Living Water Smart & Green Communities Initiative introduced to Southern Interior audience at Kamloops Workshop
“Living Water Smart, BC’s Water Plan and the Green Communities Initiative must be viewed as an integrated package. Living Water Smart presents the vision, and the Green Communities Initiative provides enabling tools to achieve the vision. Together they represent a call to action,” stated Kim Stephens.
2009 Power Smart Forum features panel session on “Convening for Action in British Columbia”
“The water sustainability session showcased how partnerships, collaboration, innovation and integration are helping local governments apply a water-centric lens to make the best choices,” explained Pia Nagpal.
Metro Vancouver Reference Panel recommends alignment of local actions with provincial and regional goals
“The ‘Surrey Forum’ was designed to start a dialogue between policy-makers and project implementers. The program was built around the HOW question as it pertains to green infrastructure,” stated Vincent Lalonde.
Living Water Smart & Green Communities Initiative introduced to Southern Interior audience at Kamloops Workshop
“Living Water Smart, BC’s Water Plan and the Green Communities Initiative must be viewed as an integrated package. Living Water Smart presents the vision, and the Green Communities Initiative provides enabling tools to achieve the vision. Together they represent a call to action,” stated Kim Stephens.
RESILIENT CITIES: Unique conference will showcase a Panel Session on how ‘Green Objectives’ are being achieved in British Columbia
“Sustainability imperatives, the call for climate action, and the pressure for new approaches in almost every urban system have North American cities scrambling to manage the shift toward ecological practices and greater resilience,” states Gene Miller. There is growing national and international interest in how BC has moved from awareness to action in implementing green infrastructure practices.
waterbucket.ca provides “home” for telling the story of Metro Vancouver’s Liquid Waste Management Reference Panel
“The Reference Panel story is an important one, and has provincial relevance. This citizen advisory group has developed a policy framework that has influenced the region's Liquid Resource Management Plan,” stated Mike Tanner.
2009 Metro Vancouver Water Balance Model Forum: Living Water Smart and Making Green Choices to Create Liveable Communities and Protect Stream Health
The forum promoted moving beyond pilot projects to a watershed-based approach to achieving performance targets for rainwater management and green infrastructure. “We envisioned that the Surrey Forum would be a transformational event and a catalyst for action. One of our goals is to implement an educational program in Metro Vancouver that would be modelled on the Vancouver Island Learning Lunch Series,” stated Raymond Fung.
Convening for Action in British Columbia is being delivered through partnerships
The Water Sustainability Action Plan is being delivered through partnerships and regional pilot projects and programs. Convening for Action program has evolved into a ‘made in BC’ process for moving British Columbia practitioners from awareness to action. “Through outreach and education, the guiding vision is to influence land and water practitioners to learn about and use practices that better balance the necessary relationships of settlement activity and ecological assets in local and regional landscapes,” explains Glen Brown.
Doing Business Differently: What ‘Convening for Action in the Okanagan’ Means
“The Okanagan Basin Water Board is the hub for people to convene around when the topic is water. Its mandate is to communicate and coordinate. In the process, it is tapping into a huge reservoir of volunteers. This is what creates the energy, the will and the momentum to do business differently in the valley,” states Anna Warwick Sears. “The OBWB is a unique form of inter-regional government.”
British Columbia’s Green Communities Project: Expectations and Programs
“We are using the slogan The New Business As Usual to convey the message that, for change to really occur, practices that until now have been viewed as the exception must become the norm moving forward. We have to build regulatory models and develop models of practice and expertise to support The New Business As Usual”, stated Dale Wall.