Mackenzie Basin Board ministers meet for first time in 18 years – Northern Journal

June 30, 2015

Signatories to the Mackenzie River Basin Agreement met for the first time since 1997 last week to review next steps as transboundary water agreements are being finalized by the various jurisdictions.

The ministers of the Mackenzie River Basin Board met in Winnipeg last week while there for their annual meeting of Canada’s environment ministers.

It was the first time they had met collectively on the issue of shared jurisdiction over water in almost two decades, and according to NWT Environment and Natural Resources Minister Michael Miltenberger, a lot has happened in the meantime.

“It was a fairly historic meeting,” he said. “There’s been substantive progress on the bilateral agreements…and there’s been an exponential increase in interest in what’s happening with water, given the resource development, climate change/global warming issues that are happening around us as we speak, with our drought, water levels at all time lows. There’s a huge increase in interest at the political level, at the public level, at the business level, with all the Aboriginal governments about water. So I think that has sparked the interest to have people come to the table.”

Read More: http://norj.ca/2015/06/mackenzie-basin-board-ministers-meet-for-first-time-in-18-years/