management plan which really looks at the whole big basin or watershed and tries to understand what are the impacts, future and present, and how do they add up?"

That's exactly what the new water stewardship strategy aims to address, said Michael Miltenberger, the minister of Environment and Natural Resources.

"At this point it's going to lay out all the principles and the key elements and all the technical areas that we need to look at when it comes to water and the hydrological cycle and the aquatic ecosystem," Miltenberger said.

He said the department plans to gather feedback on the draft strategy through the winter and make necessary policy changes in the spring, hoping to set an example for a water management plan on the national level.

"We have been pushing the federal government for some time now about the need for a national water strategy," said Miltenberger. "When we get ours done we're going to hold it up as what we think is a good example of what other jurisdictions have to do and, on a national level, what the federal government should be trying to do."