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“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.

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.

Mike Tanner is the waterbucket.ca visionary. His leadership got the website off the ground and online within 12 months of the inaugural meeting of founding partners in 2004. He did the heavy lifting that brought together provincial ministries and so many others for a common purpose. “Somebody had to put up the initial seed funding to build support for the waterbucket.ca idea. And that is what I was able to bring from BC Hydro with a $5000 contribution from the Power Smart program. Champions within other agencies quickly jumped on board and we were on our way,” stated Mike Tanner.

“Urban streams are rarely managed as ecological systems or as municipal assets. Rather, they are sliced and diced to suit land development objectives. And this has consequences. If land use intensity increases to levels that destroy the conditions of the stream, then there will be no stream asset to produce ecological services. Communities need annual budgets to tackle Riparian Deficits along streams. EAP, the Ecological Accounting Process, gives them that number,” stated Tim Pringle.

“The region’s continued health and sustainability demands that we treat it as one system, not as a composite of separate and jurisdictionally distinct entities. As Parliamentary Secretary for the Georgia Basin Initiative, I had a visionary document and strong personal support from Minister Marzari at the top. And I had Erik Karlsen’s on-the-ground connections with Basin communities and their issues. All I had to do was run with it, And that’s what we did!. The Georgia Basin Initiative was successful because we had the right people at the right time,” stated Joan Sawicki.

“The drought of 2015 suggests we may be crossing an invisible threshold into a different hydro-meteorological regime in Western North America,” stated Bob Sandford in 2015. Events have proven him to be right. Over the past decade, it has been one drought after another, dramatized by the extremes that impacted BC communities in 2021 and again in 2023. The mountainous nature of BC’s geography means that BC communities are typically storage-constrained, and what storage they do have is measured in months. This accentuates risks, uncertainties and vulnerabilities.

“One afternoon in the summer of 2020 I was enjoying the sparkle of Alta Lake from my deck, when an excited neighbour appeared waving a membership form, telling me I should join this new lake group. Freshly retired from a 30+ year water career with the provincial government, my feet barely back on the ground, I said sure, why not? Not retired, just re-wired. My nvolvement allows me to make a contribution as a citizen scientist to protect the place I love. WLCF has since evolved to more of stewardship, citizen science focus,” stated Lynn Kriwoken.

“Knowing that Canada is heavily reliant on other places for fruits and vegetables was one way to delve into the actual climate change risk assessment. Looking at risks meant looking at the entire supply chain, not just domestic production. After that, it was a question of how do we make the research more useful for people. So, we developed the Canada Food Flows portal as an online knowledge mobilization platform.My bigger motivation for looking beyond Canada’s borders resulted from my participation in a consultation session held in Ottawa,” stated Kushank Bajaj.