Convening for Action in British Columbia

“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.

“Here in the Okanagan we are facing our own water issues as a result of unsustainable forms of development that are now leading to unprecedented levels of habitat and species extinction. Equity of access to water is also an issue that is becoming more problematic as water becomes an increasingly scarce resource,” stated John Wagner.

The Policy Research Initiative held a 3-day conference on the future of freshwater policies in Gatineau, Quebec. “Instead of looking at water as a product, alternative approaches to water management consider water as one Gatineau conference – cate soroczanmeans for providing a service – and not always the only or even the best one. This session explored various perspectives on water management,” stated Cate Soroczan, chair of a panel that included two BC perspectives.

“We build capacity through a 3-step process. First, we challenge practitioners and others to step back from their existing paradigms. Then we inform our audiences regarding alternatives. Finally, we provide the tools and experience to do things differently. The desired outcome is to turn ideas into action on-the-ground,” explained Ray Fung.

“The summit model was used because it focused on issues and responses and has resulted in an outline for action that follows from presentations on key water management themes in the South Okanagan and dialogue between presenters, panelists and participants,” stated Erik Karlsen.

“Poster content is developed by water experts for specific communities in close collaboration with community representatives and educators through an iterative process of face-to-face discussion and focus groups. As a result, Waterscape posters reflect water issues that are most relevant to the local community, and have a sound scientific and technical underpinning,” stated Bob Turner.