Two-Day Workshop: A Regional Bioeconomy Approach: Partnerships for Natural Solutions

IISD's Water program will be hosting a two-day interactive workshop to learn all about innovative approaches from Canada, the United States and Europe where water and land management are being implemented through sustainable bioeconomy approaches. 

The conversation will explore how we can move forward to better manage our resources through applying sustainable economic and social principles. The workshop will be hosted by IISD at the University of Winnipeg and will feature speakers from Manitoba, Canada, the United States and Europe. 

View a draft agenda for this two-day workshop.

For more information contact Donna Laroque at dlaroque@iisd-ela.org.

Background

For the last decade the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) alongside industry, academia, NGOs, and government have actively applied innovative strategies to better manage water, land, and energy resources in the Lake Winnipeg Watershed.

One 'Made In Manitoba' approach has been harvesting cattail (Typha) and other emergent plants from marginal agricultural land, water retention sites, and drainage ditches to remove captured nutrients and contaminants, and using their abundant plant biomass for sustainable products and low carbon energy to replace fossil fuels. Biomass energy is a means to reduce carbon emissions through renewable and sustainable energy, and there are big environmental, economic, and social benefits for land and water management. With the ban on the use of coal for space heating in Manitoba there is strong demand for quality processed biomass fuel and not enough local production. Adding waste sources of biomass into this demand, such as cattails or reeds, increases the supply of available biomass and directly creates a demand for waste plant material harvested for nutrient capture and drainage maintenance.

As we move from research to commercial-scale watershed applications, IISD has formed many valuable partnerships. These partnerships promise a future where we can address landscape-based issues such as flooding, drought, soil erosion, invasive species, loss of habitat, and nutrient loading in integrated ways with sustainable agriculture, rural economies, urban environmental management and rural energy, rather than focusing on these issues in isolation and often at cost. These are the foundations that support bioeconomy-based water, land, and energy management concepts that can be applied globally, in countries with far greater issues than North America. Innovative solutions to collectively deal with flooding, nutrient overloading, and carbon reduction issues that also create economic growth and jobs can help us and the global community.