STORY BEHIND THE STORY OF EAP: “There is a special type of courage that Council needs to have to say, ‘give us the naked truth’. There is not a lot of political up-side to shining a light on infrastructure challenges,” stated Christopher Paine, Director of Financial Services, District of Oak Bay
The big picture context for EAP is whether a local government has a strategy for its constructed assets. Success over the long-term depends on local government political commitment to the guiding principles of sustainable service delivery. Bridging the infrastructure funding gap for constructed and natural assets requires an intergenerational commitment. “Lack of a long-term financial plan to support asset management really forces an incremental erosion of the service level. That is why forward looking long-term financial statements are so important to inform Council decisions,” stated Christopher Paine.
ECOLOGICAL ACCOUNTING – WHAT’S IN A NUMBER? “Start with an understanding of the parcel because that is how communities regulate and plan land use. It is the parcel level where you get the information that you need to change practice to protect natural assets. That is what everyone must get their heads around,” stated Tim Pringle (October 2022)
How will communities ensure that streams survive as healthy ecosystems in an urban setting? This existential question defines a key challenge facing local governments in an era of weather extremes. EAP, the Ecological Accounting Process, provides communities with a path forward. It is the means to inject balance into the natural asset management conversation. “We needed a measure of financial value that could be applied on stream systems generally, not just because somebody somewhere had done something somehow. And then it struck me, the BC Assessment database is the lynchpin for financial valuation,” stated Tim Pringle.
STORY BEHIND THE STORY OF EAP: “By accounting for and integrating the services that nature provides, communities can achieve the goal of Sustainable Service Delivery for watershed systems,” stated Liam Edwards, former Executive Director, BC Ministry of Municipal Affairs (quotable quote, 2015)
Three landmark initiatives came to fruition in 2014. One of these is ‘Asset Management for Sustainable Service Delivery: A BC Framework’. It makes the link between local government services, the infrastructure that supports the delivery of those services, and watershed health. The BC Framework provides context for EAP. “The BC Framework points the way to integration of natural systems and climate change thinking into asset management. Resilient cities will be the ones that can absorb water and manage the water cycle as a closed loop,” stated Liam Edwards
STORY BEHIND THE STORY OF EAP: “Nature appears more fragmented because we have to slice it into categories and dice those categories into bits before we can value bits of those bits. The sum of these parts is far short of the whole and does not capture the interconnectedness and holism of nature,” stated John Henneberry (1952-2021) Professor of Property Development Studies, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom
John Henneberry’s pioneering work serves as validation of how EAP looks at streams and water assets as a system. His eclecticism produced real insights into the operation of land and property markets, enabling all involved to see things more clearly and differently. His interests lay at the interface between planning and property. “An industry has developed that values different aspects of nature in different ways. Our view of nature is biased to those aspects of it that can be measured and particularly to those that can be valued,” stated John Henneberry.
BIG IDEAS POWER EAP: “The building blocks process of testing, refining and mainstreaming the methodology and metrics yielded 19 foundational concepts which we describe as big ideas,” stated Tim Pringle, EAP Chair
“What gets measured gets managed (or could be). The challenge for local governments is how to determine financial values for a natural asset such as a stream system. The community uses and enjoys these assets and expects local government to include them in asset management plans and budgets. EAP provides an original way to analyze and present data from existing sources as well as field observations. The analytical and quantitative steps are designed to be carried out by local government and collaborators, primarily stream stewards,” stated Tim Pringle.
HOW MUCH SHOULD LOCAL GOVERNMENTS SPEND EACH YEAR TO REDUCE THE RIPARIAN DEFICIT: “An elephant in the room is the hollowing out of government capacity at all levels and the reliance on outside service providers,” stated Kim Stephens (Asset Management BC Newsletter, Summer 2022)
“The question is, how does one create a situation where the environmental perspective is on an equal footing with the engineering and accounting perspectives? Only then can there be a balanced and productive conversation about annual budgets for maintenance and management (M&M) of assets, whether those are constructed assets or the natural component of the Drainage Service. The growing cost due to neglect of the Drainage Service, combined with the urgency of the drainage liability issue, is the driver for linking municipal infrastructure asset management and stream health as cause-and-effect,” stated Kim Stephens.
BEYOND THE GUIDEBOOK 2022 / FINANCIAL CASE FOR STREAMS: “Green infrastructure state-of-the-art in the United States is now close to where the BC state-of-the-art was in 2005” – based on an interview with Dr. Zbigniew Grabowski, lead researcher for the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, this is the key takeaway from the first systematic review of the use and definition of the green infrastructure concept in local government plans in the United States
“There are a lot of ‘greening’ and sustainability initiatives, but they are not conceptually unified. They are neither thought about in terms of interdependencies nor systemically. We had this moment of realization about the diversity of plans when it clicked in our minds about analyzing all the plans in terms of three big buckets: something that is very stormwater-focused, something that is very land-focused, and something that is trying to integrate the two. In the process, we started to uncover this grain of systems thinking within green infrastructure planning,” stated Dr. Zbigniew Grabowski.
OUTCOME OF STAGE 3 EAP MAINSTREAMING PROGRAM: “Now, with EAP as a foundation piece, local governments have a rationale and a metric to do business differently via multiple planning pathways to achieve target-based strategies for systematic restoration of streamside protection zones,” stated Kim Stephens, Executive Director, Partnership for Water Sustainability in British Columbia
“EAP provides the reason for anyone and everyone to ask a fundamental question, why aren’t stream health factors considered and given equal weight to engineering considerations? The community expectation that these assets will be maintained and managed is the impetus for the reason for looking at asset management differently. EAP provides local governments with the philosophy, methodology and metrics they need to make the financial case for stream systems. Maintenance and management (M&M) of stream systems can now be integrated into a Local Government Finance Strategy for sustainable infrastructure funding,” stated Kim Stephens.
THE ECOLOGICAL ACCOUNTING PROCESS IS A BC COLLABORATIVE INIATIVE: “EAP considers the entirety of the stream corridor system—a ‘natural commons’—and seeks to ensure that streams survive in an urban or urbanizing setting, without suffering from degradation of stream channels and streamside riparian setback zones” (Water Canada magazine, May-June 2022)
“I reached out to Kim Stephens of the Partnership for Water Sustainability BC with an invitation to share more about the people, policy, and projects in BC, through penning an article for Water Canada magazine and sharing of relevant information. I am very keen on showcasing real world water projects, and the people whose lives they impact, with our national audience. The Ecological Accounting Process is a topic the Water Canada audience would really benefit from and that is why we featured it in the May-June 2022 issue,” stated Jen Smith, magazine editor.
STORY BEHIND THE STORY OF EAP, THE ECOLOGICAL ACCOUNTING PROCESS: “Because local governments need real numbers to deliver outcomes, we landed on a concept which we call the Riparian Deficit,” stated Tim Pringle, EAP Chair (Waterbucket eNews, June 2022)
“It is amazing that we have been able to produce a methodology that defines what a stream is, can find the value of the stream using impartial BC Assessment data, and add to that a riparian assessment that looks at the 30m zone and a further 200m upland area to evaluate the water balance condition and what is happening to water pathways,” stated Tim Pringle. “Because local governments need real numbers to deliver outcomes, we landed on a concept which we call the Riparian Deficit. This expresses three measures of value in a single number.”