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BC Water Sustainability Action Plan

    COUNTERBALANCE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WITH NATURAL INTELLIGENCE! – “I am worried about youth because they are going into these artificial worlds and may never experience the natural world,” stated Michael Blackstock, co-founder of the Blue Ecology Institute, and ambassador of the Partnership for Water Sustainability in BC


    “Natural Intelligence is an idea that resonates because it is intuitively obvious. I believe it is that simple. Natural Intelligence is another angle on interweaving Western science and Indigenous knowledge because it explores what Indigenous knowledge is based on. Blue Ecology is a Natural Intelligence approach. Natural Intelligence is a form of Indigenous wisdom…which is knowledge of Natural Intelligence and how to live with it and how to be harmonious with it,” stated Michael Blackstock.

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    REMEMBERING BARRY JANYK, POLITICAL CHAMPION FOR SMART DEVELOPMENT: “Barry Janyk could take up a lot of space in a room. He was a really fierce advocate for his town. I don’t know many mayors that care so visibly about their town,” stated Bruce Milne, former mayor of Sechelt


    Bruce Milne was elected mayor of Sechelt the same year Janyk was first elected to council, in 1996. “He held us all to account for the next three years, to make sure we really did make some change,” said Bruce Milne. “Elected officials who weren’t as confident sometimes found a lack of space left over for less confident people to be difficult for them, but it was never a problem when he was actually advocating for Gibsons or the Sunshine Coast.” Barry Janyk’s environmentalism was a pillar not only of his life, but his time in office.

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    WILL 2025 BE THE YEAR OF THE RE-SET? “I think that you will all agree that we are living in most interesting times.” – from a speech by British politician Joseph Chamberlain in 1898


    The “may you live in interesting times” quote has an interesting history. The first documented use of the quote was in a 1898 speech by Joseph Chamberlain, British politician and social reformer. “I never remember myself a time in which our history was so full, in which day by day brought us new objects of interest, and, let me say also, new objects for anxiety,” he stated. Despite being so common in English as to be known as the “Chinese curse”, the saying is apocryphal, and no actual Chinese source has ever been produced.

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    SEASON FINALE FOR WATERBUCKET.CA SERIES ON LIVING WATER SMART IN BRITISH COLUMBIA (December 2024): “Storytelling is among the oldest forms of communication,” stated Professor Rives Collins, author of ‘The Power of Story: Teaching Through Storytelling’


    We share our world view through our stories and storytelling This is how we pass on our oral history. Storytelling is the way we share intergenerational knowledge, experience and wisdom. “Storytelling is the commonality of all human beings, in all places, in all times,” stated Professor Rives Collins, Northwestern University, author of “The Power of Story: Teaching Through Storytelling”.

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    ELECTION DAY FLOODING SPURS RE-SET AND COURSE CORRECTION: “Nine cascading factors must all be in alignment to implement a course correction,” stated Kim Stephens of the Partnership for Water Sustainability in British Columbia


    “On election day in British Columbia, an atmospheric river deluged Metro Vancouver and parts of the province’s south coast. Flooding was widespread across the Lower Mainland. The storm caused more than $110 million in insured damaged according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, reported the Canadian Press on November 15, 2024. On top of this are the flood costs incurred by local governments. Timing is everything. When Metro Vancouver’s Liquid Waste Committee met in October and again in November, the Election Day Flood was top of mind,” stated Kim Stephens.

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    IS OUR FOOD SECURITY SLIPPING AWAY WITHOUT ANYONE IN BRITISH COLUMBIA NOTICING? “Few people know how important the Fraser Valley is to food security for British Columbia. The question is…does anyone care, really?” – Ted van der Gulik, President of the Partnership for Water Sustainability, and former Senior Engineer in the Ministry of Agriculture


    “Food security, land security and water security are not separate issues. They are one and the same. But agricultural land is being lost bit by bit. And it is not because land is coming out of the Agricultural Land Reserve. Rather, it is all about what is happening on the land within the ALR. The Lower Mainland region is losing food land each year. That is just from making houses and yards bigger and adding amenities such as pools and tennis courts. This accumulating impact will have consequences for our food security,” stated Ted van der Gulik.

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    WHY REGIONAL GROWTH STRATEGIES MATTER: “Cities are all about choices – choices that become reality very quickly, with lasting consequences. Over the 21st century – the urban century – much will depend upon getting the choices right,” stated Mike Harcourt, the former Premier of British Columbia whose leadership made possible the Growth Strategies Act


    “A key purpose of the regional growth strategies legislation our government introduced in 1995 was to enable local government to respond to housing needs. It provided a basis for regional districts and their member communities to support adequate, affordable, and appropriate housing in places where the necessary facilities exist or can be provided. Meeting Metro Vancouver’s urgent housing demand is exactly the sort of situation for which we developed the regional growth strategies legislation in the 1990s,” stated Mike Harcourt.

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    LAND PLANNING PERSPECTIVE FOR RISK REDUCTION ON STREAMS: “Urban streams are rarely managed as ecological systems or as municipal assets. Rather, they are sliced and diced to suit land development objectives,” said Tim Pringle, Chair of the Ecological Accounting Process (EAP)


    “When we initiated EAP in 2015, it was almost intuitive to pick up on where things were after a decade of riparian area regulation, and then recognize local governments need a number if they want to get natural assets into their management plans on a regular basis. The question we asked was, how do you find that number? Well, we can treat a stream as a land use because we have RAPR and BC Assessment. The rest of it is the methodology that does the right calculation. EAP finds a financial value for the streamside protection and enhancement area prescribed by RAPR,” stated Tim Pringle.

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    UNDERSTAND WHY THE LIVABLE REGION STRATEGIC PLAN MATTERS: “We have one system of local government in BC, not two like in other provinces. Some things in a regional district are done by agreement at a regional level. And some are done by agreement at a local level,” stated Ken Cameron, co-architect of Metro Vancouver’s Livable Region Strategic Plan in the 1990s


    “When I was manager of policy and planning at the Greater Vancouver Regional District, I would tell my staff that we have been put in charge of the planning for the life support system for this region. We cannot own it but we can leave it to our children. And to build a better place, we need people who are interested enough to understand the state of mind that lay behind the success of the Livable Region Strategic Plan. It had four pillars: a Green Zone, complete communities, a compact region, and increased transportation choice ,” stated Ken Cameron.

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    AN ENGINEERING PERSPECTIVE GROUNDS NATURAL ASSET MANAGEMENT: “Our focus in moving forward with EAP, the Ecological Accounting Process, is on land that we own,” stated Murray Walters, Manager of Water Services with the Regional District of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island


    “You have to de-silo. You cannot operate in silos where everyone is trying to grab more turf all the time. You need to operate in an environment where people are not afraid to go talk and tell you what they are doing and what they want to help with. We cannot always help them and they cannot always help us either. But we are talking about it these days. Internal collaboration does not happen overnight. You must have initial successes to build relationships. That is what the French Creek EAP project represents. It will feed into other studies,” stated Murray Walters.

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