What: Creating a Blue Dialogue Webinar
Date: March 6th, 2025
Time: 9:30-11am PT
Where: Online
Cost: Free
Join us for our sixth annual Water Research Roundup, featuring emerging researchers Rheanne Kroschinsky, Sacha Ruzzante, and Lucas King. They will discuss their current work on priority issues related to freshwater management and governance.
The speakers will explore governance and decision-making frameworks for community (source) watersheds in B.C.; how climate change and historic droughts are affecting streams and salmon on the west coast; and the intersection of sustainability and natural resources governance through a lens of relationship and responsibility to Treaty, land, and water.
Following their presentations, we will be joined by discussant Dr. Jon O’Riordan, who will offer some remarks from his perspective as veteran researcher and policy advisor. An open Q&A will follow.
FEATURING
Rheanne Kroschinsky is a water governance researcher currently pursuing her PhD at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. Her work explores governance and decision-making frameworks for community (source) watersheds in B.C. Through partnerships with Syilx communities and the District of Peachland, her research emerges from the UBC Okanagan Watershed Ecosystems Project, a community-engaged initiative focused on the Peachland Creek watershed. Rheanne is also a Visiting Governance Research Fellow at the University of Victoria’s POLIS Water Sustainability Project, where her work is focused on the exploration of a watershed boards framework for B.C. watersheds.
Sacha Ruzzante was born on Mi’kma’ki (Nova Scotia), where he learned to love nature and the creatures that inhabit it. He currently lives on the territory of the Songhees, Esquimalt and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples and is a PhD candidate at the University of Victoria’s Groundwater Science and Sustainability Research Group. His research explores how climate change and historic droughts are affecting streams and salmon on the west coast. Drawing on his research and modelling, he will discuss how bold climate action and local mitigation strategies are urgently required to safeguard salmon against future extreme events.
Lucas King is of settler ancestry from Winnipeg, Manitoba, and you will most often find him on the water, exploring and finding new places to fish. Lucas currently works as the Director of the Territorial Planning Unit at Grand Council Treaty #3 and is a PhD student in the University of Victoria’s School of Public Administration. His focus area – both personally and professionally – lies at the intersection of sustainability and natural resources governance through a lens of relationship and responsibility to Treaty, land, and water. His passion is founded through a strong relationship with Nibi of Lake of the Woods in Treaty #3 Territory.
We will also be joined by discussant Dr. Jon O’Riordan, who will offer some remarks from his perspective as veteran researcher and policy advisor. Jon joined the University of Victoria’s POLIS Water Sustainability Project as a strategic water policy advisor in 2007. In this role, he focuses on provincial water policy reform and the ecological governance of water management. He is also an associate fellow with the University of Victoria’s Centre for Global Studies and is a former Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management in the B.C. provincial government.
The Creating a Blue Dialogue webinar series brings together expert water practitioners and thinkers, as well as emerging water leaders, to engage with innovative ideas on water policy and governance in Canada. By creating an online community of interest, the series strengthens the national capacity to engage with and solve problems, and raises awareness about emerging Canadian water issues, best practices, and policies. The series began in 2010 and is hosted by the POLIS Water Sustainability Project at the Centre for Global Studies, University of Victoria.
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