Overcoming barriers on the path to water conservation

The purpose of this report is to identify a comprehensive set of barriers to water conservation in Canada and provide strategies that may assist local managers and users, struggling to implement innovative water conservation approaches, in overcoming these barriers. [...] This report seeks to help a variety of audiences, from the general public to those directly involved in water management decisions, recognize and overcome barriers to using demand management and soft path approaches, improving their water management processes. [...] In some cases, the values that were used to craft policies and regulations in the past are now preventing the implementation of new approaches to water management. [...] This is due to the lack of awareness and understanding of the ecological importance of managing both “renewable water supplies” (precipitation that falls and flows towards the sea), and “total water supplies” (renewable water plus stored fresh water in lakes and underground aquifers) (Brandes and Ferguson 2004). [...] The potential use of data outside of its original purpose is considered to be problematic due to the specific non-transferable nature of some data and the misinterpretation of data by the public.