Partnership for Water Sustainability in BC

banner

Tag:

Georgia Basin Initiative

    MOBILIZE COMMUNITY GROUPS, CLOSE DATA GAP IN COMMUNITY PLANNING: “Monitoring flow involves much more than throwing a datalogger in the stream. Getting reliable and useful data takes a lot of effort and hands-on work,” stated Ally Badger, biologist with Aquatic Research & Restoration Centre of the BC Conservation Foundation, and coordinator for Vancouver Island Community Flow Monitoring Network


    “Most of these stewardship groups draw on people who live around the streams, Who better to be out there learning and gaining experience with the tools to do the work. And then taking the knowledge gained through this process to advocate for their streams. To the best of our knowledge, nobody else in Canada has done this type of community-based network approach for hydrometrics before. There have been other types of monitoring, such as for lakes. But we are the only ones who have done it for hydrometrics,” stated Ally Badger.

    Read Article

    AN EXTRAORDINARY LEGACY: “The extraordinary legacy of Erik Karlsen continues to ripple through time. On the 5th anniversary of his death, the Partnership for Water Sustainability remembers his impact as champion for the green infrastructure movement,” stated Kim Stephens, Executive Director


    For a generation of elected representatives, Erik Karlsen was a familiar face in the local government setting. His influence was profound and far-reaching. He touched many lives over the course of his unique career in public service. 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.

    Read Article

    CONFRONT THE PROBLEMS, OPERATIONALIZE SUSTAINABLE SERVICE DELIVERY: “We have no more excuses. We need to move past our anxiety, confront the problems, and operationalize asset management for sustainable service delivery!” – Arnold Schwabe, Executive Director, Asset Management BC


    “I would like to say taxpayers are unhappy but that would be an understatement. They are angry! Everywhere there is distrust due to failure to communicate the purposes of local government as defined in the Community Charter for municipalities and in the Local Government Act for regional districts. So, what do we do? We reset. It is clearly a time of change. I think it is an appropriate time for local governments to reflect and self-evaluate the services they provide and how they provide them. This isn’t about blame. It is about putting pieces together,” stated Arnold Schwabe.

    Read Article

    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.

    Read Article

    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.

    Read Article

    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.

    Read Article

    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.

    Read Article

    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.

    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

    Next Page >