Policy for phosphorus management is building in other countries, why not in Canada?

Many Canadians are aware that Canada is rich in potash, the potassium-laden ore that is an essential component of the world’s agricultural fertilizers. Not as well known is that phosphorus is an equally important component of fertilizer — and that the Canadian phosphorus fertilizer industry is 100% reliant on imports of non-renewable phosphate rock (phosphorite) to produce its product.

From phosphate rock extraction to fertilizer application to food and human waste, phosphorus can be lost to the environment, causing undesirable consequences such as algal blooms. These losses also offer opportunities to recover and recycle this nutrient, reducing the pressure on phosphate rock, which is identified as a limited resource on the European Union’s (EU) “Critical Raw Materials” list.

It is clear that careful management of phosphorus is needed. Although other countries have national management strategies to increase efficiency of phosphorus use in agriculture and recover phosphorus from wastewater, Canada does not currently have a united phosphorus community. In our paper, we describe the range and scope of the phosphorus stakeholders in Canada and discuss ways to bring stakeholders together to develop management strategies.

The phosphorus stakeholders in Canada are diverse: rock extractors and fertilizer producers, human rights groups, agricultural think-tanks, environmental non-government organizations, academic researchers, and government agencies. The interests of these stakeholders are also diverse, from financial growth to water quality. To bring these stakeholders together, Canada can look to the Netherlands and the EU.

The Netherlands created the Nutrient Platform NL, a community that fosters a wide range of phosphorus stakeholders and has a cohesive and productive network of stakeholders focused on phosphorous recovery and re-use. An EU-funded German phosphorus recovery project recently generated European data on current phosphorus recovery technologies and outlined the different technical, political, economic, and regulatory roadblocks that prevent further phosphorus recycling. Germany and Switzerland recently enacted phosphorus recovery and recycling legislation.

Learning from and adopting approaches from these countries, Canada can take advantage of existing clusters of activity across the country to form a Canadian phosphorus policy platform.

Read the full paper — Canada: Playing Catch-Up on Phosphorus Policy by Jessica Zane Ross and Sidney Omelon on the FACETS website.