Green Infrastructure

“Commencing with a launch announcement by the BC Minister of Environment in 2005, this community-of-practice serves an important function in recording the history of the green infrastructure movement in British Columbia. Originally created to support the work of the Green Infrastructure Partnership, the community-of-practice has long supported interconnected initiatives, notably Asset Management for Sustainable Service Delivery in BC,” stated Mike Tanner, Waterbucket Chair.

During the period 2003 through 2010, the Green Infrastructure Partnership played a prominent role in leading change and assisting with implementation of the Water Sustainability Action Plan for British Columbia, primarily in the Metro Vancouver region. “I see my years of chairing the GIP as helping to get the ball rolling and ideas disseminated, on green infrastructure, all of which has subsequently been taken up by others to a much greater degree of implementation and success. Our efforts a decade ago moved the state of-the-art of green infrastructure to a more mainstream level,” said Paul Ham.

In 2007, the first Beyond the Guidebook guidance document provided a clear distinction between natural and engineered green infrastructure. “Two complementary strategies can ‘green’ a community and its infrastructure: first, preserving as much as possible of the natural green infrastructure; and secondly, promoting designs that soften the footprint of development,” wrote Susan Rutherford. “Green infrastructure design is engineering design that takes a ‘design with nature’ approach, to both mitigate the potential impacts of existing and future development and growth and to provide valuable services.”

“Many plans fail to explicitly define green infrastructure. How it is defined guides the types of projects that local governments implement, with enduring impacts to people and the urban environment. Ecology is not really being embedded in any planning practice. This realization turned my attention towards this question…how do you embed ecosystem science and principles within landscape planning to conserve landscapes, ecological functions, and quality? My work is about a new paradigm that moves away from humans as separate from nature,” stated Zbigniew Grabowski.

The intergenerational nature of drainage experience and evolution in Surrey is unique in the Metro Vancouver region. The city had a 25-yr head start on other BC municipalities. And there has been staff continuity over a 50-yr period. By 2009, Surrey had evolved from pilot projects to setting watershed-based objectives and targets. “The Biodiversity Development Cost Charge Bylaw for acquiring and enhancing land in stream corridors has been in place since 2019. Surrey is the only municipality that has one. The work to create the DCC was initiated many years before,” stated Rémi Dubé.

In British Columbia, the success of the waterbucket.ca website for the past 20 years is that it records history in the making while providing a platform for individuals and groups to share their success stories. Otherwise, with the passage of time, people either forget about or never knew what previous generations were trying to do and why. A recent observation by Thomas Friedman is a reminder of the importance, relevance and power of storytelling. “It has been a real failure of education to bring along generations X, Y and Z to appreciate what is being lost right now.”

“Erik Karlsen bridged the worlds of municipal affairs and environmental stewardship. For a generation of elected representatives, his was a familiar face in the local government setting. He was influential and his influence was far reaching while he was alive. His rippling through time through the work of the Partnership for Water Sustainability in leading the Georgia Basin Inter-Regional Educational Initiative. He was a thought leader and change agent. Erik Karlsen has a special place in the history of the Partnership. His memory lives on,” stated Kim Stephens.

Erik Karlsen had a remarkable impact on the shape of BC communities. This came through his influence on BC planning law and policy, his even greater influence on adoption of new planning practices, and his role in building professional networks that shaped community planning. He was tireless at building networks and at mentoring professionals. He was always where the action was – where creative and innovative energies were flowing. His ability to gravitate to that action – and to ‘morph’ into whatever current political form it was taking – was a real feature of Erik’s career.

“In 2004, we brought together an intergovernmental partnership to fund development of the waterbucket.ca website. Launched 12 months later in 2005, waterbucket.ca has matured into a legacy resource. It has become the place where people go to look for information on water in BC. It is a powerful communication platform because we provide an independent voice for peer-based learning. We are getting the stories of the Living Water Smart champions out there. When people say I saw it on waterbucket.ca, that is our ultimate measure and testament of success,” stated Mike Tanner.

“Even before I started, I got a call from Don Stenson who was then Director of Planning at the City of Burnaby. He asked me to come to his office and said something that I have never forgotten. He said there is one thing that I want you to never forget… STORMWATER. Whatever you build on top of that mountain, the stormwater flows into Stoney Creek must be no worse than they are today. That is why Kim Stephens could do whatever he wanted because protecting Stoney Creek from stormwater impacts was THE most important thing that I could do,” recalled Michael Geller.

The context for the Partnership for Water Sustainability celebrating the life of Barry Janyk is the Smartstorm Forum Series. This transformational series fueled a movement and galvanized an ecosystem-based approach to rainwater management and green infrastructure within the Georgia Basin bioregion of southwestern British Columbia. Barry Janyk, who was then mayor of Gibsons, infused the SmartStorm Forum Series with his passion. He was the political champion who carried the green infrastructure torch to the Metro Vancouver Regional Board and then to UBCM.

“Context is everything. In 1999, the science was brand new and the Streamside Protection Regulation was still two years away from becoming law. This context underscores just how far ahead of the game that Metro Vancouver was with its watershed health rating system. This is context for Metro Vancouver coming full circle to build on seminal applied research undertaken in the Metro Vancouver and Puget Sound regions in the late 1990s.This legacy work provides us with a benchmark for comparison of watershed health assessments then and now,” stated Tim Pringle.

“In the 1990s, very careful work by the likes of Parliamentary Secretary Joan Sawicki and Erik Karlsen created the foundation by which we could move forward with development of regional growth strategies and then implementation. It required huge amounts of work by people like Darlene Marzari when she was Minister of Municipal Affairs to build a consensus among local elected officials in terms of what a regional growth strategy might look like. That work changed, in many ways, the context. We had people in local government who were keen on doing this,” stated Dale Wall.