Archive for March, 2026

“Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.” —W.H. Auden

“When the well is dry, we know the worth of water.”

—attributed to Benjamin Franklin

“Overdrafts on aquifers are one reason some of our geologist colleagues are convinced that water shortages will bring the human population explosion to a halt. There are substitutes for oil; there is no substitute for fresh water.”

—Paul R. Ehrlich

“Where water flows, equality grows.” —UN World Water Day

International Day of Forests is marked on March 21, and World Water Day on March 22. Water and forests are critically intertwined. When there is deforestation of large tracts of primeval forest, a steady decline in water accessibility takes hold. The land heats up and biodiversity languishes.

An article in ScienceDirect,“Trees, Forest and Water: cool insights for a hot world,” points out that a solution for our forests and water conservation is reachable:“Forests and trees must be recognized as prime regulators within the water, energy and carbon cycles. If these functions are ignored, planners will be unable to assess, adapt to or mitigate the impacts of changing land cover and climate. Our call to action targets a reversal of paradigms, from a carbon-centric model to one that treats the hydrologic and climate-cooling effects of trees and forests as the first order of priority.” https://tinyurl.com/water-trees-and-forests

Women and girls are the first to experience water scarcity. UN World Water Day 2026 looks at how gender inequality affects women’s lives. In a powerful TED Talk titled “Water is a women’s issue. Here’s why,” water and sanitation campaigner Eleanor Allen focuses on how it is vital for communities to have clean drinking water and sanitation near their homes, schools and places of work. When this happens in areas of clean water scarcity or inadequate sanitation, women’s and girls’ lives are almost magically transformed, enabling them to pursue education and be free of the scourge of waterborne diseases as well as violence perpetrated against them. As a result, men’s lives are also vastly improved. https://tinyurl.com/eleanor-allen-water

The UN World Water Day website elaborates: “Where people lack safe drinking water and sanitation close to home, inequalities increase, with women and girls bearing the brunt. They collect water. They manage water. They care for people made sick by unsafe water. They lose time, health, safety, and opportunities. And too often, the systems that govern water leave women and girls out of decision-making, leadership, funding and representation. This makes the water crisis a women’s crisis. We need a transformative, rights-based approach to solving these challenges, where women’s voices are heard and their agency recognized. All women must be equitably represented at all levels of water leadership – helping design every pipe and policy. And women must drive change in water as engineers, farmers, scientists, sanitation workers and community leaders.” https://tinyurl.com/observing-water-day

The great biologist, Nature activist and may I say soothsayer (who sometimes predicted wrongly) Paul R. Ehrlich died this month. Over the last 30 years I have had the good fortune to read his books on overpopulation, consumption and human hubris. His scholarly articles and books on civilizational collapse and the outsized malevolent contributions to a global ecological/economic collapse led by the United States—now accelerated by its present administration—have had critics say Ehrlich was way off the mark with his predictions, or that he was too controversial. Nevertheless, like fellow biologist E.O. Wilson, he has turned out to be a convincing public figure who has unflinchingly spoken out on humanity’s dire ills brought on relentlessly by governance breakdown and wide-scale corporate greed, not to mention a tangible indifference by many individuals in the global north. His book One with Nineveh: Politics, Consumption, and the Human Future is a cautionary tale about the striking similarities that can be found between the collapse of ancient Assyria’s capital city and the modern world. In section of his book titled Water: Overdrawn and Under Appreciated Ehrlich wrote that, today, “in developing regions, more than 2 billion people are surviving with inadequate supplies of water for household use—lacking even a minimum amount for drinking water, cooking and washing.”

The Assyrian Empire’s greatest Mesopotamian city, Nineveh, collapsed in 612 BCE. It was the largest city in the world at that time. A prolonged siege finally resulted in its destruction. When archaeologist Austen Henry Layard discovered the remains of Nineveh in the 1840s, he wrote in his book Discoveries Among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, “Desolation meets desolation… On all sides, as far as the eye could reach, rose the grass-covered heaps marking the site of ancient habitations. The great tide of civilisation had long since ebbed, leaving these scattered wrecks on the solitary shore.” But it wasn’t only constant war that brought on the demise of Nineveh. Through a combination of failed elitist despotic governance and a pillage of its ecological integrity, that vast cultural and religious centre collapsed. 

For a case in point that parallels Nineveh’s destruction, present-day Iran’s water crisis has been accelerating for decades. Before the current war took priority for Iranians, the main conversation amongst the population was the proposed relocation of millions of citizens from Tehran to the coast because water was no longer plentiful.

Water is quickly becoming catastrophically scarce in Iran. In the interior of the country, Lake Urmia, once the largest saltwater lake in the Middle East and the sixth-largest in the world, and at millions of years old one of the Earth’s oldest lakes, has all but disappeared in five decades. It is vital for migrating birds and for general biodiversity. As a result of a combination of negligence, greed and outright ignorance, we are seeing repeated what happened to the Aral Sea, now a windswept toxic desert after cotton production diverted water away from it. This short video explains what is presently happening in Lake Urmia: https://tinyurl.com/iran-lake

“For most Canadians, the accessible portion of the world’s renewable water is a mere 2.6%—a far cry from the mythic 20% figure.” Canadians are just behind Americans in their consumption of water as measured throughout the world. https://tinyurl.com/Canada-water-reserves

North Americans need not be such profligate users of water. As super-consumers of everything, though, why would we be any different with regard to water conservation and water usage? Climate breakdown can also easily be linked to a mindset that doesn’t understand limits. Whether we like it or not, Canadians are inexorably connected to the planet’s finite capacity to tolerate stupidity. Can we find the collective will to change our course? Or are we the next Nineveh?

Meanwhile, March 20 was World Frog Day. Healthy forests, amphibians and clean water go happily together. https://tinyurl.com/world-day-of-frogs

Around April 15, tiny spring peepers will emerge from ponds and wetlands to start to sing for a few weeks from dusk into the night. If you can, bring a child and put up a tent nearby or open a window to listen to these small musicians and take in their multi-million-year-old chant to Nature. You can learn more about protecting frogs and even listen to tree frogs in Margaret Renkl’s article “Why tiny ponds and singing frogs matter so much.” 

https://tinyurl.com/ponds-singing-frogs

“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.” 

—Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of March thaw, is the spring.” 

—Aldo Leopold

“Daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and take

The winds of March with beauty.” 

—William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale

The month of March is unpredictable. A storm of ice and snow is always a possibility, but just as suddenly bright crisp days are there for cross-country skiing, or a chair set on melting snow for us to catch the lengthening days of sunshine. Mark Twain once exclaimed: “In the spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.” 

This is a month when Nature stirs in Québec. Migratory animals begin to move into or out of the province. Whether it is the greater snow goose, or whales in the St. Lawrence, March marks the start of enormous activity for animals. Meanwhile, some whale species are changing their migratory patterns because warming oceans are demanding they hunt in new locations as climate warming is pushing their prey to new areas. 

Many burrowing creatures who will hibernate through most of the winter can now be spotted. Typically the American robin will be seen huddled on a branch in inclement conditions late in the month, and people will comment on their first sighting, concerned that the soil has not thawed enough for the newly arrived birds to dig for worms.

Here in Québec we also associate March with maple syrup time. The earth is warming and trees are moving nutrients from their roots up through their trunks to burgeoning buds for May’s wondrous summer leaves to capture carbon dioxide and release oxygen. As we move through the countryside, it is common to see vast amounts of water vapour emerging from maple sugar cabins. Many houses will have traditional metal sap buckets attached to maple trees. Both private and commercial celebrations take place and can easily be located throughout Québec.

March is also the time when humans start to plan with the awakening of Nature. The longer sunlit days inspire us to shake off winter’s lethargy. The seed catalogues are with us, and if you missed the mid-winter ritual of perusing the ones that arrived in December or January and ordering the seeds of your choice nice and early, you will still be able to find racks of seeds in all the hardware stores, and perhaps next year you will make your selection from a specialist publication. Here is a website that lists Canadian seed catalogues: https://tinyurl.com/catalogues-seeds

Over several decades a cycle of growing plants has emerged for me. After receiving vegetable and flower seeds by post in February, I sow various lettuce varieties in my indoor mini-greenhouses. Many people even eat their own-grown lettuces in January. As long as you have adequate ultraviolet light you need not be held to ransom by the high prices in the shops. 

I have already sown a resilient variety of basil, and the leaves will be available to eat in April. Next to be sown will be the seeds of flowers such as lisianthus, lobelia and snapdragon, as they need 8 to 10 weeks indoors before they can be transplanted. Other flowers will follow. 

Late March will be the time various kinds of pepper seeds will find their place in the indoor greenhouses, followed by aubergine seeds. I never tire of watching the seedlings appear. Some, like lobelia, are so small that they exude fragility, while others, such as the sweet or hot peppers, are sturdy and stalwart when they poke through the soil. These same pepper plants will eventually be planted outdoors when the soil temperature is very warm to the touch, but pepper bushes are a joy to see in large pots too, as they are so elegant to behold.

More so than New Year resolutions, the month of March exudes a renewed commitment to caring for Earth and all its inhabitants. People from around the world are protecting wildlife. The core idea of the global Great Backyard Bird Count in mid-February is to document birds before the thrilling migration happens in the spring. Last year more than 830,000 people participated in the event, recording around 70 percent of the world’s avian species in places from Australia to Canada. This year saw record-breaking levels of participation. https://tinyurl.com/backyard-of-birds

March 3 is World Wildlife Day. https://tinyurl.com/wildlife-UN-day With spiralling extinction happening across the world, we must stand up and confront the callous support factory farms are given by those who have the opportunity to know better. These massive farms kill wildlife through pollution, persecution, and the destruction of vital habitats in order to grow feed.

The Fifteenth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) will take place from March 23 to 29 in Brazil. Topics to be acted on will include habitat and biodiversity loss, conservation and ecological connectivity (the safeguarding of vital corridors for migratory species to pass through); and addressing exploitation and its prevention will be coordinated with government commitments. See https://www.cms.int/cop15

The first in-depth State of the World’s Migratory Species Report, launched in February 2024, spelled an increasingly alarming story. “The available evidence suggests that the conservation status of many CMS-listed species is deteriorating. One in five CMS species are threatened with extinction and a substantial proportion (44%) are undergoing population declines.” https://tinyurl.com/migratory-animals 

The United States and Canada never ratified the UN Convention on Migratory Species but have an agreement that goes back to 1916 focusing on migratory birds. It is not a very comprehensive document. In Canada we can expect little cooperation from the present US administration in safeguarding bird populations. In 2025 and into 2026 a raft of anti-Nature legislation has already been passed, and more is to come. The tragedy of the expanded Mexican—US wall will bring yet more misery to wildlife. Both US and Canada—governments and individuals—have failed the western and eastern monarch butterfly migratory populations. Each of us is reminded of this criminal lack of care. It is not because we don’t know what needs to be done to save the butterflies. Albert Einstein is believed to have said: “Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act, and in that action are the seeds of new knowledge.”

Growing seeds is a thing of beauty and involvement. It is the germination of courage. Give that opportunity to children, and watch them grow! No garden of your own? Find a community garden. Read up on compassionate and workshare gardening at https://tinyurl.com/garden-consciousness