As people across B.C. continue to experience more (and more intense) droughts, wildfires, floods, and water quality concerns, advancing watershed security is top of mind in our work at POLIS. Watershed security revolves around the fundamental need to responsibly and sustainably manage and govern water in its entirety—from water sources to the ocean and the surrounding landscape.
This is where our broadened focus on fresh water and wildfire comes into play. Both are urgent issues in British Columbia. And they are fundamentally interconnected.
To effect the policy, legislative, and governance changes we need to ensure watershed security, it can be helpful to focus on specific priority issues, like fire or water. We can’t have watershed security without wildfire resilience and water sustainability. They work together to create the kind of desirable future we all want.
At POLIS, we do this issues-based work with the foundational understanding that everything is connected. And, of course, with a focus on ecological governance and a commitment to moving ideas into action.
Watershed security is a common theme that links the top issues of our time, from adapting to a changing climate, to reconciliation, co-governance, and implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, to local economic vibrancy, to wild salmon survival, to our collective health, spiritual well-being, quality of life, and community prosperity.
Through this integrated approach, watershed security offers far more than just an environmental focus. Rather, watershed security is a reconciliation, wellness, and economic imperative for a more prosperous, resilient, just, and sustainable future.
