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Commencing in 2003, the Ministry of Environment has provided core funding so that the BCWWA Water Sustainability Committee can develop and deliver the Water Sustainability Action Plan for British Columbia. “Convening for Action pilot programs in the South Okanagan, Vancouver Island and Greater Vancouver are promoting water-centric approaches to community planning and land development,” stated Environment Minister Barry Penner.

“By drawing its members from a diverse range of disciplines and organizations, the committee functions across the boundaries and beyond the historical limits or constraints of the mandates, knowledge and expertise found in specific organizations. One of the criteria for membership is that individuals will feed back the WSC outcomes into their organizations”, added Ray Fung.

“The Water Sustainability Committee believes it is simply not good enough to focus only on defining the problems or debating the perspectives (the ‘so what’). Rather, the objective of the Action Plan is to challenge individuals and organizations to demonstrate how we can move from talk to action (the ‘now what’),” stated Erik Karlsen. “The desired outcome is implementation of on-the-ground changes in policies, programs, research, practitioner education and standards of practice that lead to full integration management and landscape (re)development. In an ‘integrated landscape’, water is the unifying element.”

“The mission of the Real Estate Foundation is to support sustainable real estate and land use practices for the benefit of British Columbians,” explained Tim Pringle. “The BCWWA Water Sustainability Committee is a member of an Advisory Committee that has been established by the Foundtion for its Communities in Transition (CIT) initiative. CIT’s mission is to support values-based planning processes that balance social, environmental, economic and governance concerns to address regional and local land use and conservation issues in non-metropolitan areas of BC.”

“The POLIS Project on Ecological Governance is an ecology-based public policy think tank situated at the University of Victoria. The mission of POLIS is to help reorient Canadian water management from supply to demand-side approaches,” explained Oliver Brandes. “A ‘soft path’ for water takes the management approach beyond traditional concerns to consider how we might redesign the underlying human systems that determine demand and our approach to supply.”

“Nature’s Revenue Streams is a 3-year public-private project on Vancouver Island that will show how urban development can be used as an opportunity to improve watershed and stream health,” stated Patrick Lucey. “NRS has considerable synergy and commonality with elements of the Water Sustainability Action Plan, both in terms of approach and green infrastructure deliverables. For this reason, NRS has executed Statements of Collaboration with the Water Sustainability Committee, the Green Infrastructure Partnership, and the Water Balance Model) Partnership.”