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Ian McHarg

    DOWNLOAD A COPY OF: “Living Water Smart in British Columbia: Healthy Waters Program for salmon, whales, and people” – released by the Partnership for Water Sustainability in May 2023


    “The new Healthy Waters program will support sampling and analysis for a variety of contaminants of concern at up to 12 flagship BC watersheds. We will engage, share and train Indigenous community members, conservation teams and local authorities, thereby leveraging capacity in support of water quality monitoring and stewardship. The program aims to monitor water quality, effectively documenting water contaminants from the mountains to the sea,” stated Dr. Peter Ross.

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    DOWNLOAD A COPY OF: “Living Water Smart in British Columbia: Erik Karlsen and the Streamside Protection Regulation” – released by the Partnership for Water Sustainability in May 2023


    During the period 1996 through 2001, the BC government tasked Erik Karlsen with the lead role in developing the wording of an Order in Council to enact Section 12 of the Fish Protection Act. It was a unique position, as this legislation was a Ministry of Environment initiative, but led by Erik, who was the Director of Regional Growth Strategies in the Ministry of Municipal Affairs. Over a period of two years, Erik Karlsen chaired a committee of experts in a process that focused on the science, the policies, the costs, the benefits with a goal of gaining consensus from all sectors.

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    FOUR COUNTER-INTUITIVE PRINCIPLES FOR GROWING A NETWORK THROUGH COLLABORATIVE LEADERSHIP: “It was exciting to hear about the work of the British Columbia Partnership for Water Sustainability and how their approach has exemplified network leadership as I have conceptualized it,” stated Dr. Jane Wei-Skillern, Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley


    “The network emerges around a common goal, rather than a particular program or organizational model. The community mobilizes the resources from throughout the network, and based on existing relationships in the community. The solution is emergent and comes from the community members themselves, rather than being pushed from the top down. And finally, once a network is up and running and proves itself to be effective, It becomes the primary vehicle for change, rather than the individual organizations themselves,” stated Dr. Jane Wei-Skillern.

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    DOWNLOAD A COPY OF: “Living Water Smart in British Columbia: Growing the Network through Collaborative Leadership” – released by the Partnership for Water Sustainability in November 2021


    “Embracing collaborative leadership, growing a network based on shared aspirations, and delivering results across organizational boundaries differs in every way from building an organization in any conventional sense,” stated Mike Tanner. “The Partnership for Water Sustainability is a legal entity. Operationally, however, we function as the hub for a network in the local government setting. This approach reflects The Partnership genesis, first as a technical committee and then as a roundtable, before morphing into a legal entity. We are growing the Living Water Smart Network. We are not building a conventional organization.”

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    DOWNLOAD A COPY OF: “Living Water Smart in British Columbia: Shared Responsibility Underpins a Regional Team Approach to Creating Our Future” – released by the Partnership for Water Sustainability in November 2021


    “Shared responsibility can work at different levels. Senior government, regional government, municipalities, the development community and their consultants – all of us have an impact on the land, on the water, and on the way things look. Policy and legal tools can help developers, regulators and designers collaborate to implement green infrastructure solutions and ensure responsible outcomes. Each party in the process has a responsibility. Our purpose in developing the Responsibility Matrix is to encourage players with different perspectives to talk candidly with each other about green infrastructure or other sustainability goal implementation,” stated Susan Rutherford.

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    DOWNLOAD A COPY OF: “Living Water Smart in British Columbia: Know Your History and Context to Offset Generational Amnesia” – released by the Partnership for Water Sustainability in November 2021


    “Every generation is handed a world that has been shaped by their predecessors – and then seemingly forgets that fact. One of the first times this particular type of generational amnesia was observed was back in the 1990s. What this blindspot meant, Daniel Pauly argued in a short-but-influential paper, was that the scientists were failing to account fully for the slow creep of disappearing species, and each generation accepted the depleted ocean biodiversity they inherited as normal,” stated Richard Fisher.

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    DOWNLOAD A COPY OF: “Living Water Smart in British Columbia: Shifting Baseline Syndrome and Resilient Rainwater Management” – released by the Partnership for Water Sustainability in November 2021


    “Every generation will use the images that they got at the beginning of their conscious lives as a standard and will extrapolate forward. And the difference then, they perceive as a loss. But they don’t perceive what happened before as a loss. You can have a succession of changes. At the end you want to sustain miserable leftovers. And that, to a large extent, is what we want to do now. We want to sustain things that are gone or things that are not the way they were. And the question is, why do people accept this? Well because they don’t know that it was different,” stated Daniel Pauly.

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    DOWNLOAD A COPY OF: “Living Water Smart in British Columbia: A Tribute to Buzz Holling” released by the Partnership for Water Sustainability in October 2021


    Buzz Holling had profound and far-reaching influence during his lifetime, having made major contributions to the theory of predation, the concept of ecological resilience, the concept of panarchy, and adaptive management. “The only way to approach such a period — where uncertainty is very large and one cannot predict what the future holds – is not to predict, but to act inventively and exuberantly in diverse, adventures in living and experiment,” said Buzz Holling. One of his talents was his ability to bring people together to understand, assess and act on new solutions to complex problems of people and nature.

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    DOWNLOAD A COPY OF: “Living Water Smart in British Columbia: Short-Term Gratification versus Long-Term Legacy” – released by the Partnership for Water Sustainability in May 2021


    “In British Columbia at least, we know what we need to do to adapt to a changing water cycle. Whether and how we deal with uncertainty, manage risk, and adapt to droughts and floods will depend on how effective we are in encouraging a spirit of inter-generational collaboration among decision-makers at all levels within government and with community. The goal would be to build bridges of understanding and pass the baton from the past to the present and future,” stated Kim Stephens.

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    SHORT-TERM GRATIFICATION VS INTER-GENERATIONAL LEGACY: “If we truly want our governments to shift from short-term to longer term thinking, as voters we must then be prepared to support – and re-elect – those politicians who bring in such policies and legislation, even if those initiatives negatively impact us personally today,” stated Joan Sawicki, a former Speaker of the BC Legislative Assembly and Minister of Environment, Lands and Parks during the period 1991 through 2001


    “Not many people understand the decision-making process that politicians and public employees go through in attempts to address ‘the public interest’. Voters often send mixed messages. While it is perfectly legitimate to hold politicians’ “feet to the fire”, there is some justification to do the reverse as well! It is sometimes too convenient to blame politicians for the short term thinking hole that we are in. In a representative democracy, politicians can only lead where people are prepared to follow,” stated Joan Sawicki.

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