Convening for Action in British Columbia

“Convening for Action is a provincial initiative that supports innovation on-the-ground. From the perspective of those leading and/or participating in regional programs, having this community-of-interest provides the opportunity to ‘tell our story’ and ‘record our history’ as a work-in-progress,” states Ray Fung. “It will turn ideas into action by building capacity and understanding regarding integration of long-term, strategic planning and the implementation of physical infrastructure.”

“Future planners, engineers, scientists, politicians and citizens alike will be called upon to demonstrate both vision and pragmatism, working as a team towards consensus, commitment and collaboration for the common good. Such collaboration is essential and must cross all political and community boundaries given that climate change is no respecter of such creations. The Partnership has accepted this challenge and its implementation,” stated Eric Bonham.

In his 1969 book, Design With Nature, Ian McHarg pioneered the concept of environmental planning. “So, I commend Design with Nature to your sympathetic consideration. The title contains a gradient of meaning. It can be interpreted as simply descriptive of a planning method, deferential to places and peoples, it can invoke the Grand Design, it can emphasize the conjunction with and, finally it can be read as an imperative. DESIGN WITH NATURE!,” wrote Ian McHarg.

The waterbucket.ca community is about networking and collaboration and waterbucket.ca provides a platform for learning from each other through sharing of success stories. The 20th anniversary of the waterbucket.ca website is an opportunity for celebration as well as reflection. “The waterbucket.ca website is providing reasons to have the conversations about ‘why change’.The resulting awareness of need will help us obtain the mandate to implement watershed-based land use planning,” stated Marvin Kamenz, Director of Community Planning with the Town of Comox.

“Twenty years ago, we went live with the waterbucket.ca website. We profile those who do good work in the spirit of Living Water Smart. This is a big reason why waterbucket.ca has become the place where people go to look for information on water. We have the communication platform. We give the champions a voice. We are getting the stories of the Living Water Smart champions out there. This validates what they are doing. That is a public service that the Partnership is able to do because we have an independent communications platform,” stated Mike Tanner.

“The 1992 Land Development Guidelines were about doing business differently because the status quo was not working. Municipalities were feeling the pressure to change course. So, we built on Puget Sound research and developed a watershed health rating system for our region. A trend projection from 1996 to 2036 demonstrated how the status quo would lead to a further region-wide decline in stream health. When we showed the picture of what this would look like to the Board members, they agreed that things had to change. Otherwise, things will get worse,” stated Robert Hicks.

“The Ecological Accounting Process is about the condition and financial value of municipal stream assets that supply ecological services, Urban streams are rarely managed as ecological systems or as municipal assets. When local governments obtain a financial value for streams as spatial assets, they can include them in their asset management plans and budgets. EAP gives municipalities the methodology and metrics that will let them add streams to their asset management strategy,” stated Tim Pringle.

In “Views of the Salish Sea”, Howard Macdonald Stewart documents that, too often in his career as an advisor to the United Nations, he experienced a vital paradise that had become an environmental desert due to ‘business as usual’ decisions. He wrote the book to help readers better understand past decisions and their consequences. “The pressure on this ecologically vulnerable area will only intensify. Will we continue with Business as Usual or implement Wise Use in the Salish Sea? The first step is to understand the complex story of the region,” stated Macdonald.

“The region’s continued health and sustainability demands that we treat it as one system, not as a composite of separate and jurisdictionally distinct entities. As Parliamentary Secretary for the Georgia Basin Initiative, I had a visionary document and strong personal support from Minister Marzari at the top. And I had Erik Karlsen’s on-the-ground connections with Basin communities and their issues. All I had to do was run with it, And that’s what we did!. The Georgia Basin Initiative was successful because we had the right people at the right time,” stated Joan Sawicki.

“The drought of 2015 suggests we may be crossing an invisible threshold into a different hydro-meteorological regime in Western North America,” stated Bob Sandford in 2015. Events have proven him to be right. Over the past decade, it has been one drought after another, dramatized by the extremes that impacted BC communities in 2021 and again in 2023. The mountainous nature of BC’s geography means that BC communities are typically storage-constrained, and what storage they do have is measured in months. This accentuates risks, uncertainties and vulnerabilities.

“For the past decade, the situation in BC has been touch and go almost every year. In 2015, Western North America clearly crossed an invisible threshold into a different hydrometeorological regime. Over the past decade, it has been one drought after another, dramatized by the extremes that impacted BC communities in 2021 and again in 2023. While it rains a lot, we do not have an abundance of supply when demand is greatest. Right when we need a reliable supply of water, we can expect deeper, more persistent drought punctuated by flooding,” stated Kim Stephens.

“The Melting Glaciers, Healthy Watersheds and You panel is about education and raising awareness. One of the foundational programs with the Whistler Lakes Conservation Foundation is our monitoring and reporting program. Monitoring and reporting aside, it is not just about the science. It is about people. We know we can’t manage what we don’t measure. That’s why quantitative lake data provide a baseline from which changes can be observed and acted on over time. However, we cannot always measure everything that matter,” stated Lynn Kriwoken.

“If you are importing food, you are importing water. It is that simple. Also, our agricultural land in BC really is not as secure as everyone thinks. You can see all kinds of activities that do not support food production that are going on within the Agricultural Land Reserve. BC has two powerful tools for achieving food security. The Agricultural Land Use Inventory program is input to the Agriculture Water Demand Model. This is a powerful combination. These tools yield accurate data about agricultural land use and water need in all regions of BC,” stated Ted van der Gulik.