Water pricing conflict in British Columbia

Abstract

The Water Sustainability Act in British Columbia, Canada is a source of conflict among citizens, the provincial government, and industrial groundwater users. The water extraction fees stipulated in the act highlight the issue of water commodification and its potential legal consequences. Complementary approaches for conflict analysis are used to study this emerging conflict in order to gain valuable strategic insights. Analysis is performed using the Graph Model for Conflict Resolution, a flexible methodology for analyzing and modelling conflicts. In addition, generalized metarationalities and metarational trees, which account for the role and influence of policies in decisionmaking, are used to explore possible resolutions of the conflict. The analyses show that the current situation, where protesters lobby the government but the fees are not increased, is an equilibrium and thus unlikely to change.