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“Implementation of asset management along with the associated evolution of local government thinking is a continuous process, not a discrete task. We needed a way to illustrate this diagrammatically, and thus communicate, what the journey by a local government to the eventual Sustainable Service Delivery destination would look like. This led us to the concept of a continuum. Over time local governments can achieve the goal of sustainable service delivery for watershed systems,” stated Glen Brown. “It’s all about the service because infrastructure assets are worthless IF they do not provide a service.”

Creating a culture for urban watershed restoration relies on knowing the oral history of an area. And as the First Nations who have settled these lands for 1000s of years tell us, passing on the oral history is key to sharing a collective memory over time. Each generation must be receptive so that experience is passed on. “We are inching our way to bring together Western science and our own (Indigenous) science. There are different ways of how the two interact when we bring them together. The observation record for us is in the oral history,” stated hereditary Chief Hanamuxw (aka Don Ryan) of the Gitxsan.

“As we move forward with the Action Plan, it is making sure that we provide the people on the ground with the tools and resources that they need to help support action at the local level. A top-down approach does not work. When a community shows interest or a desire to move something forward, that is when we mobilize. The Action Plan purpose is to engage, listen, understand and support the local interests in moving forward. That is where we have been successful,” stated Glen Brown.

“The network emerges around a common goal, rather than a particular program or organizational model. The community mobilizes the resources from throughout the network, and based on existing relationships in the community. The solution is emergent and comes from the community members themselves, rather than being pushed from the top down. And finally, once a network is up and running and proves itself to be effective, It becomes the primary vehicle for change, rather than the individual organizations themselves,” stated Dr. Jane Wei-Skillern.

“Embracing collaborative leadership, growing a network based on shared aspirations, and delivering results across organizational boundaries differs in every way from building an organization in any conventional sense,” stated Mike Tanner. “The Partnership for Water Sustainability is a legal entity. Operationally, however, we function as the hub for a network in the local government setting. This approach reflects The Partnership genesis, first as a technical committee and then as a roundtable, before morphing into a legal entity. We are growing the Living Water Smart Network. We are not building a conventional organization.”

“Irrigation for agriculture is a dominant use of water in British Columbia, the need is seasonal, and use peaks when water supply is at its lowest. With longer and drier summers being the new reality for water management, the Agriculture Water Demand Model is a game-changer for achieving food security in British Columbia. We have downscaled climate data to a 500-metre grid across the province. This means we can reliably estimate the total water need for agricultural irrigation. This further means that the Province can align water allocation and water use. This is a powerful outcome,” stated Ted van der Gulik.

“Shared responsibility can work at different levels. Senior government, regional government, municipalities, the development community and their consultants – all of us have an impact on the land, on the water, and on the way things look. Policy and legal tools can help developers, regulators and designers collaborate to implement green infrastructure solutions and ensure responsible outcomes. Each party in the process has a responsibility. Our purpose in developing the Responsibility Matrix is to encourage players with different perspectives to talk candidly with each other about green infrastructure or other sustainability goal implementation,” stated Susan Rutherford.

“Every generation is handed a world that has been shaped by their predecessors – and then seemingly forgets that fact. One of the first times this particular type of generational amnesia was observed was back in the 1990s. What this blindspot meant, Daniel Pauly argued in a short-but-influential paper, was that the scientists were failing to account fully for the slow creep of disappearing species, and each generation accepted the depleted ocean biodiversity they inherited as normal,” stated Richard Fisher.

“Every generation will use the images that they got at the beginning of their conscious lives as a standard and will extrapolate forward. And the difference then, they perceive as a loss. But they don’t perceive what happened before as a loss. You can have a succession of changes. At the end you want to sustain miserable leftovers. And that, to a large extent, is what we want to do now. We want to sustain things that are gone or things that are not the way they were. And the question is, why do people accept this? Well because they don’t know that it was different,” stated Daniel Pauly.

“For asset management, the consideration is how and when assets might be compromised in their lifecycle by climate change and certainly that new assets need to consider what climate change impacts will affect their lifecycle and levels-of-service. Framing climate change impacts this way does not clearly align the changes to asset performance. But what if the scenarios are reframed with the uncertainty being the timeframe that a threshold is reached and not the uncertainty of change for a future date?” stated Robert Hicks.