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CHRONICLE OF GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE INNOVATION IN METRO VANCOUVER – PART A: “Each time we face an environmental challenge, we are once again looking at how we do business. A changing context causes us to ask important questions about how we might do things better,” stated Dale Wall, retired Deputy Minister of Municipal Affairs

Note to Reader:

Published by the Partnership for Water Sustainability in British Columbia, Waterbucket eNews celebrates the leadership of individuals and organizations who are guided by the Living Water Smart vision. Stories are structured in three parts: One-Minute Takeaway, Editor’s Perspective, and the Story Behind the Story. 

The edition published on April 1, 2025 is an introduction to and a high-level overview of Part A of the Chronicle of Green Infrastructure in Metro Vancouver from 1994 through 2024. The 73-page Part A is included as an attachment. It is a sweeping narrative that brings to life an era.

 

Georgia Basin Initiative was a call to action

Three decades ago, there was trouble in paradise. All communities in the Lower Mainland and along the east coast of Vancouver Island were under intense pressure and knew they had to do something about it.

 

 

Launched in 1994, the Georgia Basin Initiative was one of those rare instances where top-down and bottom-up actually did meet in the middle. And it did exactly what it was intended to do. There are initiatives and programs flourishing today that had their beginnings in the Georgia Basin Initiative.

 

 

Titled Georgia Basin Context for Green Infrastructure Innovation, Part A is a sweeping narrative. It introduces defining milestones and key players that shaped a movement to Design With Nature in Metro Vancouver and on Vancouver Island.

Part A is both a stand-alone resource and an appetizer for what will follow in future releases of Parts B through G of the Chronicle of Green Infrastructure Innovation in Metro Vancouver from 1994 through 2024. A unifying theme is that lessons from the past inform the future.

Crisis creates opportunity

Crisis creates opportunity. Often attributed to Albert Einstein, this phrase captures the current situation in time and history. In a nutshell, Donald Trump poses an existential threat to British Columbia and to Canada as a whole.

Meanwhile, knowledge and memory are being lost at an alarming rate. The existential threat provides timely context for reassessment of why we do what we do; and how a crisis brings people together in a common cause.

Never has storytelling been more important

Crisis creates opportunity. Know your history. Having an external threat reminds us what matters. Dig deep, rise to the moment. Remember, reflect, refocus and recommit to the shared values that bind us, and reset. Build on knowledge and experience to chart a path forward through troubled waters.

 

EDITOR’S PERSPECTIVE / CONTEXT FOR BUSY READER

“The Metro Vancouver region is at both a cross-roads and a tipping point for regional growth management and livability. The region was at a similar crossroads three decades ago. Will historical precedent provide communities and decision makers with inspiration in 2025?” asks Kim Stephens, Waterbucket eNews Editor and Partnership Executive Director.

Livability at a crossroads, again

“Writing the Chronicle of Green Infrastructure Innovation is my way of giving back. It brings to life an exciting period in local government “convening for action” history. The Georgia Basin Initiative continues to define my career because the Partnership for Water Sustainability is a GBI outcome.”

 

 

“By releasing Part A as the first installment, our goal is to stimulate the reader’s curiosity to delve deeper into how we got from 1994 to 2024, and where we go next. We hope this leads to a deeper understanding of why certain themes and foundational concepts continue to ripple through time.”

The Partnership is the legacy of governments “convening for action” in the Georgia Basin

“Within a few years, the Georgia Basin Initiative led to a federal-provincial agreement to collaborate under the umbrella of the Georgia Basin Ecosystem Initiative, followed by the Georgia Basin Action Plan, an evolution of the GBEI.”

“The Partnership for Water Sustainability followed in the footsteps of the GBI, GBEI and GBAP with the Georgia Basin Inter-Regional Education Initiative (IREI) under the umbrella of Living Water Smart. Three decades and counting is an amazing legacy.”

“The history of the past three decades is defined by four distinct eras, with the period of time for each varying between 6 and 9 years. In the image below, a defining statement characterizes each era.”

 

Never has storytelling been more important

“Whistler is in a headwater sub-system of the Georgia Basin. Two weeks ago, we featured the Whistler Lakes Conservation Foundation. Their story provides relevant and timely content for the history of the basin over the past three decades. Lynn Kriwoken expressed it well when she said:

“The work that we are doing today is part of a continuum that has evolved in this place over time. It started with the stewardship of the resources and the land by the people of the First Nations and the continuation of story over generations.”

 

 

STORY BEHIND THE STORY: Livability of Southwest BC at a crossroads, again 

Part A is dedicated to the shared legacy of three inspirational leaders who ran with the vision for the Georgia Basin Initiative: Creating a Sustainable Future and gave it life three decades ago.

Without the passion and commitment of Darlene Marzari, Joan Sawicki and Erik Karlsen, the call for action in the 1993 report by the BC Round Table on the Environment and the Economy may not have gone anywhere. They made a difference and they changed history in the Georgia Basin.

 

To see ahead one must learn to look back

Never has storytelling been more important than it is today. And that is because knowledge and memory are being lost at an alarming rate. A look into the future by Jay Bradley in 2007 has proven prescient in foreshadowing what is happening in the post-COVID era.

 

 

Jay Bradley’s quote nails the nub of one of the challenges of our time. And that is, loss of continuity is happening just when continuity of understanding is needed most.

Will it be business as usual or wise use?

The Georgia Basin links two nations and includes three bodies collectively known as the Salish Sea. “It is not mere coincidence that two-thirds of the population of British Columbia occupies lands bordering its great inland sea,” wrote Howard Macdonald Stewart in his book titled Views of the Salish Sea: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Change around the Strait of Georgia.

 

 

In Views of the Salish Sea, Howard Macdonald Stewart documents that, too often in his career as an advisor to the United Nations, he experienced a vital paradise that had become an environmental desert due to ‘business as usual’ decisions.

Concerned that many past decisions made in the Georgia Basin were contributing to its degradation, he wrote his text to help readers better understand these past decisions and their consequences for the evolving future of the Georgia Basin.

 

Focus on” Context, Intent and Results”

“The region’s continued health and sustainability demands that we treat it as one system, not as a composite of separate and jurisdictionally distinct entities.” – from page 14, Georgia Basin Initiative: Creating a Sustainable Future, 1993.

“As Parliamentary Secretary or the Georgia Basin Initiative, I had a visionary document and strong personal support from Minister Marzari at the top ” recalls Joan Sawicki. “And I had Erik Karlsen’s on-the-ground connections with Basin communities and their issues.  All I had to do was run with it. And that’s what we did!.”

 

 

“Erik Karlsen not only had the passion and understanding for this stuff and was way ahead of his time, but he also had an unparalleled network of connection with Georgia Basin communities – and, most importantly, a high degree of trust with those communities.”

 

 

“Sustainable refers to attaining certain conditions in the context of social, economic and environmental considerations. Resilient in a biological sense is primarily the ability for an ecosystem to recover from an intervention,” wrote Erik Karlsen in 2015.

Build consensus around the need for action

“The Province passed the Regional Growth Strategies Act in 1994. It was then my job to implement regional growth management. The government subsequently combined Regional Growth Strategies and the Georgia Basin Initiative into one operation so that Erik Karlsen wound up working for me, ” recalls Dale Wall, former Deputy Minister of Municipal Affairs.

 

 

Erik Karlsen was a sessional lecturer at Royal Roads University. He taught change management and was the éminence grise behind the guiding philosophy that drives the Partnership for Water Sustainability. His core message was one of hope and determination. Erik Karlsen understood the power of story!

 

 

Living Water Smart in British Columbia Series

To download a copy of the foregoing resource as a PDF document for your records and/or sharing, click on Living Water Smart in British Columbia: Livability of Southwest BC at a crossroads, again. The document is complete with the 69-page Part A of the Green Infrastructure Chronicle as an attachment.

DOWNLOAD A COPY:  https://waterbucket.ca/wcp/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2025/03/PWSBC_Living-Water-Smart_Georgia-Basin-Initiiative_2025.pdf