Water-Centric Planning

“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.

Published in March 2002 by the Greater Vancouver Regional District, the “Watershed / Landscape-Based Approach to Community Planning” was developed by an interdisciplinary working group and is the genesis of “water-centric planning”. “An important message is that planning and implementation involves cooperation among all orders of government as well as the non-government and private sectors,” stated Erik Karlsen.

“Originally, this COI was to be called Watershed-Based Planning for consistency with the community planning element of the Water Sustainability Action Plan. However, federal and provincial funding enabled us to broaden the scope of the COI to encompass a spectrum of perspectives, ranging from provincial watershed planning to local government community planning. This expanded scope is an ambitious undertaking. We are excited by the challenges that integration of perspectives involves,” stated Robyn Wark.

A look into the future by Jay Bradley in 2007 has proven prescient in foreshadowing what is happening in the post-COVID era. “What happens if lessons we are learning are not passed on and are lost when there is an exodus of experienced people with deep knowledge and understanding? What then? It takes a career to figure this stuff out,” he said. Jay Bradley’s quote nails the nub of one of the challenges of our time. Loss of understanding;. Never has storytelling been more important than it is today. And that is because knowledge is being lost at an alarming rate.

“Keep in mind that the vision is finding a way to take the broad collective and get us paddling the canoe in the same way. How do we as a community take the strengths of everyone of our partners and drive towards a shared goal through aligned activities? We are the choir. We already have this drive, this passion, and this focus to do climate sustainability and resiliency work. But the broader public does not necessarily know that. If we really want this work to be successful, we need to have someone driving the bus all the way. And as a focus of their foundational work,” stated Cindy Lise.

“My research is the first systematic review of the use and definition of the green infrastructure concept in local government plans in the US. Many plans fail to explicitly define green infrastructure. How green infrastructure is defined guides the types of projects that local governments implement, with enduring impacts to people and the urban environment. We need a new paradigm that reimagines green infrastructure to address root causes of water quality issues. But most of the academic systems are not really lined up with deep transformative action,” stated Zbigniew Grabowski.

“A unifying theme in conversations with 13 green infrastructure influencers is that staff champions in local government can only carry things so far. Only when someone who is elected takes the lead, and is the champion, does something happen. In the 2000s, everything was in alignment. The right people were in the right place at the right time. There was energy, there was passion. The regional team approach to municipal collaboration brought all the players together for a shared mission. They learned from each other; they moved forward in tandem,” stated Kim Stephens.

Neil Goeller created the vision for a community flow monitoring network that teaches and coaches stream stewards across B.C. to measure streamflow and close a data gap in community planning. With the energy generated by the Parksville 2019 Symposium, he successfully brought the idea to fruition as a provincial program in 2022. “Parksville 2019 raised awareness and encouraged volunteers to get involved. It is a word-of-mouth process to expand participation in the initiative. I see this as a slow and steady, organic process to grow the collaboration,” stated Neil Goeller.

“The Vancouver Island Community Flow Monitoring Network supports groups who are interested in monitoring flows along the east coast of Vancouver Island. For the most part these are volunteer-led, community stewardship groups. The groups operate the stations. We provide training, do site visits for as long as needed until they feel comfortable doing it on their own. They just need a bit of help. That is where we come in with tools, resources and training to break down barriers. Our goal is to get high quality data for publication in the provincial database,” stated Ally Badger.

Content posted on waterbucket.ca helps others achieve their goals. Blue Ecology is a prime example. Stories on the Blue Ecology page on waterbucket.ca have magnified the awareness of Michael Blackstock’s work globally. After watching him in the Partnership for Water Sustainability’s Blue Ecology video, Dr. Serpil Oppermann at Cappadocia University in Turkey was overjoyed when she contacted Michael Blackstock and he accepted her invitation to contribute a chapter to the “Bloomsbury Handbook to the Blue Humanities” book that she is co-editing.

Erik Karlsen had a remarkable impact on the shape of BC communities. 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. He had a job description like any other employee in the public service, but no supervisor, Assistant Deputy Minister or Deputy Minister, ever had the slightest idea what Erik actually did with his time. His trademark was that he got good things done.

“”In the 1990’s, water management in BC lagged decades behind other Canadian jurisdictions. Lynn Kriwoken saw a future of recurring drought, conflicts and urgent need for strong water legislation for BC. With single-mindedness, she articulated her vision to successive governments (NDP and Liberal) and convinced them to take legislative action. Amazingly, Lynn led these and other legislative reforms over a very short and politically unstable period of two decades, a testament to her ability to work effectively across bi-partisan lines,” stated Mike Wei.

Lynn Kriwoken is a former Executive Director in the BC Ministry of Environment. In government, Lynn was a leader who made a difference behind the scenes with her vision and ability to make things happen. She was the Living Water Smart champion, and her passion and leadership drove it. “We took a different approach with British Columbia’s Water Plan. Rather than a boring, bureaucratic plan that starts with a vision, mission, goals, actions and words and more words…we started with a design. It was a different approach for government,” stated Lynn Kriwoken.