hydro-nationalism
on water commodification and freshwater futures
A note to old and new subscribers: This will be the last “regular” newsletter essay for 2024 — I have some fun round-ups planned for the rest of December, however! As we approach the end of the year, I want to thank you so very much for opening this little newsletter and supporting my work, it means a whole lot. 💌
“A bottle of water is $1 at the store, $2 at the gym, $4 at the airport, and $7 on a damn flight. Same water, different price tag. Why? It ain’t about the water, it’s about where it’s at.”
— 50 Cent
In this interview, 50 Cent is speaking about understanding your own value and being in the right or the wrong spot at a certain time. But when I watched the clip, it brought me to a different exploration of the idea of value. It’s a theme I’ve been approaching across most of my work for the second half of this year: what do we value, and what does that mean for our own rights and experiences?
Water is a human right; there is no denying that.
But is water valued in the same way that food, clothing, housing, or community is? I am not always convinced of that being true. I’ve spent nearly a decade researching water security, working with First Nations and Indigenous communities across Turtle Island to bring attention to human rights violations, contaminations, and a lack of policy that protects or enshrines water as a right.
Because of that, I am quickly drawn to water when it trends, but I become challenged trying to write about it. It’s so essential, but so fluid (I know, I know). When I was running cognitive interviews about water security to build a Gallup poll metric, I interviewed people who would qualify as water secure, people who have not had to negotiate shower times, drinking water sourcing, or routine changes to ensure there is clean, adequate water supply in their house. Water was an afterthought until I asked specifically about it, which felt odd to me after years of obsessing over who gets clean water and why.
Our water is not inherently protected, and I suspect what we’re seeing with shifts in water trends like Stanley cups are only hints of challenges to come. Hydro-nationalism plays out in many ways but becomes so insidious it’s almost impossible to notice.
freshwater abundance
Here in Canada, freshwater resources are abundant. With around 20% of the world’s fresh surface water available to us, we bask in the Great Lakes, the Athabasca Glacier, the Red River, Great Bear Lake, the Arkell Spring Grounds Aquifer, the Mackenzie River, or the Laurentian River System. Our landscape is carved by glaciers, and we’re left to make sense of the wonder that accumulates in these valleys. I often think of an interview that Bob (Robert) Sandford gave in a 2019 TVO documentary about the nature of our identity being built on water (of which I can’t track down now, my apologies):
“Canadians identity had been shaped by water. There’s few Canadians that don’t have a water story that means a great deal to them in terms of a turning point in how they lived, or who they became… it is part of the Canadian aesthetic, and we should treasure that, honour that relationship, and take full advantage of it in the future. Because it will define us again in a world where water is becoming more precious.”
Those of us who work with water are hyper-aware of the alarming changes to our water systems: too much, too little, too dirty. We depend on our freshwater as a resource, rather than harnessing our responsibilities to keep it for future generations. When I say we, I mean settlers, as I know this is something Indigenous Nations have been practicing, tending, and caring for since time immemorial.
First Nations Peoples call out the big and small: from longstanding protests against the ongoing and historic mercury poisoning of Grassy Narrows First Nation (Asubpeeschoseewagong Netum Anishinabek) to seemingly smaller elements, like the consequences of more tires on highways altering stormwater runoff in ways that increase mortality for juvenile salmon.
If we live in such abundance, perhaps it is natural to take it for granted in a society bent towards extractivism rather than activism. Yet alongside this freshwater wealth, that liquid gold, are more nationalist trends (across America and Canada) that devalue our public water – those communal watering holes we used to depend on.
defining hydro-nationalism
One of the elements that challenge how we care for our waters is the division of land by nation-states. National boundaries tend to emerge around geographic truths: mountains, rivers, canyons, and valleys can be used as the line distinguishing one state from another. While these lines are imagined, they hold real social and economic powers. Yet when water is used to maintain a boundary, there become issues with its governance.
As Zachary McCarty and Elizabeth Chalecki described for Climate Diplomacy, “Borders along rivers pose a particular challenge. While rivers serve as distinct geographic markers for borders, they pose challenges for international ecological governance by splitting the basin between states. This leads to quarrels over water.”
Hydro-nationalism as a term can also take on many different meanings, in some contexts representing terrorism and water nationalism, and in others representing imagined futures where river basins and nation-states live in harmony. To me, it represents the national connections to bodies of water its people depend upon, and the urgency with which governance of water becomes intertwined with a sense of national identity.
This is meant to be in line with the nativism that Fabio Parasecoli speaks of in Gastronativism, where it “periodically expands during periods of fast social and economic transformations that shake the citizens’ sense of security, often in connection with urban expansion, demographic changes, and vast population movements.” In times where political and social and economic inequalities emerge more glaringly, harsh questions develop about who should be included in these “national projects.”
It’s important to consider and understand how water gets used to build state. As Ashraf and colleagues write, by harnessing water and its power through dams, reservoirs, and canals, it contributes to governance. But it also becomes representative of various identity-building at national, state, provincial, or local boundaries. It transforms water into a security of place, a legacy of ownership and control.
water is community
After the American election, there’s been a lot of discussion around what to do next: join grassroots efforts, organize community, and unite to push for common goals and rights. I see this as inherently good, but fraught the same way many online calls for justice tend to go. There’s an upward trend for months, sometimes a few years, and then things trickle off while online activism cycles to the next big event.
I understand how this plays out, people wanting to do better, learn more, and stay invested. But there’s never a space for rest embedded in these calls, and so there’s burnout. There’s disentangling when the work gets hard, boring, or complicated. I know from experience working within water activism how that plays out – even within the community, there are firm differences of opinion about what’s best and what’s the path forward.
In work against Nestlé, there were people on the frontlines demanding that a cease and desist be served and that the multinational stop pumping water for free in Ontario. And then there were community members working quietly with Nestlé, for a generous pay cheque. The reality is that this is how it will always look: there is no perfect community, but there is persistence. There is still a common goal of water access to look at, afterall.
national faucet pressures
In a recent piece for The Tyee, journalist Michael Harris questions what happens in a Trump era to Canada’s water resources. Given the abundance and story of water for Canada, Harris argues that Canadians have been “lulled into a false sense of water security” despite 32 ongoing drinking water advisories for First Nations reserves, multi-national and private sector firms bottling up our non-renewable freshwater resources (like BlueTriton outside of Guelph and Elora), and increasing risks of algal blooms, water contamination of lakes and streams, and retreating glaciers. It’s a pretty damning laundry list of our water futures if we’re not more careful.
What Harris points out is that this lulling fails to consider the value of water, be it economically or socially. Time and again, we take it for granted that we have this abundance, while others are keen to manipulate it further. Prior to his election win, Trump described the province of British Columbia (B.C.) as a ‘very large faucet’ that would be suitable to help reduce the pressures of California water shortages:
“So you have millions of gallons of water pouring down from the north with the snow caps in Canada and all pouring down… and they have essentially a very large faucet. And you turn the faucet and it takes one day to turn it. It’s massive.”
Despite this man sounding like a broken toddler explaining their day at preschool, what Trump presents in here is a risk to our already murky water governance in Canada. Environmental lawyer Merrell-Ann Phare describes our water governance as having “policy vacuums” in Denying the Source. Canadian water policy is split into provincial and federal domains. The federal government oversees trade and commerce, maintaining things like NAFTA or the Columbia River Treaty (a B.C. treaty with the U.S.). The provincial governments oversee natural resources, including water.
These water policy vacuums have lots of internal consequences (namely maintaining a lack of safe, clean, and reliable drinking water for First Nations Peoples living on reserves). But internationally, there are gaps that must be considered moving forward. While I’m less interested in protecting water sources due to undying nationalist Canadiana pride (clearly), I do see it as important to make sense of the current policies when dealing with a megalomaniac Cheeto man south of the border.
Harris points out that NAFTA, now CUSMA (Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement) states “that water is not covered by the agreement unless it has entered into commerce by becoming a good or a product (for example bottled water). What happens if bulk water is determined to be a good or a product?”
This is where understanding our policy vacuums becomes important, too: due to gaps in our policies around water, companies like Nestlé have extracted millions of litres of water per day from our non-renewable aquifers on Haudenosaunee treaty lands (again, for free). If provincial governments like Ontario fail to protect our water sources from the hands of industry, what precedents does this set for North American relationships?
bottling it up
In coming back to the idea of value, Dan Jaffee has done tremendous work to look at why so many movements for water rights don’t also focus on bottled water issues, and there’s good reason. It’s complicated! It’s huge. In writing up my dissertation, I wanted to jump into bottled water because there was such a need for it in Six Nations. It was affordable, reliable, and something that individuals and families could control. They couldn’t always control when water got trucked in, or if their wells and cisterns were safe to use. The same plays out in places with longstanding water quality issues, like those seen in Flint, Michigan, or Grassy Narrows.
In reading UnBottled and talking with Dan (which will come out on AnthroDish podcast in early 2025), value was an overarching theme, particularly when it comes to valuing social and government support systems. Jaffee sees bottled water as a threat to public water, something with the potential to destabilize public interest and value in our water infrastructures.
For those that are miraculously middle-class in this era, devaluing can look like choosing bottled water over tap for aesthetics. They trust that Jennifer Aniston would only sell them the best, and water becomes aesthetic. And all the while, public services for local water keep their budgets dwindling, their pipes falling apart. For those living in homes where pipes have lead, mercury, or other metal contaminants contributing to ongoing cancers and illnesses, these are no longer safe to rely on.
But for water-secure people living in downtown Toronto, Los Angeles, or otherwise, not using tap water is more of an aesthetic preference. In interviews, people will always comment on the taste of their tap water. My hometown, Peterborough, has water that I would also describe as “carp-like,” thanks to the fish that frolic throughout the river bottom of the Otonabee.
Guelph, my current city, has particularly hard water because of the very aquifer that supplies our water, Six Nations water, and up until a few weeks ago, Nestlé and BlueTriton bottling companies. People complain about the hard water, its impacts on hair and kitchen appliance life, forgetting that it’s safe. It’s water we can trust, because we still have public services that fund its sanitation and distribution to households. Taste is, in many ways, an inconsequential piece to our water, and yet they slowly, collectively, drive us away from valuing public services.
Until only this month, BlueTriton maintained the water pumps at Nestlé’s old stomping grounds in the Arkell Springs Ground Aquifer, trading it as a commodity on Wall Street. Thanks to the dedication of Six Nations First Nation youth, Elders, and Wellington Water Watchers, there’s been enough ongoing pressure locally to kick them out. But for how long?
What are we doing, if our freshwater is commodified before it even hits the plastic bottles?
Hydro-nationalism is a topic I’m keen to explore more fully in 2025 on this newsletter, so I hope you’ll stick around and learn with me. There’s so much more to dig into across bottling water, the aesthetics of taste, and Indigenous-settler governance around water.
Check back January 12th, 2025 for my return to regular essays! You can also find me on Instagram, Threads, and TikTok, or check out AnthroDish podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube.
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