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The Water Sustainability Action Plan is being delivered through partnerships and regional pilot projects and programs. Convening for Action program has evolved into a ‘made in BC’ process for moving British Columbia practitioners from awareness to action. “Through outreach and education, the guiding vision is to influence land and water practitioners to learn about and use practices that better balance the necessary relationships of settlement activity and ecological assets in local and regional landscapes,” explains Glen Brown.

“We are using the slogan The New Business As Usual to convey the message that, for change to really occur, practices that until now have been viewed as the exception must become the norm moving forward. We have to build regulatory models and develop models of practice and expertise to support The New Business As Usual”, stated Dale Wall.

The key principle is that settlement and ecology are equal values and they must be as much in balance as possible for wellbeing of human and natural systems. “If we were in fact measuring ecological values, there would be more ‘weights’ (reliable data) on the ecology side of the balance scale; thus leading to more informed conclusions and hence different decisions,” stated Tim Pringle.

“The organizers had heard about what we are doing in British Columbia; and so they asked me to tell the BC story in Toronto to a mainly Ontario audience. This provided a timely opportunity to reflect on what we have achieved since 2004, and identify universal principles that should be applicable anywhere,” explained Kim Stephens.

“The website is designed to provide universal access to information and to further collective understanding and collaboration. First, it is a new magazine for raising awareness of BC success stories, secondly, it has a growing library of information resources on the BC experience and third, it houses made in BC tools for use by practitioners on-the-ground,” stated Mike Tanner.

This 3-day celebration concluded with a featured panel presentation by Ray Fung and Fiona Crofton on water sustainability.

“Set the vision based upon community values, support the vision with information and education via the Water Bucket website, and apply web-based water management tools to make better decisions,” stated Kim Stephens.

“The website is a vehicle for documenting and then sharing what takes place in forums organized under the umbrella of the Water Sustainability Action Plan. We are writing our history as we create it. The website is designed to provide the complete story on integrated land and water management – why, what, where and how,” said Mike Tanner.

Ted van der Gulik is a visionary and an innovator. While others talk, Ted does. His accomplishments are many and his innovative leadership encompasses provincial tools such as the Water Balance Model and the Irrigation Scheduling Calculator. Ted brings energy to everything that he does, and he inspires those around him. He is the epitome of the old adage: If you want something done, ask a busy person. Ted will look into the future, identify the desired outcome, and then issue this challenge: Okay, what steps will we take now so that we can get there?

“Can we realistically expect sustainable outcomes if we are using conventional governance models to put sustainable values into practice?,” asked Eva Kras. She overviewed traditional management concepts from the perspective of their effectiveness in meeting the desired goal of sustainability and critiqued whether the values that underpin the current approach to sustainability are indeed adequate for the task.