WATER SUSTAINABILITY ACTION PLAN: The Partnership’s Water-Centric Planning community-of-interest provides a legacy record for preserving stories about “Living Water Smart, British Columbia’s Water Plan” and adapting to a changing climate
“The partnership umbrella provided by the Water Sustainability Action Plan has allowed the Province to leverage partnerships to greatly enhance the profile and resulting impact of Living Water Smart. In effect, the Action Plan partners are functioning as the on-the-ground Living Water Smart implementation arm with local government, allowing my team to focus on legislative reform. Living Water Smart comprises 45 commitments grouped into five themes. The Action Plan has played a key delivery role in two of the five,” stated Lynn Kriwoken.
CLIMATE CHANGE AND STREAM DAYLIGHTING IN URBAN CENTRES: “As heavier rainfall, extreme weather and aging infrastructure place growing pressure on cities, buried streams could become part of the solution,” wrote the University of Waterloo’s Dr. Luna Khirfan
“My research on stream daylighting compares two contrasting approaches in Seoul, South Korea, and Zürich, Switzerland. The findings suggest that municipalities don’t need to choose between a single large project and many small interventions. They need flexible programs that can identify the right approach for each site and apply lessons from one project to the next. Stream daylighting will not be feasible everywhere.The central lesson from Seoul and Zürich is that cities should treat buried streams not simply as forgotten natural features,” stated Luna Khirfan.
2016 FLOWnGROW WORKSHOP INTRODUCED BLUE ECOLOGY LENS FOR WEAVING BEST THREADS OF INDIGENOUS AND WESTERN SCIENCE: “A decade later, our messaging about the need for Water Reconciliation is standing the test of time,” stated Michael Blackstock, independent Indigenous scholar and creator of the Blue Ecology philosophy and methodology
“I am thrilled to share this story about Blue Ecology with our readers,” stated Katherine Balpataky, editor of Water Canada magazine. “Integrating traditional knowledge and western science is often spoken about and rarely done well. These kinds of frameworks go a long way for helping people in the field or involved in land and water management decisions to understand how to integrate these pieces. Water is the entry point for communicating and understanding climate change—we just need better ways to operationalize that understanding.”
CLIMATE FORCES ARE FUELING MORE DEADLY FLOODS: “The atmosphere has been much more waterlogged than normal, loading the dice for extreme rainfall,” wrote Ben Noll, a meteorologist with the Washington Post
“Some of the most extreme weather in the United States this summer have been driven by an invisible force pooling in the skies above: water vapor. Although the level of moisture flowing through the sky doesn’t have a one-to-one relationship with rainfall amounts, having more moisture can boost the odds for rainfall extremes, if there’s a force to squeeze that moisture out. Temperature rises are directly linked to the amount of moisture that can pulse across the planet. The water vapor-carrying capacity of air increases at a rate of 7 percent per degree Celsius,” stated Ben Noll.
MOMENT OF TRUTH FOR OUR CHANGING CLIMATE OPENS DOOR TO BLUE ECOLOGY: “Caused by hydrologic instability, recently identified phenomena such as atmospheric rivers demand our attention, the authors say,” noted Harvey Enchin, Vancouver Sun opinion editor
“You and your co-authors are well-known in your fields and your message is topical. It is an easy decision for the Vancouver Sun to publish your op-ed about Blue Ecology. And we will increase the word count,” stated Harvey Enchin in an exchange of emails with Kim Stephens. “You connect water, First Nations, climate change and reconciliation in a thought-provoking way. Atmospheric rivers is something new. So, I suggest you mention that the Pineapple Express is an example of an atmospheric river; without a concrete example I didn’t think readers will get this.”
A DECADE AGO, A FORESHADOWING OF WHAT WAS TO COME: “The Pacific Ocean Blob was a pretty unusual event which no one predicted. In the future, we can expect more. British Columbia is right on the frontline,” stated Hillary Scannell, a researcher at the University of Washington in a 2016 interview with the Vancouver Province
First detected in 2013, the Pacific Ocean Blob was a large-scale marine heat wave that extended from Alaska and down the B.C. coast to Mexico. It lasted until 2016. A long-lasting ridge of high pressure created a large, warm and nutrient-deficient body of water “We examined sea surface temperature in the North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans over the period 1950-2014. We found that temperatures had never been higher. When there is persistent warming over decades, there will be more extremes,” stated Hillary Scannell.
WHEN THE CLIMATE CHANGED: “With hindsight, we can clearly see that in 2015 the West Coast of North America crossed an invisible threshold into a different hydro-meteorological regime,” stated Kim Stephens, Executive Director, Partnership for Water Sustainability
“A long career provides perspective. A generation ago, water supply managers in B.C. could reasonably anticipate that three months of water storage would be sufficient to maintain supply during a dry summer. Today, however, a 6-month drought is a very real likelihood. Communities need double the storage volume. Everything changed in 2015 when extremes became the norm. The climate is changing and the water balance is out of balance. In engineering terms, we have small margins of safety for water storage and therefore limited resiliency to adapt,” stated Kim Stephens.
SALMON IN THE VANCOUVER REGION’S INDIAN RIVER WATERSHED: “Researchers say a diverse natural habitat may be key in their fight for survival,” wrote Tiffany Crawford, a reporter with the Vancouver Sun
The Indian River watershed is located at the extreme northern tip and head of Indian Arm, a 20-kilometer marine fjord that extends north from the main body of Burrard Inlet near Vancouver, British Columbia. “Over several years, the researchers studied salmon habitat in the I watershed, which is in xʔəl̓ilwətaʔɬ territory. The watershed is home to chum, coho, and pink salmon, as well as rainbow, cutthroat and dolly varden trout. With climate change they are all at risk. In 2023, for example, there was a massive die-off because of drought,” wrote Tiffany Crawford.
CREATE GREENER COMMUNITIES AND PREPARE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE: “Imagine that everyone understands and cares where our water comes from and goes,” stated Lynn Kriwoken, retired Executive Director and Living Water Smart champion in the Ministry of Environment from 2005 thru 2020
“In 2005, Premier Gordon Campbell gave my team a mandate to be bold and imaginative. Inspire British Columbians about water, he instructed us. Explain why water is important and what we must do to protect it. While legislative reform is a foundation piece, collaboration takes place outside the legislative framework. We constantly emphasized that Living Water Smart is about motivating and inspiring everyone to embrace shared responsibility. Influencing behaviour and attitudes is at the heart of moving from awareness to action,” stated Lynn Kriwoken.
MOMENT OF TRUTH FOR OUR CHANGING CLIMATE: “Managing water is critical to many sustainable development goals. Why? Water is a form maker. It defines communities,” stated Tim Pringle, Chair of the Partnership’s Ecological Accounting Process initiative
“Water defines British Columbia and the rhythms of water are changing. We have the knowledge and tools to restore balance to the water cycle. But we can only do it if civil engineers, urban planners and decision-makers change their mindsets and grasp the inherent complexity and unpredictability of working with natural systems. We must change how we value nature and service land and especially how we reconnect hydrology and ecology to mimic the natural flows in streams. Consequences of our water-centric decisions ripple through time,” stated Tim Pringle.
BRITISH COLUMBIA HAS SEEN WORSE DROUGHTS: “We can reasonably anticipate that droughts worse than anything we’ve reconstructed in the past 350 years will be happening in the coming decades,” stated paleoclimatologist Bethany Coulthard when she published the results of her tree ring research in March 2016
“Recent streamflow droughts in south coastal British Columbia have had major socioeconomic and ecological impacts. Increasing drought severity under projected climate change poses serious water management challenges, particularly in the small coastal watersheds that serve as primary water sources for most communities in the region,” stated Bethany Coulthard.Using 350 years of tree ring data as well as long-term drought records, Coulthard found at least 16 historical droughts worse than the benchmarks used today by hydrologists and water managers in coastal BC.