BIO

Since I first set foot on a glacier, I have been fascinated with the forms, processes and power of water.

In former lives I’ve been a whitewater kayak instructor, a wildland firefighter and worked in Alberta’s agro-industrial sector. I hold a Master of Arts in Geography (McGill) and Bachelor of Arts degrees with double majors in Geography & Philosophy (Lethbridge) and Theology & Wilderness Leadership (Prairie). After traveling throughout India in 2005, my wife gave me the book “Water: The fate of our most precious resource” by Marq de Villiers. After reading it, I turned my fascination with water into a life pursuit.

My research is supported through awards from the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative. My essay, “What are water policies for?” won the 2008 graduate paper competition held by the Environmental Studies Association of Canada.

Aside from research, I chair the Canadian Water Resources Association Student and Young Professionals, serve on the advisory board of the Water Ethics Network, and was a member of the UNESCO Water Ethics and Water Resources Management Working Group. I have also been an invited participant to the Religion, Science and Environment Symposium and to events with the World Policy Institute.

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TEACHING

    I am passionate about ideas and this carries over into my teaching. I’ve taught three fourth year seminar courses: (1) Geographies of water: management, metrics and mores; (2) Ethics in geography, planning and environment, and; (3) The nature and philosophy of geography. While at McGill I co-designed the graduate course, Water: ethics, law and policy, which is a core course in the IWRM graduate certificate in the Department of Bioresource Engineering. I also deliver annual lectures on the conceptual and ethical basis of sustainable development to the McGill-UNEP Collaborating Center for Environmental Assessment.

    I encourage my students to engage their academic experience fully and creatively. A few have agreed to have parts of their work put up here. For example, here is an audio clip that supplemented part of a broader project on the Petitcodiak River in New Brunswick. Others have used activism, blogs and developed special series in student newspapers to communicate their work beyond the classroom. As part of my teaching I am increasingly trying to apply ideas in real-time to demonstrate the relevance (and ideally the reach) of sound arguments. Here is a recent one refuting Ezra Levant’s ideas of “ethical oil” that applies readings done in our ethics and planning course.

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SELECTED PUBLICATIONS 

                                                                  

1. •In press. Groenfeldt, D. & J.J. Schmidt. Ethics and water governance. Ecology and Society.
   

1. •In press. Schmidt, Jeremy J. Integrating water management in the Anthropocene. Society and Natural Resources.
   

• Jeremy J. Schmidt (2012). Scarce or insecure: the right to water and the ethics of global

  water governance. The right to water, F. Sultana and A. Loftus (eds) (Routledge:         

  London) Pp. 94-109.

• Peter Brown and Jeremy Schmidt (eds) (2010). Water ethics: foundational readings for

  students and professionals. (Island Press: Washington, DC).

• Jeremy J. Schmidt and Martha Dowsley (2010). Hunting with polar bears: problems with

   the passive properties of the commons. Human Ecology, 38(3): 377-387.

• Peter G. Brown and Jeremy J. Schmidt (2010). An ethic of compassionate retreat.

  Minding Nature 3(2): 16-27.

• Jeremy J. Schmidt (2007). Pricing water to death: Alberta’s permits prolong the problem.

   Alternatives Journal 33(4): 29-30.

Reviews are published or forthcoming in the following journals:

    • Annals of the Association of American Geographers

    • Environmental Values

    • Agriculture and Human Values

    • Capitalism, Nature, Socialism

    • Ethics, Place and Environment (now Ethics, Policy and Environment)

    • Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture

    • The Canadian Geographer

    • Canadian Public Policy

    • Journal of Peace Research

    • International Journal of Social Research Methodology

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