Water-Centric Planning

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Erik Karlsen

    LIVING WATER SMART IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: “It became clear that if one did not have a way of building confidence amongst practitioners, the rate of innovation would be slow,” stated Dale Wall, former Deputy Minister of Municipal Affairs


    “We were looking in a new way at infrastructure innovation. We needed quite a lot of innovation to achieve some of the things that we hoped to achieve through regional growth strategies. The convening for action process that built confidence among practitioners to introduce new approaches. We realized that we simply had to have practitioners having discussions so that they would become more comfortable with innovative approaches. A peer learning network was one of the strands to introduce infrastructure innovation and build more sustainable regions,” stated Dale Wall.

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    LIVING WATER SMART IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: “Being an effective champion requires deep knowledge, experience and quiet resolve to make things happen,” stated Joan Sawicki, land and resource management champion, and former provincial cabinet minister


    “With the change of government in late 1991, all of a sudden land use planning and natural resource management was front and centre. We had Mike Harcourt as Premier and Darlene Marzari as Minister of Municipal Affairs. Both had come out of local government. They were very familiar with the urgent growth pressures and the ecological impacts that they were having. Then I was appointed Marzari’s Parliamentary Secretary. I had spent a term as an elected Councillor in Burnaby. So the Georgia Basin Initiative was a good fit for me,” stated Joan Sawicki.

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    LIVING WATER SMART IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: “In the urban environment, we cannot bring back the watersheds that were here historically. But we can do things to retain and improve natural areas and the quality of receiving waters,” states Hugh Fraser, former Deputy Director of Engineering, City of Delta


    Hugh Fraser is a green infrastructure pioneer in the Metro Vancouver region. In the early 2000s, he was a leading voice when green infrastructure was in its infancy and was a component of the region’s Liquid Waste Management Plan. Delta’s rain garden program in road rights-of-way began in 2005 as a demonstration application to show how to achieve desired watershed health outcomes. “The program is now in Decade Three. Shared responsibility and intergenerational commitment are foundation pieces for enduring success,” stated Hugh Fraser.

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    STORY BEHIND BRITISH COLUMBIA’S FISH PROTECTION ACT (1997): “Erik Karlsen was the secret sauce who convened the fantastic streamside regulation discussions that created collegiality between municipalities,” recalls Susan Haid, career environmental and urban planner in BC local government, and adjunct assistant professor at the University of BC


    “In late 1996, in came Erik Karlsen from the Province as the spokesperson for the first Fish Protection Act. He convened discussions with environmental, engineering and planning staff. Those were such fantastic discussions. There was a really good alignment and call to action on making streamside regulation work. It was a major advancement but a lot of stress as well. Streamside regulation was being portrayed as a huge land grab. There was a lot of back and forth to move from something that was site-specific to more of a hardline edict with the province,” stated Susan Haid.

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    LIVING WATER SMART IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: “Steve Jobs described creativity as ‘connecting dots’ and argued that creative people were able to connect experiences they have had and synthesize new things,” stated Kim Stephens, Partnership for Water Sustainability in BC


    “A terrific Steve Jobs quote encapsulates why processes and outcomes go awry when there is a ‘don’t know, don’t care’ mindset about the history behind the WHY and HOW of policy frameworks that shape urban design,” stated Kim Stephens. “Steve Jobs explained that dot-connectors have had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. Unfortunately, he added, a lot of people don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem.”

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    LIVING WATER SMART IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: “We are trying to envision a program where we acknowledge that we are part of fish habitat. We are part of the water cycle. This allows us to really look at our place on the water pollution file,” stated Dr. Peter Ross of the Raincoast Conservation Foundation


    “Right now, I find myself trying to simplify the pollution file because the world has become so complicated. We have a staggering half million chemicals on the high-volume production marketplace. When I as a scientist who has been practicing for decades try to understand what the consequences are for fish or fish habitat or whales or people, I realize that I have my work cut out for me. Instead of trying to capture the science and understanding of half a million chemicals, I am now saying: water as a focal point is very simple,” stated Peter Ross.

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    LIVING WATER SMART IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: “In the integrating matrix, I set out to capture three ‘states of play’ as row headings: naturally functioning, degraded through lack of awareness, and going forward with science-based understanding,’ stated the late Erik Karlsen (1945-2020) when he presented a path forward to tackle the Riparian Deficit


    Circa 2000, legendary civil servant Erik Karlsen had the lead role in developing the language that operationalized British Columbia’s Streamside Protection Regulation. In 2015, his last contribution before his health declined and he passed was creation of a matrix to explain how to integrate two foundational concepts that provide a path forward for designing with nature restore a desired watershed and stream condition.. These are Daniel Pauly’s “Shifting Baseline Syndrome” (1995) and Richard Horner and Chris May’s “Road Map for Protecting Stream System Integrity” (1996).

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    WATER SUSTAINABILITY ACTION PLAN: Metro Vancouver guidance document for a “Watershed / Landscape-based Approach to Community Planning” is the genesis for an actionable vision for water-centric planning in British Columbia


    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.

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    WATER SUSTAINABILITY ACTION PLAN: Historical context for evolving from a community-of-interest on the waterbucket.ca website to implement and mainstream “Water-Centric Planning” in British Columbia


    “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.

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