Join WPACs for our 3rd annual World Water Day Webinar! Our expert panel will be sharing diverse perspectives about water governance, sustainability and opportunities for peace.

To introduce our event, Deputy Environment Minister Sherri Wilson will be providing an address on behalf of the province. This webinar will be hosted by Adam Norris, Watershed Coordinator for the Mighty Peace Watershed Alliance.

Speaker 1: Azure Johnson – Indigenous Knowledge Keeper & Director of Azure and Company

Advancing Reconciliation Through Community Building

Azure Johnson is a Plains Cree Treaty 6 Nehiyew Iskwew leader in Indigenous education & history, arts, performance, and traditional initiatives through land-based teachings. Azure wears many hats as a mother, Traditional Knowledge Keeper, Treaty Harvester, Educator, Designer, Model, and Hide Tanner. Raising her 4 boys to be strong, inspiring Indigenous men, she is proud to be breaking harmful narratives affecting Indigenous peoples as a Contemporary Survivor having attended Indian Residential Schools in Saskatchewan; she is the last to attend in her family before the schools closed in 1998. Her own educational background encompasses criminology, mental health, addictions, and psychology. Azure loves volunteering her time to help her community and is a mighty advocate for the vulnerable.

Speaker 2: Andre Asselin – Executive Director of the Alberta Water Council

Multi-sector Consensus Based Approaches and Water Security

Andre Asselin was born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Environment and Conservation Science, with a specialization in environmental economics and policy, and pursued graduate studies in resource economics, both at the University of Alberta. He developed a close relationship with nature spending summers in the outdoors hiking in Alberta’s beautiful Rocky Mountains or lakeside at the family cabin. He began working with the Alberta Water Council as a project manager in 2010 and has progressively taken on greater responsibilities since. In 2017, he was named Executive Director of the Alberta Water Council. He is happily married to the love of his life, Sheena.

Speaker 3: Oliver Brandes – Co-Director, POLIS Project on Ecological Governance, University of Victoria

Towards Watershed Security – Understanding the Potential and Power of Watershed Governance

Oliver M. Brandes is an economist and lawyer by training and a trans-disciplinarian by design. He serves as Co-Director of the POLIS Project on Ecological Governance, based at the University of Victoria’s Centre for Global Studies (CFGS), where he leads the award-winning POLIS Water Sustainability Project. His work focuses on water sustainability, sound resource management, public policy development, and ecologically based legal and institutional reform.

Short presentations by each speaker will be followed by a panel, in which they share diverse perspectives and answer questions from the audience

To register for this online event, visit: https://bit.ly/4c9zSvZ