On Tuesday, May 27th, POLIS Co-Director Oliver M. Brandes and Centre for Global Studies visiting governance graduate student fellow Rheanne Kroschinsky presented at the Canadian Water Resources Association (CWRA) National Conference, held on the traditional and unceded territory of the Syilx Okanagan peoples in Penticton, British Columbia.
The conference drew nationwide participation from First Nations, all levels of government, including the new Canada Water Agency leadership team, as well as non-governmental organizations, industry, academia, and water champions from across the region.
Through the theme of Living Between Waters – Connecting Water & Resilience, the conference emphasized the importance of partnership development, respecting and upholding Indigenous rights, multi-level and inter-agency coordination, Indigenous stewardship and decision-making, the roles of various levels of government and industry in promoting resilient water science and management, and the creation of a resilient vision for a shared water future.
Oliver and Rheanne’s presentation on the “State of Watershed Governance in British Columbia” reviewed contemporary processes while focusing on comparative case studies to illustrate opportunities to improve watershed outcomes and governance in B.C. Oliver guided the audience through current freshwater crises and challenges, foundational concepts of governance and how they apply in the context of water, and a reimagining of how the Nine Winning Conditions of Watershed Governance could be integrated to support a more robust and effective approach to water security and watershed decision-making in B.C. Rheanne detailed her recent work on Peachland and her focus on community watershed legislation within sustainable watershed decision-making. Together, they closed the session by offering a potential provincial framework for the development of a system of watershed boards.
In a separate presentation, “Towards Watershed Security: Water, wildfire, and modernized land use planning in British Columbia,” Oliver dove deep on current POLIS research and the urgent need for integrated and modernized land use planning to achieve provincial mandates and watershed security priorities. He outlined opportunities for elevating water as key planning consideration and a central design element to advance a more robust and effective provincial approach to land and water use management that can, over time, foster an inclusive, collaborative, and coordinated approach to addressing pressing regional watershed security and ecological challenges.
Rheanne followed this work with a highly effective and impactful presentation with University of British Columbia, Okanagan colleague and fellow Watershed Ecosystems Project cluster member, Dawn Machin on “Co-creating a Framework for Governance of the sqʷʔa (Peachland Creek) Community Watershed.” The presentation embodied their collaborative work over the past four years and detailed the process of relationship-building, the emergence of the local partnership, and an innovative collaborative design approach for developing integrated, whole-of-watershed co-governance in the Peachland Creek watershed. Although the emphasis of this work is local to the Okanagan, it has the potential to inform regions across B.C. and beyond.
Together, these three complementary and intertwined presentations emphasized the importance of:
- Understanding contemporary water challenges at the national, provincial, and local levels and the current frameworks through which decision-making occurs and the systemic exclusion of Indigenous communities from many existing Crown processes.
- Illustrating the change that is needed within the evolving water governance landscape at various levels of government and the importance of co-governance and collaborative approaches at the community level.
- Identifying potential pathways for achieving this level of system change with targeted and timely reforms, such as a provincial framework to support local collaborative watershed entities, better attention to wildfire resilience, and illuminating the available legal tools, including community watershed designations and those found within the B.C. Water Sustainability Act.
Oliver was also invited to participate in the in-person roundtable “Building Freshwater Resilience through Collaboration,” offered as part of the President’s Freshwater Table series hosted by the Canada Water Agency. This roundtable was co-hosted with the CWRA alongside its 2025 National Conference and included a variety of perspectives and expertise from across the West. This session and further complementing roundtables will help build the focus and priorities for the Canada Water Agency in the coming phase of its development.
