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Friendly, 2015 that calls for a water-quality based goal of a 50 per cent reduction in phosphorus to Lake Winnipeg from diferent sources. The remainder of the document provides elements of an action plan,
focusing on speciic sectors and areas to achieve this goal and other necessary co-beneits. Finally, the multiple parties relected in the Lake Friendly Stewards Alliance represent the collaborative, multi-party
process that is critical for good watershed management.
Similar elements of ecosystem-based governance were identiied in our research using a review of literature conducting, in many cases, meta-analyses across basins. These principles emphasize the need
for strong leadership and capacity; a clear basin plan with speciic goals; consistent and long-term resourcing; a role for legislation in establishing basin-wide planning and the use of regulatory instruments
for appropriate goals; strong monitoring and reporting systems; multi-party approaches to ensure that diferent perspectives are included; and, speciically important in this region, a need for shared decision
making with Indigenous communities. A study of these principles in the context of the northern NCRB leads us to make the following recommendations.
Another reason for embarking on northern NCRB management in the present time is the current political climate. The Government of Canada 2016 budget emphasizes Indigenous communities,
including their water infrastructure. References to improving the socioeconomic conditions of Indigenous Peoples relate broadly to good ecosystem management and the provision of services including, but not
limited to, drinking water, waste management, community infrastructure and economic development. We assert that sustainable development in northern communities is linked closely with ecosystem
management to ensure that the foundational natural systems that provide many of the beneits that we need are maintained in the long term.
6.1 Recommendations
The need and logic for integrated management based on understanding of ecosystems has been clearly articulated for decades, but a key challenge identiied is the weak institutional and inancial capacity for
its implementation. The MA 2005 highlighted ecosystem services as a way to understand and assign an economic value to the tangible beneits from ecosystems and promoted their valuation and the use of
markets and other policy instruments as ways to inance their management. Based on this, we provide the following speciic recommendations.
Recommendation 1: Prioritize a Northern NCRB Initiative The irst and somewhat obvious recommendation we make is that the northern NCRB needs our
attention due to a variety of factors. In order to ensure that development in the northern portion of Manitoba is sustainable and that decision making is informed by integrated thinking and long-term
objectives, a basin-planning efort will go a long way. Clearly this needs to be prioritized at political, policy and operational levels to ensure that social, environmental and economic objectives for the region
are understood and managed. While in many cases such planning eforts are the result of a crisis e.g., in Lake Winnipeg, the algal blooms are driving a basin initiative, we recommend that we avoid crises by
acting now.
A starting point for northern NCRB planning could be the 1999 COSDI report, which embraced basin- level planning along with other principles identiied in this report multi-party initiatives, transparency
and reporting, inclusion of Indigenous Peoples, adequate resourcing. While the document is 17 years
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old, the value of large-area planning has not diminished. The current provincial government could work in partnership with other parties to help guide its implementation, particularly in northern Manitoba
where large area planning is lacking.
Recommendation 2: Identify, Quantify and Prioritize Ecosystem Services in the Northern NCRB, Ideally through a Combination of Analytical and Multi-party Approaches
Basins around the world are increasingly being managed for speciic ecosystem services, such as biodiversity, lood control, nutrient capture, carbon sequestration, agricultural sustainability, and cultural
and spiritual values. Based on a previous review of global, transboundary basins Roy et al., 2011, we recommend that ecosystem services help communicate and prioritize key aspects of watershed
management. The northern NCRB possesses a richness of ecosystem services, some of which are already being managed to some degree e.g., hydroelectricity; wildlife to support ecotourism; eforts to protect
important cultural and spiritual sites. However, these ecosystem services have not been systematically identiied, quantiied and analyzed. Such an approach has proven useful in other geographies to enhance
understanding of the full beneits of a watershed ecosystem, and also to consciously manage it to prioritize some, preserve others, and generally ensure appropriate balance and recognition of trade-ofs.
Providing economic values to these watershed ecosystem services would also help in their communication and would add further appreciation. Some services in the basin already have an economic value attached
to them e.g., domestic and export value of minerals or forestry products, some recreational activities, hydroelectricity production. Others, such as biodiversity and climate regulation, are not currently
represented in the economy, but nonetheless have value; without them, there would be economic consequences. Methods exist to calculate the monetary value of such services e.g., Costanza et al., 1997;
Voora Venema, 2008.
In order to identify and appropriately understand the ecosystem services in the basin, we recommend that a multi-party process be used. The following recommendation is for the creation of a multi-party
body to help guide basin management; it is quite possible this entity could participate in ecosystem service assessments.
Recommendation 3: Form a Multi-party, Basin-Level Organization to Consider Northern NCRB Management and Fund it and its Activities Adequately and Consistently. Include Shared Decision
Making with Indigenous Peoples.
With parties and decision making in the basin fragmented by jurisdiction and geography, one essential step towards large-basin management would involve the creation of a multi-party body at the basin scale.
Such an entity could take many forms, such as being non-governmental, spearheaded by one government or established as a multi-lateral organization. Any structure would have potential to function well
provided it has or is provided with the mandate, resources and relationships to lead the initiative.
Initially, such an organization could be formed in Manitoba, but a mid-term goal should be to involve other interests in the NCRB, including those in the Saskatchewan and Alberta portions of the Churchill
River basin, as well as those upstream of Jenpeg i.e., the full Nelson River basin, as well as the connected Churchill River Basin.
An important feature of a basin organization would be signiicant inclusion of Indigenous Peoples, including a decision-making role in planning, co-management, beneit sharing and Indigenous
ownershipoperation of companiesinfrastructure.
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Recommendation 4: Access Traditional and Innovative Sources for Adequate Funding for a Northern NCRB Initiative
One of the biggest barriers to watershed management success identiied in the extant literature is a lack of adequate and consistent funding. As such, one of our primary recommendations is that any initiative
for large-basin planning in the northern NCRB needs to be adequately funded. We believe that using the ecosystem services framework allows us to access markets and non-traditional sources of funding for
watershed management. This could include revenue-sharing agreements, carbon markets for preserving forest and wetland-based carbon sinks, and even create locally appropriate ecosystem services-based
markets, such as for water quality. Such resourcing must inance not only the creation of a plan, but also its implementation, monitoring and revision of the plan for periodic updating and improvement.
We recommend that diverse funding sources be sought see Section 5.7, but emphasize that several of the options this report identiies have strong potential to be stable, long-term sources; trusts, revenue
sharing, funding protected by legislation and innovative use of local taxationlevies and user fees all have such potential.
Recommendation 5: Use Existing Entities and Processes to Build Basin-Level Thinking, Operating at Multiple Scales
In a northern NCRB initiative, we believe while to some degree government could take a leadership role, a viable alternative could also be leadership provided by a multi-party steering committee, building
on current institutional roles and programming. Potential representatives on this steering group could include people from the RMBs in northern Manitoba, the former Thompson Economic Diversiication
Working Group which took a broad regional approach and various Manitoba Hydro activities, such as its recent regional cumulative efects assessment. In addition, processes such as a recently announced task
force on Manitoba’s Northern Economic Development Strategy the Government of Canada’s support of new relationships with and improved socioeconomic conditions for the country’s Indigenous people have
potential to contribute to basin-level thinking.
In terms of existing processes, a variety of policies, legislation and programs exist at the federal, provincial, municipal levels these are listed in Appendices 1 and 2. While many complement each
other, in the context of basin planning, a closer look at the speciic roles, redundancies and gaps in policy mechanisms will be a useful early step in the process. For instance, the role of regulations under
the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and the Manitoba Environment Act show how these complement each other in the context of basin planning. It is also important to understand the role of
water power licensing under the Manitoba Water Power Act to ensure that licensing or relicensing of new and existing hydroelectric power stations and facilities are conducted systematically and against some
broadly agreed-upon regional goals and priorities.
Recommendation 6: Enhance Monitoring, Data Sharing and Reporting For a northern NCRB planning and management initiative to be efective, environmental and
socioeconomic knowledge of the basin are necessary. Without suicient data on environmental, social and economic considerations—including of baseline conditions—management targets and goals important
parts of basin plans cannot be created. Fortunately, a signiicant amount of monitoring and data collection is already carried out in the basin by various entities. In order to support northern NCRB
management, additional steps could include:
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• Connecting monitoring and data collection to clear, basin-level questions and objectives. • Sharing and centralizing existing environmental data centralization likely to be carried out by
basin-level organization identiied in recommendation 3. • Ensuring consistency in data collected.
• Identifying data gaps, and setting up mechanisms to begin collecting data on topics and in geographies that are missing.
• Incorporating traditional knowledge. • Sharing and centralizing socioeconomic data, and identifying data gaps etc. as described above for
environmental data. • Identifying and publicly sharing baseline conditions for the basin and watersheds within it.
• Eventually producing state-of-the-basin reports, as well as other communication products. • Looking at citizen sciencecommunity-based monitoring, including a role for Indigenous
communities in monitoring.
6.2 Next Steps
