Kat Hartwig

Kat Hartwig has been involved in international, national, and regional environmental advocacy issues relating to sustainable tourism, endangered species, corporate social responsibility and water-based ecosystem health since 1983. She advocates for land and water policy and protection mechanisms necessary to support biodiversity, source water protection and climate resilient communities. Under her leadership, Living Lakes Canada has created award-winning water stewardship programs, helped pilot new water monitoring technologies, developed new water monitoring frameworks to track climate impacts on freshwater sources, updated federal lake survey protocols, and played a role in guiding provincial and federal policies around freshwater protection. With her paradigm-shifting approach to water management, she has tirelessly advocated for the inclusion and leadership of Indigenous voices and the valuing of Indigenous Knowledge in water policy and science.

She is an advisor for the Global Water Futures Canada’s First Research Excellence Fund panel, the Lake Windermere Ambassadors, and the BC Water Leaders Consortium. She continues to serve as a board member of the Germany-based Global Nature Fund. She received the BC Achievement Foundation Community Impact Award (2023), the BC Achievement Foundation Mitchell Award of Distinction (2023,) and the Kootenay Conservation Program Conservation Leadership Award (2023). Kat resides by the headwaters of the Columbia River in the traditional territories of the Ktunaxa and Secwépemc First Nations, where she was born and where she raised her two daughters.

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