DOWNLOAD BEYOND THE GUIDEBOOK 2015: “Moving Towards Sustainable Watershed Systems, through Asset Management” (released November 2015)
Note to Reader:
The event of record for release of ‘Beyond the Guidebook 2015’ was the Water Balance Partners Forum hosted by Metro Vancouver at the Annacis Research Centre. It is the third in a series, celebrates work by local government champions, and tells five ‘regional stories’, including Metro Vancouver, to showcase how everyone benefits from ‘sharing & learning’ through inter-regional collaboration.
Released in November 2015, ‘Beyond the Guidebook 2015’ is about inter-regional collaboration that is guided by this mantra: “Through sharing and learning, ensure that where we are going is indeed the right way”. Beyond the Guidebook 2015 is structured as a “front-end” plus four parts to meet the information needs of different audiences. The “front-end” presents three theme areas in order to provide the reader with an over-arching context before delving into the details in the four parts.
Towards a Watershed Health Legacy in the Georgia Basin
‘Beyond the Guidebook 2015’ is the third in a series that builds on Stormwater Planning: A Guidebook for British Columbia. Structured in four parts, ‘Beyond the Guidebook 2015’ is a progress report on how local governments on the east coast of Vancouver Island and in the Lower Mainland are ‘learning by doing’ to implement affordable and effective science-based practices to achieve:
- Watershed Health: Protect and/or restore hydrologic integrity
- Resilient Rainwater Management: Mimic the natural water balance
- Sustainable Service Delivery: Integrate natural systems thinking and adaptation to a changing climate into asset management
‘Beyond the Guidebook 2015’ introduces Dr. Daniel Pauly’s Shifting Baseline Syndrome to explain why communities unwittingly accept incremental and cumulative environmental degradation. It then adapts this thinking to focus on how communities can turn the clock back to replicate desired conditions. This outcome would be achievable through an approach that is being branded as Sustainable Watershed Systems, through Asset Management. The concluding chapter presents a look ahead at the program road map, through 2017, for the Georgia Basin Inter-Regional Education Initiative (IREI).
A Milestone Accomplishment
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Congratulations on the release of Beyond the Guidebook 2015. This is a milestone accomplishment, and was made possible with provincial funding assistance,” wrote W.H. (Wes) Shoemaker, Deputy Minister, BC Ministry of Environment, in a letter to the Partnership for Water Sustainability.
“The Ministry of Environment appreciates that the Partnership for Water Sustainability in BC (the “Partnership”) embraces shared responsibility for the Water Sustainability Action Plan for B.C. and Stormwater Planning: A Guidebook for B.C. The ministry acknowledges that the Partnership is also adding depth to the Guidebook through the Beyond the Guidebook Report Series and the Beyond the Guidebook Primer Series.”
Alignment at Three Scales
“The work of the Partnership is supporting the Province’s Living Water Smart vision and Green Communities initiative,” continued Wes Shoemaker. “In particular the Partnership’s efforts to bring together five regional districts—Metro Vancouver, Capital Region, Cowichan Region, Nanaimo Region and Comox Valley—to implement the Georgia Basin Inter-Regional Educational Initiative (IREI) has been particularly successful. This program is effectively demonstrating how to align regional and local actions with the provincial policy, program and regulatory framework.”
“Other partnership capacity-building tools and resources developed by the Partnership such as the Water Balance Model for BC and Water Conservation Calculator are helping to build community resilience and align well with the goals of both the Water Sustainability Act and the Climate Leadership Plan.”
To Learn More:
Download a copy of Beyond the Guidebook 2015: Moving Towards “Sustainable Watershed Systems, through Asset Management”.
