Water-Centric Planning

LIVING WATER SMART IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: “We proceeded on three parallel tracks and established relationships with a new generation of provincial decisionmakers and staff,” stated Ted van der Gulik, President of the Partnership for Water Sustainability (January 2024)

January 23, 2024 - Posted in Living Water Smart in BC, Living Water Smart: The Series, published in 2024

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. The edition published on January 23, 2024 featured the Partnership’s Annual Report 2023. The document is written to inform and engage the reader through a storytelling approach to sharing of information. The “story behind the story” is a 450-word essay written by Ted van der Gulik for his President’s Perspective. He paints a broad-brush picture of where the Partnership is heading.

We did what we said we would do!

“A challenge confronting our society is widespread organizational amnesia. The baby boomers have more or less gone out the door. And with them has gone so much oral history. Knowledge and experience are not being passed on. Organizational amnesia is the consequence,” wrote Ted van der Gulik.

“It is a race against time to pass on knowledge and experience. It feels like the gap caused by loss of understanding is widening. When those coming into organizations do not know what they do not know, loss of understanding of the WHAT, WHY and HOW is a cause of concern in managing expectations.”

Our mission is intergenerational in scope

“The Partnership is the engine for a network in the local government setting. Our mission is intergenerational. This means we are striving to bridge the gap in understanding; and we are doing what we can to help governments overcome organizational amnesia.”

“The clock is ticking, and we are working hard to shape this outcome: what the Partnership and associated network will look like after the Year 2025. At the end of Year One, we can proudly state that we accomplished what we set out to accomplish in 2023. We exceeded our own expectations. We are ahead of schedule in moving forward with the strategy for network continuity.”

We must look back to see ahead

“In 2023, the Partnership had two over-arching objectives. One was to connect with a new generation of provincial decisionmakers and staff. The other was to bring our Ambassadors Program to the forefront of provincial and local government awareness. We accomplished both objectives, and all the way up to Premier David Eby, as we proceeded down three parallel tracks to:

WATER TOOLS – Find a permanent home for a suite of online tools that the provincial water management program already relies on for water licensing. These tools provide a powerful capability for water sustainability planning as envisioned in the Province’s Watershed Security Strategy.

ECOLOGICAL ACCOUNTING PROCESS (EAP) – Train next generations of planners and local government staff to tackle the riparian deficit along urban streams. The EAP methodology and metrics address the disconnect in the Riparian Area Protection Regulation (RPAR) between land use oversight and direct responsibility for maintenance and management of stream condition.

BLUE ECOLOGY – Build a bridge between two cultures through a water-first approach, one that embraces lessons learned from Indigenous oral history and imbues a change in attitude among water managers. We describe this desired outcome as Water Reconciliation.”

“We have started to engage government with training and will continue through 2024. We also convened the inaugural Ambassadors of the Partnership Forum and will build on the energy that it generated. It is full speed ahead down all three tracks!”

TO LEARN MORE:

To read the complete story, download a copy of Living Smart in British Columbia: There is no time to re-invent the wheel.

To download the annual report, click on Annual Report 2023: What the Partnership and associated network will look like after the Year 2025