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“Through regional initiatives such as CAVI, which is the acronym for Convening for Action on Vancouver Island, the Water Sustainability Action Plan is adding considerable depth to Living Water Smart. In 2008, CAVI undertook the Vancouver Island Learning Lunch Seminar Series as a provincial pilot,” stated Glen Brown. “The Learning Lunch Seminars promote a consistent provincial approach to implementation of rainwater management and green infrastructure solutions.”

“We have emphasized the connections surrounding ‘why we do it’ – watershed health and all that entails (quantity and quality) and the need for drainage actions to be integrated with all of the other policy and actions, to truly be effective – that is, thinking and integrating regionally down to the site scale”, stated Susan Rutherford.

“In October 2008, the Cowichan Valley Regional District hosted a Water Balance Model Forum that was conducted as a hybrid-training workshop to inform, educate and enable those who wish to apply the Water Balance Model to support a Design with Nature approach to land development,” stated Jay Bradley. “This was part of the implementation program for ‘Beyond the Guidebook: The New Business As Usual’. This initiative adds depth to  Living Water Smart, the provincial government’s vision and plan to keep British Columbia’s water healthy and secure for the future.”

“The vision is that the Showcasing Innovation Series can play an integrating role to cut across disciplines and ultimately serve as a catalyst to create Ministry of community development – dale wall, deputy minister neighbourhoods that integrate both good planning and innovative engineering designs, for overall greater sustainability….environmental, social and economic,” stated Dale Wall.

“Sustainable water management in BC is an important priority. The purpose of the workshops was to share information and explore opportunities for advancing water governance,” stated Lynn Kriwoken. ““Productive dialogue on challenges and solutions were the central focus of the workshops.”

“The roundtable discussion was a direct request from the provincial sponsor – Green Buildings BC – as they wanted to get a better understanding of costs and capacity around green buildings: from residential to commercial, institutional and government. The intent of this discussion was to get a cross-dialogue going on between builders, designers and the Province,” stated Vivian Dean.

“We organized the roundtable event to engage the major Vancouver Island developers in a conversation about the factors that facilitate or hinder their efforts to design, plan for and implement development incorporating Green Value Strategies on Vancouver Island,” said Jack Hall, REFBC Chair.

“We took ourselves up and down the island. We asked the same question: What will Vancouver Island look like in 50 years? There was a sense of urgency. We wanted to talk about and establish some way of collaborating on Vancouver Island. We found that the north is not talking to the south, and the east is not talking to the west. So, we said why don’t we pull these people together,” stated Eric Bonham.

“A decade ago, we thought that if we could hold the line for 20 years, we believed that we might be able to improve conditions over 50 years. Early success has given us confidence that this is attainable much sooner,” stated Kim Stephens.

“For BC’s engineers, planners and environmental scientists, the need to adapt plans and projects to account for climate change has become critical,” stated Eric Bonham. “Three professional organizations have been working together to provide leadership on this issue.”