“The intention is to learn with and from each other about what we can do to advance community-based efforts in creating a conservation culture in BC and achieving an environmentally sustainable future,” states Pia Nagpal.
“With local governments increasingly adopting integrated sustainability planning approaches, there is a greater need to develop and strengthen collaborative partnerships amongst all orders of government in environmental management,” stated John Slater.
“A $6.9-million collaborative adaptation program will help B.C. communities deal with the impacts of climate change on water use, forest and watershed management, flood protection and community planning,” announced Stockwell Day.
“The extreme dry weather conditions experienced in 2009 raise questions and concerns about the way we have been building our communities. The focus of the series is on how to balance settlement changes and ecology,” states John Finnie.
The day opened with Dr. John Robinson looking at climate change on a global scale and how this translates to the BC setting. In his view, the world will never achieve the necessary changes required to reduce our GHGs if we continue to focus on individual behaviour change.
Evidence suggests blights of biblical proportions may be coming, due to climate change, according to a new government-commissioned research paper, Climate Change and Public Health in British Columbia,
“British Columbia's Climate Action Charter gives land use practitioners a metric that is widely accepted as one of the measures of 'sustainability': green house gas emissions (GHGs),” says Tim Pringle.
“The key is to focus on what you want to do. Because many factors are in play, the objective is to build in resiliency to address risk. We have to know where we want to go. Then we can figure out the steps to get there. To adapt water supply systems, the question boils down to: how much water do we need, and how can we make efficient use of what is available?,” says Kim Stephens.
“We made a commitment to have a vision for clean energy and to put into play policies that would move us forward in that direction. This report by the Canada West Foundation reinforces what we’ve been saying and doing for some time now,” says Richard Neufeld.
“While there may be general consensus on climate change predictions at the global scale, real discussion of climate change impacts in our own “backyard” – be it a city, a watershed, or a particular project site – is just getting started. In most cases, the emergence of “best practices” – or even “standard practices” – is still on the horizon,” states Eric Bonham.
