SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - The NWT's new water stewardship strategy, released Nov. 4, calls for co-operation from upstream districts, including British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan, in preserving the quality of water flowing into the territory.

The first draft of the strategy, which the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and Indian and Northern Affairs Canada began working on two years ago, sets out water stewardship goals, such as working on environmental research, improving communication and sharing information among environmental programs in NWT and auditing those programs to find out how effective they are.

Michael Miltenberger, minister of Environment and Natural Resources, said the department will gather feedback on the draft in the winter and make 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."

The government has circulated the draft - now available on the department's website - to provincial governments and environmental organizations across the country, and is also asking for public input. With that feedback, the government plans to have the official stewardship strategy ready by winter 2010.

Water management is a priority for the GNWT, said Miltenberger, and the stewardship strategy would help the government negotiate a transboundary agreement with Alberta, beginning in late 2010.

"This will give us the foundation to go forward when we look more carefully at resource development in the North, as we look at how do we deal with our transboundary issues," Miltenberger said, adding that the Alberta government has received a copy of the strategy.

"They know what a huge issue it is for us, they know that we have a strong Northern voice where we have ourselves, the federal government and the aboriginal governments basically shoulder to shoulder on this issue which gives us a much stronger position from which to negotiate."

The release of the stewardship strategy comes just after World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Canada published its Rivers at Risk report this month. The report highlights 10 rivers across the country, including the Mackenzie, as it examines 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 with binding 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) transboundary nature," he said from his office in Toronto.

Maas said his organization supports the GNWT's efforts to develop a water management strategy, adding 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 NWT's stewardship strategy aims to address, said Miltenberger. "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," the minister said.