“Our vision is that the UNU Hub becomes a magnet to attract the world to top talent to address key water problems The water problems that we face in Canada are the same as those faced in other countries – the devastating floods, droughts, algal blooms, and drinking water advisories that are acutely felt in Canada affect our personal safety, our way of life, the health of our ecosystems, and are having a growing impact on our economy. By developing an international community of practice, the Hub will develop necessary solutions for water issues both at home and abroad.”--Dr. Martyn Clark, PhD, Professor, Schulich School of Engineering and interim Executive Director for UNU Hub

Interview with Dr. Martyn Clark

WT: Congratulations on being chosen as the world’s first UN University Hub for Water! What does this distinction mean for research at the University of Calgary?

Clark: The UNU Hub aligns directly with the University of Calgary’s “Plan Ahead For Tomorrow” in terms of the mission “to create a prosperous, compassionate, sustainable, and equitable world”; the values to “spark global change, to solve what seems unsolvable”; and the strategy to “harness the power of research and innovation to tackle society’s biggest challenges.”

In many respects, the UNU Hub creates an incubator and accelerator program for students to tackle society’s biggest challenges, providing a complement for the incubator/accelerator programs for software development and business development. In short, the UNU Hub provides today’s youth with the opportunity to make the world a better place with a global reach.

WT: What has been the focus/mission of your research that garnered this recognition?

Clark: The University of Calgary is well known for its research in water. Some key areas of focus for the University include:

Sustainable Water Systems: The focus is on understanding and managing water resources amidst climate change, addressing challenges like changes in precipitation patterns, water availability, water quality impacts, and increased water demand.

Advanced Water Data Acquisition and Analytics: This area develops new state-of-the-art, real-time data acquisition and sensor systems, data warehousing and advanced computational/analytics systems capable of assessing and predicting the status of water quality/quantity, and the combined impacts of multiple stressors on aquatic ecosystems, requiring collaboration and standardized methods to influence monitoring programs and development assessments.

Indigenous Water Systems: This focus positions communities as leaders of change, by both addressing the challenges that are most crucial to their well-being and addressing water inequities due to climate change, resource extraction, and water access issues. This area cuts across all other research areas.

Advancing Wastewater Treatment Technologies: Oil sands tailings, ponds; wastewater treatment in small and remote community applications; emerging substances of concern such as pharmaceuticals, plastics, etc.

Science-to-Action: The focus here is on extensive collaboration with end users of science information to identify and stimulate effective management and policy options that increase Canadian resiliency to environmental change.

WT: UNU is a partnership with UNU-INWEH in Hamilton, Ontario – the UN Think Tank on water. What does this partnership mean for UCalgary?

Clark: The partnership will foster and encourage important collaborations with the UNU to promote state-of-the-art and policy-relevant university research, making university research, training, innovation, and outreach activities more impactful and relevant to practice and policy.

Critically, the UNU Hub will connect our university post-graduate students and researchers directly to the UNU and UN system. This will facilitate attendance in major UN meetings and conferences such as the UN Climate Change Conference and provide experiential learning opportunities that are only possible through this partnership.

For example, students will be exposed to new and unique scholarly opportunities such as participating in the publication of op-eds, flagship UN reports and/or policy briefs. They may also complete short assignments or missions in the Global South, Indigenous communities, or UN agencies. Finally, they may be involved in action campaigns for World Water Day, One Health Day, and World AMR Awareness Week.

A key objective of the Hub is connecting University of Calgary researchers with the activities of organizations and societies that have a strong focus on international development such as World Meteorological Organization, World Bank, World Health Organization, Food and Agriculture Organization, UNESCO, and others. The UNU Hub will amplify the research of the participating faculty members and provide a direct benefit to their research programs.

These connections will ensure that the University of Calgary post-graduate students and faculty members can effectively share their knowledge, resources, and expertise to effectively address global water and health challenges.

WT: How is the creation of The Water Hub providing a different and unique perception on global water sustainability/stewardship?

Clark: Building climate-resilient communities and ecosystems requires a disruptive transformation in environmental intelligence. By environmental intelligence we mean both the information that we use to anticipate environmental change and environmental extremes as well as the wisdom that we employ to proactively safeguard our environment.

Part of the transformation in the Hub centers on forging connections between prediction science and decision science to provide decision-makers with the information and wisdom necessary to mitigate and manage key water-related climate vulnerabilities.

The Hub will make concerted efforts to cross the digital divide in the Global South, where the technological innovations will help empower under-served communities with the environmental intelligence to adapt to climate extremes. In doing so, the Hub will develop effective solutions to mitigate and adapt to climate threats that affect our personal safety, our way of life, our ecosystems, and our economy.

The Hub will connect water research across campus to advance transdisciplinary scholarship that is necessary to develop the scientific understanding, the solutions, and the skilled workforce to empower communities around the world to adapt to environmental change.

WT: Kaveh Madani , the Director of UNU-INWEH has been quoted as saying “The focus on indigenous communities is one of the things that really got us excited about the University of Calgary.” Can you tell us a bit more?

Clark: Including research in Indigenous communities there are four research clusters in the Hub that attracted attention:

Understanding changes in aquatic ecosystems: Innovating enhanced surveillance and diagnostic systems for tracking and reporting on the condition of regional water resources to understand threats from the cumulative effects of climate variability and extremes, development and changing water resources. Led by Dr. Kelly Munkittrick, Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, and Campus Alberta innovation Program Chair in Aquatic Ecosystem Health.

Evaluating risks of infectious diseases in a changing climate: Evaluating how human, animal, and ecosystem interactions in a changing climate are resulting in the emergence and re-emergence of diseases and compromising the effectiveness of human and animal health responses to infectious disease outbreaks. Led by Dr. Herman Barkema, Professor in Epidemiology of Infectious Disease, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (UCVM) and NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Infectious Diseases.

Environmental predictions for water sustainability. Improving water management by creating advanced environmental prediction tools and systems aimed at establishing long-term adaptive water supply and demand management strategies and assessing options to achieve long-term water security. Led by Martyn Clark, Professor of Hydrology in the Department of Civil Engineering, Schulich School of Engineering, and Schulich Research Chair in Environmental Prediction.

Building resilience in Indigenous communities. Improving communities through leading innovations in new community-based participatory approaches and integrated watershed management frameworks that are inclusive of multiple knowledge systems and address water equity and equality. Led by Dr. Deborah McGregor, incoming Canada Excellence Research Chai in Indigenous Ways of Climate and Water Sustainability For Planetary Health and Well- Being.

This is best described by Dr. Deborah McGregor in her description of the research cluster. Deborah writes:

Indigenous peoples are recognized, both within Canada and globally, as comprising the population most vulnerable to health and environmental-related inequities and injustices. Many are in a continual state of crisis, including vulnerabilities arising from environmental and climate change.

This research seeks to establish and advance mechanisms for climate and water resilience based on the inclusion of Indigenous knowledges, laws, and values.

WT: How does Calgary’s geographic location provide research advantages?

Clark: Calgary is the ideal location to provide a western Canadian focal point for UNU and extend the impact of UNU’s long-established home in Hamilton, Ontario.

Calgary’s location in western Canada juxtaposed next to the Canadian Rocky Mountains – the crown of the continent, the hydrological apex of North America – where Calgary is near the headwaters of the Saskatchewan, the Mackenzie, the Fraser, the Columbia, and the Mississippi River basins that provide water to sustain life for large fractions of Canada and the USA.

The University of Calgary is a focal point to bring people together from our many productive alliances with universities across Alberta, across Canada, and around the world. With an international airport in Calgary, we can gather to develop solutions for our most wicked water problems.

The power of Calgary also lies in its culture of ideas. The University’s support of a thriving innovation ecosystem in Calgary is rapidly building the intellectual and technical capacity that can be leveraged to tackle our most challenging global water and health problems.

The only thing missing at this transformational moment is the mechanism to connect people to problems--to empower a community of scholars to work together and dedicate their careers to effectively mitigate and manage complex challenges in our climate, our land, and our water. The missing link was the UNU Hub.

The Hub will activate those in the University community with an interest in global challenges and empower them to make a real difference in our world.

WT: The Canada Water Agency, (CWA), in Winnipeg, was created by the Government of Canada in June 2023. Will CWA play in your ongoing work?

Clark: The CWA was created to work together with the provinces, territories, Indigenous communities, local authorities, scientists, and others to keep our water safe, clean, and well-managed.

Collaboration is arguably the key to the success of the CWA, and the UNU Hub can help with this. The promise of the CWA is that it will effectively integrate capabilities across Canada to address the most wicked water problems that affect our economy, our health, and our well-being.

The new era cooperation in Canada requires building and nurturing a community of practice that focuses efforts across academia, practitioners and government on the critical water crises of the century.

The Hub can help the CWA by galvanizing the international community to develop solutions to address key climate threats in the water sector. The solutions required are too large for individual research groups--and indeed, individual countries –- and an international community practice is needed so that different research and development groups can contribute their unique data, information, knowledge, and predictive capacities to support mitigating and adapting to water crises.