News archive - August 2023

Resource economist and Water Institute executive director Dr. Roy Brouwer shares his expertise on the economic value of the Amazon rainforest and the recent vote by Ecuadorians to stop oil drilling with Time Magazine.

Ecuadorians voted on Sunday to stop an oil-drilling project in the Yasuni region of the Amazon with 59% voting yes on a proposition that will end the practice.

Dr. Roy Brouwer, a resource economist and executive director of the Water Institute at the University of Waterloo, who conducted a study on the economic value of the Amazon rainforest, says that Indigenous populations tend to place an extremely high value on the environmental sanctity of the forest. 

“They've lived in the Amazon for 11,000 years. How are you going to compensate these people by taking away their livelihood, cutting the forest and having them move out of the area where they live for 11,000 years? There's no monetary compensation for that.”

Read the full article in Time here.

There are over two billion bikes in the world, and an equivalent number of people without safe drinking water. The leaders of a new University of Waterloo initiative, Water Cycles Expeditions, believe the connection between water and cycling is more than a mere coincidence. Next month, all are invited to join the Water Cycles Bikes and Blues Festival, held in Belwood, ON on September 9^th to explore how cycling can reconnect people and water and help to empower communities to understand and address local water challenges.