Convening for Action in British Columbia

“The Green Infrastructure Partnership and Water Sustainability Committee provide a progress report on what was learned through one-on-one conversations with an ‘ad hoc mayors and chairs focus group' representing three regions of BC,” stated Kim Stephens.

“The Water Sustainability Action Plan is aimed at building capacity by improving awareness about effective approaches to the sustainable use of water resources and demonstrating how to integrate these approaches into land and resource planning, development and management decisions at the regional, community through to site levels.” stated Ray Fung.

According to Eric Bonham, the consultation workshop, held as an adjunct to the Water in the City Conference in Victoria, provided a timely opportunity to test and validate an approach that can bridge the gap between talk (interest) and action (practice)in advancing a water-centric approach to community development.

“The Guide will fill a gap because what has been lacking is this – written information on green infrastructure that is written from the perspective of elected officials for elected officials. Before we can write a Communication Guide, we need to understand what elected officials already know plus what they would like to know about green infrastructure. Only then can we judge what level of information transfer will be useful to them,” stated Paul Ham.

“The landscape and livability of Vancouver Island is rapidly being transformed by settlement, economic growth and water supply pressures. This CAVI workshop provides the opportunity to participate in a real life process that has relevance to what Vancouver Island may look like in 50 years,thell.” stated Graeme Bethell.

“By drawing its members from a diverse range of disciplines and organizations, the committee functions across the boundaries and beyond the historical limits or constraints of the mandates, knowledge and expertise found in specific organizations. One of the criteria for membership is that individuals will feed back the WSC outcomes into their organizations”, added Ray Fung.

“Experience shows that big meetings don’t work in terms of creating change. The program design for Water and Cities is predicated on the realization that moving from talk to action starts with people having a conversation. Spontaneous communication in turn leads to dialogue; and it is dialogue that leads to consensus on what needs to be done,” stated Patricia Gallaugher.

“We are excited to demonstrate that industry is doing its part to rise to the challenge of providing practical solutions to on-the-ground drainage issues. Our collaboration with the Inter-Governmental Partnership is creating opportunities for the IGP to achieve their outreach objectives in communicating the water balance message to a broad audience of practitioners,” stated Keith Lumby

“A regional growth strategy is the most effective way to integrate the full range of government and non-government interests in a region, stated Meggin Messenger. “The preparation of a regional growth strategy involves all orders of government and the public in defining vision, goal and objective statements that respond to current and anticipated land use and development issues to meet the needs of current and future residents.”

“We focussed on the South Okanagan because it’s a ready-made pilot project that’s manageable in scale, and then we can roll out what we find across the province,” stated Kim Stephens.