SCARP PhD Julia Kidder wins Peter Wall Award

Julia Kidder's entry

Between Laws: 
Collaborative Governance and Decolonization in the Quw’utsun-Xwulqw’selu Watershed

My research focuses on how Indigenous people are advancing adaptive solutions to climate change and freshwater challenges in line with their own legal traditions in so-called British Columbia. 

Earlier this year the UNEP announced that we have entered into an era of "global water bankruptcy" which is both disturbing and a call to action for researchers involved in environmental-sustainability and community planning. As this crisis unfolds in unique ways in settler colonial contexts, I'm interested in learning about whether collaborative watershed governance and government-to-government water sustainability planning can shift our current water management and decision-making framework to be more aligned with Indigenous territorial and water sovereignty goals, and with water itself. 

While I've been focused primarily on collaborative flood planning in BC's coastal areas for the first years of my PHD (on the Living with Water project) the Wall Award will enable me to dive deeper (excuse the pun!) into collaborative watershed planning. Specifically it will support my research in the heavily logged, drought-prone and climate-impacted Cowichan-Koksilah watershed on Vancouver Island. 

I've been working with the Cowichan Watershed Board in a different role for the past year, and I'm feeling really excited about drawing out lessons from their collaborative model (co-chaired by Cowichan Tribes and the Cowichan Valley Regional District) alongside others in BC who are working at the climate-water-justice interface. 

We desperately need to change how we conceptualize our responsibility to water as a living being and planetary life-support system, and it gives me hope to know that this research can play a small supporting role in a broader network of solidarity with people who are doing just that.