Partnership for Water Sustainability in BC

banner

Tag:

EAP Ecological Accounting Process

    REIMAGINE URBAN GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE AS AN ECOSYSTEM: “How green infrastructure is defined guides the types of projects that local governments implement, with enduring impacts to people and the urban environment,” stated Dr. Zbigniew Grabowski, principal author of ‘What is green infrastructure? A study of definitions in US city planning’


    Cities are murky on how they define ‘green infrastructure’. Analysis of 122 plans from 20 major cities found that many plans fail to explicitly define green infrastructure. When they do, they tend to focus on stormwater management. “Green infrastructure is broadly understood to be a good thing, but many local government plans lack a clear definition of what it is. Hydrological definitions dominate. What they mean can be unclear and inconsistent within and across local governments,” stated Zbigniew Grabowski.

    Read Article

    METRO VANCOUVER LEGACY RESEARCH; BENCHMARK FOR WATERSHED HEALTH: “The Ecological Accounting Process is about the condition and financial value of municipal stream assets that supply ecological services,” stated Tim Pringle, Adjunct Faculty with the Master of Community Planning Department at Vancouver Island University


    “When local governments obtain a financial value for streams as spatial assets, they can include them in their asset management plans and budgets. 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 streams to be there! We are moving EAP from a primary emphasis on Asset Management to use by planners for spatial analysis related to streams and trees,” stated Tim Pringle.

    Read Article

    NATURE-FIRST CITIES: “What are the costs associated with having cities that are not nature-based? What are the benefits if we invite nature back into our cities?” – Sean Markey, professor in the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University


    “Nature-First Cities is not a heavy academic book. We wrote it to be inspirational…and we challenge readers to understand why we have become so disconnected from nature and what happens when we start to rebuild that connection. What happens ecologically? What happens socially? Equity is a huge component of the book and one of the pillars around what makes nature-directed stewardship work. So, there is that broader picture around rehabilitating that sense of connectivity with people and nature in cities,” stated Sean Markey.

    Read Article

    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.

    Read Article

    AFFORDABLE, EFFECTIVE AND PRAGMATIC NATURAL ASSET MANAGEMENT: “Moving forward with natural asset management is one of the key drivers for Nanaimo. This is why the City is all-in for EAP, the Ecological Accounting Process,” stated Bill Sims, General Manager of Engineering and Public Works with the City of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island


    “In the background, we are having our conversations about asset management in general. Conversations about how we keep it going for gray infrastructure and bring in natural assets. Our parks group is doing land inventories. All of this can be presented as a package. The EAP program is embedded in our Integrated Action Plan. This supports City Plan: Nanaimo Reimagined which provides direction for the coming 25 years on everything…land use, transportation, climate adaptation, etc. We made sure EAP is part of that. It is firmly rooted,” stated Bill Sims.

    Read Article

    TURNING THE TIDE FOR STREAM SURVIVAL: “Led by Tim Pringle, the Partnership for Water Sustainability created the methodology for EAP, the Ecological Accounting Process. Now we are in a 3-year transition strategy to embed EAP at Vancouver Island University,” states Anna Lawrence, Project Coordinator, Mount Arrowsmith Biosphere Region Research Institute at Vancouver Island University


    “There are so many different parts to EAP. And with each part you can go down a distinct pathway that helps local governments. And that is what Sam Gerrand has done in such a holistic way with his master’s thesis which moves EAP from a stream-by-stream approach to a regional scale. As we become more familiar with EAP and its applications, it is becoming increasingly apparent that it requires tailored communication to a variety of audiences to emphasize that this is one tool to increase and maintain the health of our stream systems,” stated Anna Lawrence.

    Read Article