Coordinating clean water

Agricultural runoff carrying excess phosphorus and nitrogen remains one of the leading causes of freshwater pollution in Canada. When these nutrients enter rivers and lakes, they fuel harmful algal blooms that threaten drinking water supplies, aquatic ecosystems, tourism, and local economies. While Canada has heavily invested in programs that encourage farmers to adopt Best Management Practices (BMPs) such as cover crops, riparian buffers, and improved nutrient management, it remains a persistent challenge.

In my recent opinion piece for Water Canada, I argue that part of the challenge lies in how BMPs are administered. Federal and provincial initiatives continue to treat adoption as a farm-level decision, providing incentives to help farmers adopt these practices on their individual operations. However, monitoring data from watersheds such as Lake Erie shows little long-term decline in nutrient pollution.

Agricultural water pollution is fundamentally a landscape-scale problem, but we continue to manage it at the scale of individual farms. Although BMP adoption remains important, farms are connected through shared waterways, meaning that activities on one property can influence water quality elsewhere in the watershed. As a result, the benefits of conservation efforts on one farm may be limited if neighbouring farmers are not taking similar or complementary actions. Addressing this challenge requires moving beyond individual stewardship and considering how conservation efforts can be coordinated (i.e., farmers aligning their actions) across entire watersheds.

This is not a call for mandatory BMP adoption. Evidence suggests that regulatory approaches alone rarely produce lasting environmental improvements or strong public support. Instead, it requires a shift in policy thinking from only encouraging individual adoption to fostering collective action among farmers. Programs should focus not only on increasing BMP uptake but also on creating the conditions for coordinated implementation that advances shared water quality goals.
Canada has already made important steps toward greater coordination among agencies responsible for freshwater management. Building on this foundation, coordination should become a central principle of how BMPs are designed and delivered, particularly in agriculturally intensive watersheds. As climate change places increasing pressure on freshwater systems, collaborative approaches will be essential to protecting Canada's water resources.