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Parksville 2019 is designed to foster a conversation in communities along the east coast of Vancouver Island and in the Metro Vancouver region about Sustainable Watershed Systems, through Asset Management. “The daily symposium themes are Sustainable Stream Restoration and Restorative Land Development, respectively. An evening lecture by global thought leader Storm Cunningham is the bridge between the two days. Storm Cunningham will also close the symposium with an inspirational message,” stated Paul Chapman.

“Local governments are implementers. This means they can be change leaders. They can integrate climate adaptation into the activities and actions of engineered and natural asset management – or flipping it around, integrate asset management into the activities and actions of climate adaptation. ‘Getting it right’ starts with recognition that hydrology is the engine that powers ecological services,” stated Kim Stephens. “Getting it right depends on provincial and local government alignment to require ‘design with nature’ standards of practice for servicing of land – so that communities decrease their ‘destructive footprint’ while at the same time increasing their ‘restoration footprint’.”

Inter-departmental participation by all member local governments effectively meant closing front counters on three Fridays for most of the day so that planning, engineering, operations and building inspection staff could attend the Learning Lunch seminars. “Throughout the series, our theme and our challenge was to ask participants what will they do better or differently to achieve a shared vision for the Cowichan Valley,” stated David Hewetson, Building Inspector with the City of Duncan. “This is why it was so important to get everyone thinking in terms of the What – So What – Now What mind-map.”

“There are indeed a lot of good things happening throughout Vancouver Island,” stated John Finnie. “Yet practitioners in local government are not necessarily aware when they are being innovative and are not often aware of innovation in other municipalities. We believe a key to the success of CAVI is that we are talking to people, not preaching at them. Our approach is to inform and educate. We do this by creating situations for people to have conversations.”

“The ‘regional team approach’ is founded on partnerships and collaboration; and seeks to align actions at three scales – provincial, regional and local,” stated Kim Stephens. “We use the word collaboration a lot in British Columbia. And it means something to us. But in other parts of the world, my experience is that they don’t really understand our ‘top-down, bottom-up’ approach. It may take us longer to get there, but collaboration is how we get to the destination.”

“Our region is hemmed in by the mountains, the sea, the US border and the Agricultural Land Reserve. This means population growth will be accommodated through redevelopment, and this involves redevelopment of watersheds. This is what gives us the second chance to get it right,” stated Kim Stephens. “As the housing stock turns over, there is a window of opportunity. We get one window every 50 years. Will local government take action in time?”

“The Rising to the Challenge conference was a milestone event. Because Australian practitioners are at a fork in their journey, they are looking to learn from BC experience. They are curious about our “whole systems” approach to water balance management,” observed Kim Stephens. “BC is moving from asset management to ‘sustainable service delivery’, with a focus on protecting the ‘water balance services’ that a watershed system provides.”

“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 the question is, why do people accept this?,” stated Daniel Pauly.

“Communication, cooperation, coordination and collaboration – have you thought about the power of the 4Cs? When all four are in play, good things happen,” states Derek Richmond. “Are you also aware of the beneficial outcomes that are flowing from collaboration between local government and the stewardship sector in the Nanaimo region? A groundswell of heightened awareness is translating into involvement and empowerment to make a difference. Join us on April 11-12 to learn more.”

“Knowing the Waterbucket user-base was wanting to find information easily, we redesigned the home page with not only a more contemporary look and feel but also to facilitate it being a portal to all of the different content-rich sections of the site,” stated Susan Friesen. “”Now site users can enjoy a faster, easier and mobile-friendly experience to conduct their research and become more informed with the valuable resources the Partnership for Water Sustainability in BC provides.”