An Introduction to Water Law

After oxygen, water is probably the most important thing that any of us, human or animal, will ingest today. It keeps us and the environment around us healthy and ultimately alive. In Canada, we often take our water for granted, we seem to have a lot of it and most of us have access to clean water at the tip of our fingers. Considering this, it will probably be surprising to learn that our water isn’t actually as clean or abundant as we thought. Water management is key, especially as climate change results in more water issues such as droughts and floods. Keeping this in mind, Alberta is in charge of managing and distributing our water resources. 

Water law is one of our topical sections focused on a more discrete area of the law – the others include species, energy, toxins & waste, and climate change. You can jump around these sections in any order and can focus on a particular topic that is important to you or you can start here and move through each one – this will help you understand how each area of environmental law is connected. Start with the links on the left hand side, and as you complete each sub-topic, you will follow the links at the bottom of each page (or the links on the left hand side) to the next topic in order.

Teachers:

• Lesson plans are designed to be used in conjunction (and often after) spending time on the website content itself. They are adaptable and can be used in their entirety or parts of each can be drawn on to create content appropriate for your grade level and curriculum.

Students

• The website content and lesson plans can be completed in groups or on your own to expand your thinking. Make sure to check back with the website content if you have any questions or aren’t sure how to finish.

Additional Resources

• Don’t forget that you can always look to our Resources page for some other websites and sources of information both to help with the lesson plans and to expand your knowledge even further!

 

Water Law >>

 

 

 

Water Law

• An Introduction to Water Law
• Water Law
• What laws exist to manage and protect our water?
• Where did these laws come from? – A brief history of water law in Alberta
• Wetlands
• Water Licences
• Water for Life Principles, the Alberta Water Council and what we can do to improve…
• Section Review

Lesson Plan: Fundamentals of Environmental Law

Lesson Plan: Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Lesson Plan: Tragedy of the Commons

Lesson Plan: Climate Litigation

Curriculum Connections

Newsletter

Join our new Alberta Environmental Laws 101 Facebook group to ask questions, participate in discussions and keep up to date on environmental news. Please share this widely so that the high school teachers and students in your circles hear about this great new resource for supplemental online learning. Alberta Environmental Laws 101 Facebook Group