Convening for Action in British Columbia

“In 2018, I happened to read a report which quoted a paper by Younes Alila. So I started reading more of his work. This is significant, I thought, because lives have been lost and billions of dollars in infrastructure damage has happened. And nobody seems to care. Here we have a UBC professor of hydrology who has completely changed how forest hydrology is looked at now. And he has determined that we have been using the wrong methods to determine the prescription outcomes from forest harvesting practices. Yet we are still continuing to do the same thing,” stated Mike Morris.

“Climate change scientists have always been overly consumed with extremes. The probabilistic framework has guided them since the mid-1980s. It has evolved into what they now refer to as attribution science. It has been developed aggressively by climate change scientists. That new framework is PROBABLISTIC in nature. It uses the frequency of extremes to tell you the extent to which the atmospheric rivers of November 2021 resulted in over $17 billion of damage due to human influence. Independently, I have been developing that same framework,” stated Younes Alila.

“In the BC Interior and the Okanagan, most are passionate about water, its science, limitations, and challenges. Okanagan Lake is key to our survival. Kelowna’s Water Security Plan came out of a need to recognize that water quality, not just quantity, is critical to our path forward. It took a long time to get there. But we got it across the finish line. We are known for our drinking water, wastewater and stormwater practices. But our outcomes must also consider natural asset management, environmental flows, and source water protection,” stated Rod MacLean.

“The Agricultural Land Inventory for me was a chance to translate reality into data, to make a permanent record bearing witness to these changes and providing the facts for informed decision-making. I am so proud of Christina Gemino’s work in turning that data into a message and call for action,” stated Kevin Eastwood. What is neat about the story of Christina Gemino and her body of research is how she infuses her passion to paint a picture of land use within the Agricultural Land Reserve. Through her analysis, she shines a light on what is going on within the ALR that is not right.

Christina Gemino titled her master’s thesis The Silent Death of Agriculture in Metro Vancouver. “The non-sanctioned expansion of industrial use on agricultural land was a factor that drove my research. It can forever change the agricultural land base. There was a 121% increase in ALR parcels with industrial use from 2016 through 2022. It should be ZERO percent. You can build warehouses and industrial stuff pretty well anywhere you have a piece of property. You cannot build a farm by bringing in soil. We have to find other places for this other stuff,” stated Christina Gemino.

“I was inspired to write the book because a couple of years back I was looking at a lot of old photos. And I could not help but feel how fortunate I have been to have seen so much of the world through the lens of rivers. The book takes the reader on a multi-decade global adventure. And it chronicles a lot of the real-life encounters I have had on rivers around the world,” stated Mark Angelo. As an avid kayaker, canoeist and rafter, Mark Angelo has traveled on close to a thousand rivers spanning well over one-hundred countries; perhaps more than any other individual.

In an article published in the NY Times, David Brooks reflected on new research findings. Reliance on artificial intelligence impacts the underlying cognitive architecture of human brains, he wrote. “But here’s where things get scary. The subjects who relied only on their own brains showed higher connectivity across a bunch of brain regions. Search engine users experienced less brain connectivity and A.I. users least of all. Are we really willing to become dumber? Essays written written by people relying on their brains created a wider variety of arguments and points.”

“The Partnership for Water Sustainability’s Mid-Year Report for 2025 is a baseline or landmark document. It is not a conventional annual report in the way people typically expect one to look like. The Partnership has adopted a storytelling approach to inform and engage readers about our mission,” stated Tim Pringle. Structured in three parts, the Mid-Year Report describes the Partnership’s operational framework followed by a section on the ambassadors’ program. Then it weaves quotable quotes into a narrative about the Partnership’s array of initiatives.

A request from Todd Pugh of CivicInfo BC was the inspiration for the Partnership for Water Sustainability featuring stories behind the stories of local government champions. “The idea is pretty simple. We run a lot of municipal press releases, but there are deeper stories to be told. We want thoughtful columns that highlight interesting ideas, concepts, or experiences. In short, we would love to hear about the journey – a behind-the-scenes story, from a first-person perspective,” stated Todd. He called his idea Civic Voices. The Partnership made it happen.

“We run a lot of municipal press releases, but there are deeper stories to be told,” stated Todd Pugh, Executive Director of CivicInfo, the data and information agency serving BC’s municipal sector. Waterbucket eNews has evolved to meet a growing need for a trusted source of information, one that provides context and perspective for a changing local government setting. Stories draw attention to the elephants in the room and that starts conversations. Headlines and supporting quotable quotes for 10 stories are sneak previews that foreshadow what is coming this fall.