Ecological Accounting Process

WHERE EAP IS SITUATED ON THE ASSET MANAGEMENT CONTINUUM: “The ultimate vision for Sustainability Service Delivery is that communities would manage natural assets in the same way that they manage their engineered assets,” stated Glen Brown, Chair of Asset Management BC, when he unveiled the continuum idea (Dec 2015)

19 May 2025 - Posted in Milestone Moments in EAP History

Note to Reader:

Released in December 2014, Asset Management for Sustainable Service Delivery: A BC Framework has been a game-changer. It makes the link between local government services, the infrastructure that supports the delivery of those services, and the health of watershed systems.

Twelve months after release of the BC Framework, in December 2015, the Partnership for Water Sustainability hosted the Feast AND Famine, Flood AND Drought Workshop. This event provided a forum for Glen Brown of UBCM to introduce the “asset management continuum” as a metaphor for describing incremental progression towards Sustainability Service Delivery.

The Feast AND Famine, Flood AND Drought Workshop addressed this over-arching question: What should we expect and what can we do to build “water-resilient communities”? The program comprised four modules that were cascading – from high-level visioning to ground-level applications. Adaptation to a changing climate was a unifying theme.

The workshop is the event of record for the Asset Management Continuum for Sustainable Service Delivery. The article below is structured under two topic headings to provide historical context and perspective on what led up to this watershed moment, and how the continuum has subsequently evolved to include the Ecological Accounting Process (EAP), respectively.

Of relevance to milestones in EAP history, the workshop followed within a month of release of Beyond the Guidebook 2015 which seeded the EAP idea.

TOPIC 1: Story Behind the Story of how the concept of the Asset Management Continuum came to be

“Context is everything for connecting dots,” states Kim Stephens, Executive Director with the Partnership for Water Sustainability in BC. “The story behind the story of the Asset Management Continuum has its genesis in the 1960s. According to the legendary Erik Karlsen, that is the decade when British Columbia began its multi-faceted and ongoing journey towards sustainability. Erik Karlsen was our link to that period because he was there from the beginning.”

CONCEPT 1: Build Greener Communities

“Fast forward to the 2000s. Notable milestones in the journey were in 2003, 2008 and 2014. Climate change in 2003 resulted in the ‘teachable year’ because of the severity of impacts resulting from drought, fire, wind, pine beetle, and atmospheric rivers. In 2008 came the ‘call to action’ by the provincial government with Living Water Smart in British Columbia.”

“Three game-changing provincial initiatives then came to fruition in 2014, one of which was the BC framework for sustainable service delivery. We describe the three as providing the ‘springboard to implementation’. A unifying theme for these milestone years is build greener communities.”

CONCEPT 2: Sustainable Service Delivery for Watershed Systems

“In preparation for the Feast AND Famine Workshop in December 2015, Glen Brown of UBCM and I met for lunch to brainstorm his storyline for the module titled Sustainable Service Delivery for Watershed Systems. This was just a few weeks after the Partnership had released Beyond the Guidebook 2015: Moving Towards “Sustainable Watershed Systems, through Asset Management”. As so often happens, one has a conversation and a big idea emerges.”

“One must keep in mind that December 2015 was still early days in the rollout of Asset Management for Sustainable Service Delivery: A BC Framework. The BC Framework was Glen’s baby. He had nurtured the idea from inception when he had an aha moment at a meeting of the National Asset Management Working Group in Ottawa, sometime around 2008 as I recall.”

“Glen carried the day when he boldly advocated for an holistic definition of asset management that weaved in an implicit reference to natural assets. Subsequently, the Partnership ran with that definition. This is a classic illustration of why it is so critical to seed high level policy and definitions with the right choice of words that can be turned into action.”

“The thinking behind the BC Framework is a core piece of Beyond the Guidebook 2015. In fact, it was the combination of Glen Brown and my mentor Erik Karlsen who inspired the final choice of a title for the third in the series that builds on Stormwater Planning: A Guidebook for British Columbia.”

CONCEPT 3: Asset Management Continuum

“Over lunch, Glen Brown and I talked about the need for an incremental approach when introducing a new idea and new expectations for doing business differently in the local government sphere.”

“As we talked, something clearly clicked in Glen’s mind. My memory is that he was on a roll. So, I quickly handed him a serviette. Sketch what is in your mind, I said. That was the moment when the idea for the initial version of the Asset Management Continuum crystallized. A couple of weeks later, Glen presented his vision at the feast and famine workshop.”

To learn more:

The first time the Asset Management Continuum was published was in the Spring 2016 issue of Watermark Magazine . The magazine includes an article that describes the 2015 workshop. To read the article, download a copy of Feast AND Famine, Flood AND Drought: Solutions and tools for building water-resilient communities .

Watch Glen Brown on YouTube

“Implementation of asset management along with the associated evolution of local government thinking is a continuous process, not a discrete task. We needed a way to illustrate this diagrammatically. This led us to the concept of a continuum,” Glen Brown explained to the Feast AND Famine audience.

“The continuum bridges two pieces. One piece is recognition that the asset management process is founded on an incremental approach. The other piece is integration of natural capital, natural assets and watershed systems thinking.”

CONCEPT 4: Watersheds as Infrastructure Assets

“In the rollout of Beyond the Guidebook 2015, we were just trying to get people who were working in the local government sector used to the idea that watersheds are infrastructure assets. At a time when most local governments were still at Ground Zero for asset management in general, our communication strategy was simply to begin the process of establishing expectations for further down the road,” continues Kim Stephens.

“In my Beyond the Guidebook 2015 presentations to regional boards and municipals, I would explain that a watershed is an integrated system. And the natural pathways by which rainfall reaches streams are ‘infrastructure assets’. Those pathways provide water balance services. This is why it is necessary to protect and/or restore hydrologic integrity in urban areas to preserve or redistribute the seasonal water balance.”

“The three pathways are over the land surface, shallow horizontal interflow through the soil layer, and deep vertical to groundwater. More specifically, and because hydrology is the engine that powers ecological services, one can think of the pathways as drainage assets that sustain ecological services.”

“When I spoke to both political and technical audiences, my over-arching message was that a systems approach to watershed health and protection recognizes that actions on the land have consequences, notably for the three pathways to streams and hence the water balance of the watershed. Those consequences are felt in both dry weather and wet weather – too little or too much water, respectively.”

TOPIC 2: Evolution of the Asset Management Continuum

To learn more, read this announcement: NEW GUIDANCE DOCUMENT: Primer on Integrating Natural Assets into Asset Management (BC Framework Series)

“EAP shows local governments how to integrate stream systems and other water assets, such as wetlands, within a creekshed,” notes Tim Pringle, creator of the Ecological Accounting Process and adjunct professor at Vancouver Island University.

Incremental in nature, sustainable service delivery is a continuous quality-improvement process. The image below conceptualizes a local government’s “asset management journey” as a continuum of steps, with EAP being Step Three. “Over the years, we have evolved the graphic to improve the visual presentation. However, the basic information remains the same. In other words, the concept is standing the test of time,” states Kim Stephens.

Living Water Smart Context for Asset Management Continuum

“Released in 2008, Living Water Smart transcends governments. It has 45 actions and targets, one of which is the genesis for Asset Management BC — co-chaired by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and UBCM (Union of BC Municipalities) — which rolled out Asset Management for Sustainable Service Delivery: A BC Framework in 2015,” explains Kim Stephens.

“A second Living Water Smart objective underpins Sustainable Watershed Systems and continues to guide the work of the Partnership. When Asset Management BC released their Natural Assets Primer in 2019, this provided the catalyst for figuring out once-and-for-all how to integrate so-called natural assets into asset management processes.”

“

“Through a Memorandum of Understanding with Asset Management BC, the Partnership brings a whole-system perspective to the unfunded liability issue that is associated with drainage and creek systems. As Glen Brown has noted over the years: The ultimate vision for Sustainability Service Delivery is that communities would manage natural assets in the same way that they manage their engineered assets’.”

To Learn More:

EAP brings a whole-system approach to an understanding of drainage service realities. To read a backgrounder released by the Partnership in December 2021, download a PDF copy of “Living Water Smart in British Columbia: Asset Management Continuum for Sustainable Service Delivery”.