All climate-change models point to greater weather variability in a province where the weather already varies immensely from year to year and region to region, said Dwight Williamson, director of Manitoba Water Stewardship's water science and management branch.

"The main issue with climate change is the issue of greater variability, so while we may have been experiencing flooding in some parts of our system, droughts can occur on a local level," Williamson said.

"In the '30s and '40s, we understood the relationship between soil and water conservation. We don't have that perspective now," he said. "Because we're such an urban society -- 80 per cent of us live in cities -- those relationships are not very clear anymore."