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Ted van der gulik

    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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    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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    THERE IS NO TIME TO RE-INVENT THE WHEEL: “We are a movement built around water sustainability,” stated Ray Fung, a founding director of the Partnership for Water Sustainability, in his closing reflections on what he heard at the Summit at the Bastion in Nanaimo


    Ray Fung captured the mood of the summit with this summation: “The Partnership is seen as a resource that is stable, that is there, and that people can draw upon. I liked the comment that THIS IS A MOVEMENT. I find that is really inspiring to not see ourselves just as a network. We leave the summit inspired to figure out how the FORM of the Partnership will follow the FUNCTION. We can learn things from expanding our perspective. Part of that holistic approach includes the SPIRITUAL as well as the physical connection to the land.”

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    OVERWHELMED COMMUNITIES ARE LOSING SIGHT OF THE GOAL: “A message of hope is paramount in these times of droughts, forest fires, floods AND housing affordability as system resiliency is being stressed,” says Kim Stephens, Partnership for Water Sustainability in British Columbia


    “Sustainable service delivery should have been the engine for integration across disciplines, departments, and sectors. But that is not how it turned out. ASSET MANAGEMENT overshadows or dominates SUSTAINABLE SERVICE DELIVERY in everyday thinking. The two ideas have in practice become disconnected. It is no surprise that the asset management community has lost its way. We are observing this across sectors. Communities and local governments are being overwhelmed by the issues of the day, losing sight of the goal, and getting lost in the details,” stated Kim Stephens.

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    FOREST FIRES AND MASS EVACUATIONS: In 2023, history repeated itself in the Kelowna region


    “Mother Nature has an amazing sense of timing. On the 20th anniversary of the evacuation of 27,000 people from Kelowna due to forest fires, history repeated itself in August in the Kelowna region, in particular West Kelowna. We have had two decades to prepare for the obvious and the inevitable. 2003 was the first of a series of teachable years, with the full onslaught of a changing climate hitting hard as of 2015. Climate change is accelerating. There is no time to re-invent the wheel, fiddle, or go down cul-de-sacs. Understand how the past informs the future and build on that experience,” stated Kim Stephens.

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    LIVING WATER SMART IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: “We have raised expectations that communities can do a better job of managing land and water. But what happens if knowledge, experience and the lessons we are learning are not passed on or are lost?” – a question posed in 2007 by Jay Bradley, Chair of the Vancouver Island Coordinating Team


    This edition brings to a close the current season (January through June 2023) of the Waterbucket eNews weekly newsletter series. We celebrate the leadership of individuals and organizations who are guided by the Living Water Smart vision. During the past 5-month period, the Partnership for Water Sustainability has published 20 feature stories. This finale edition constitutes our “season in review”. To refresh reader memories about the topics and how much ground we have covered, we have brought forward the headline plus defining quotable quote from each of the 20 storylines.

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    BC’s PATH TO FOOD SECURITY IS THRU WATER SECURITY: “When we think of all the changes in thinking that we have gone through in the last 50 years, the Land Commission Act really is a testament to the incredible foresight demonstrated in 1973,” stated Joan Sawicki, former MLA


    “At a time when most other jurisdictions continue to lose their food lands, BC’s ALR remains the most successful agricultural land preservation program in North America. With food security now becoming a top-of-mind public issue, thanks to the foresight demonstrated in 1973 we still have “the land” – and I submit we would not still have the option for viable agricultural sectors in high growth areas like the Lower Mainland or the Okanagan without the ALR. The ALR has been doing exactly what it was designed to do,” stated Joan Sawicki.

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    Build bridges of understanding, pass the baton!


    “A Partnership strength is the real-world experience we bring because of our multiple initiatives under Living Water Smart Actions. Under that vision, various building blocks processes have evolved over the decades. The Watershed Security Strategy and Fund, an initiative of the current provincial government, is the obvious mechanism to revisit, understand, learn from, and leverage past successes in the building blocks continuum. We have tools to help do the job. We can achieve better stewardship of BC’s water resources for present and future generations,” stated Ted van der Gulik.

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    Growing the Living Water Smart Network in British Columbia through Collaborative Leadership


    “From the outset, we had vowed never to fall into the trap of concentrating our energies on building an organization and thus losing sight of ‘the mission’. This view of the world reflected our history as a roundtable. Are there other precedents for our approach, we wondered? Or are we unique? we decided it was time to research the social science literature to definitively answer whether anyone else tried to do what we have been doing for the past two decades under the ‘collaboration umbrella’ that is the Water Sustainability Action Plan ,” stated Kim Stephens.

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    CONTEXT FOR AGRICULTURE WATER DEMAND MODEL: Water Allocation, Irrigation, and Food Security in British Columbia


    “Irrigation for agriculture is a dominant use of water in British Columbia, the need is seasonal, and use peaks when water supply is at its lowest. With longer and drier summers being the new reality for water management, the Agriculture Water Demand Model is a game-changer for achieving food security in British Columbia. We have downscaled climate data to a 500-metre grid across the province. This means we can reliably estimate the total water need for agricultural irrigation. This further means that the Province can align water allocation and water use. This is a powerful outcome,” stated Ted van der Gulik.

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