News

As part of the Collaborative Water Program’s WATER 601 course, student teams delivered final presentations featuring integrated water management solutions to complex water challenges, sharing their ideas with a panel of experts from the University of Waterloo and the Canada Water Agency (CWA). The exercise goes beyond a typical class assignment. It asks students to think across disciplines, weigh ecological, social and economic trade-offs and deliver practical recommendations that could inform real policy and practice.

Sunlight-powered process converts plastic waste into a valuable chemical without added emissions

Researchers at the University of Waterloo have discovered a way to turn plastic waste into acetic acid, the main ingredient of vinegar, using sunlight. 

Iban Ortuzar Fernandez, Post-Doctoral Fellow (PDF) in the Department of Economics, joins the Joint Research Center (JRC) of the European Commission as an Economic Analyst.

On the 17th and 18th of October, 2025, the University of Winnipeg hosted the 35th Annual Conference of the Canadian Resource and Environmental Economics Association. Two members of the Water Economics Research Group (WERG), Iban Ortuzar Fernandez and Khusro Mir presented their research addressing pressing questions in environmental economics in Canada. Also Water Institute member and Professor Emerita Margaret Insley participated. She organizes the next annual conference in Waterloo.

In a recent CBC News feature, Water Institute executive director and economics professor Roy Brouwer discusses concerns that Ontario continues to undervalue freshwater resources and overlook the long-term environmental costs of groundwater extraction.

Roy Brouwer, Professor in the Department of Economics, University Research Chair in Water Resources Economics, and Executive Director of the Water Institute, has been appointed to the Science Advisory Board – Science Priority Committee of the International Joint Commission (IJC), a binational partnership between Canada and the United States managing shared waters.

Roy Brouwer, Executive Director of the Water Institute and University Research Chair in Water Resources Economics, contributed to an article recently published by Great Lakes Now, an initiative of Detroit Public TV and PBS.

The article is part of a two-part series looking at the cost of water in Ontario and Michigan.