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The Town of Gibsons is the Living Laboratory for the Municipal Natural Assets Initiative. It is also a demonstration application for Sustainable Watershed Systems, through Asset Management. “Investing in nature has proven to be rewarding in terms of reduced operational and capital expenditures, increased resiliency to climate change and improved environmental management of the Town’s infrastructure,” stated Emanuel Machado.

“Local governments in British Columbia already face a $200 billion challenge for renewal of aging hard infrastructure – such as watermains, sewers and roads. And now, as communities face the increasing impacts of climate change, there is another unfunded liability – the cost to restore watershed hydrology and water resilience in the built environment. British Columbia has arrived at a fork in the road,” states Kim Stephens.

Blue Ecology is an ecological philosophy developed by Michael Blackstock, professional forester and scholar. Blue Ecology looks at the water cycle differently to interweave First Nations and Western thought. “Interweaving is about creating a new form of knowledge through collaboration by interweaving useful threads from each way of knowing into a more robust way. Interweaving is not integration, just as equality is not about assimilation and creativity is not empirical,” stated Michael Blackstock.

Four years ago, President Xi Jinping offered a new way to think about flooding and drought. At China’s Central Government Conference on Urbanization in 2013, he announced that cities should act like sponges. His proclamation came with substantial funding to experiment with ways cities can absorb precipitation.