The 2003 Georgia Basin/ Puget Sound Research Conference was held in Vancouver, where scientists and decision makers, First Nations and tribes, community interest groups, students, members of the general public, the Puget Sound Water Quality Action Team, the partner agencies of the Georgia Basin Ecosystem Initiative (GBEI), and co-sponsors in Canada and the United States got together for a top-quality international conference to communicate research findings of importance to help ensure the sustainability of the Georgia Basin/Puget Sound ecosystem.
by Martin Fournier
The Georgia Basin/ Puget Sound area is a bioregion encompassing about half of Vancouver Island and most of its gulf islands, Vancouver and most of the Lower Mainland, the Seattle area and Puget Sound and most of its islands.The Georgia Basin Puget Sound bioregion shares many rivers and marine waters and is an intricately woven ecosystem. It only makes sense to treat these areas as a common and transboundary region when it comes to ecology and biology. Environmental stresses and changes on each side of the man-drawn “border” affect the quality of life for humanoids and all life forms, whether upland or marine, equally.
From March 31 to April 3, the 2003 Georgia Basin/ Puget Sound Research Conference was held in Vancouver. Scientists and decision makers, First Nations and tribes, community interest groups, students, members of the general public, the Puget Sound Water Quality Action Team, the partner agencies of the Georgia Basin Ecosystem Initiative (GBEI), and co-sponsors in Canada and the United States got together for a top-quality international conference to communicate research findings of importance to help ensure the sustainability of the Georgia Basin/Puget Sound ecosystem.
The big question driving the conference, according to the organizers and participants was: How can we balance economic growth with social and environmental health for all creatures and ecosystems of the GBPS bioregion?
Workshop QUEST simulator is a powerful tool for planning the future.
The Georgia Basin Futures Project (GBFP) is the brainchild of the Sustainable Development Research initiative, a University of British Columbia project started in 1991 to foster relevant research on sustainable development. The GBFP is a five-year research programme that explores how, in the next 40 years, we can learn to live within the limits of natural ecosystems, while improving our well being in the Georgia Basin region on the west coast of British Columbia and Washington State.
The project will engage and educate us over the next 40 years about the complex interactions between our ecological, social and economic systems and how we can think up new ways to address future problems and design a sustainable future together.
The main tool of the project is Workshop QUEST, a computer simulation that enables people from all walks of life to construct alternative futures of the Georgia basin and view the trade-offs and consequences of their choices. QUEST shows each person how his/her consumer and policy preferences affect the Basin's future over the next forty years.
QUEST has been tailored to the Georgia Basin but it can also be applied to other regions of the world with the appropriate amount of research done in that region. At present there is a QUEST simulator running for the Bali region in Indonesia and, as research gets completed, many more QUEST applications are planned. The Georgia Basin QUEST has been in use at Science World in Vancouver where over 33,000 visitors had the chance to play. An Internet version is currently in development and will be available around April 2004 for the general public.
How does QUEST work? When I attended the workshop at the conference there were eight of us participating. First we had to decide which kind of economy we envisioned for ourselves, e.g.) free-market capitalism or social democracy. We picked the current model and direction we seem to be headed in, free-market capitalism. Our next step was to collectively decide on over 60 questions ranging from Lifestyle, Urban Growth, Neighbourhoods, Transportation, Government, Agriculture, Solid Waste, Fisheries, Climate Change, Water, Energy, Cost of living, Forestry, and a whole lot more realistic choices about our utopian common future.
As Jim Fulton, Executive Director of the David Suzuki Foundation says, "I think we'll very rapidly see QUEST become part of the social decision-making process all over the planet. QUEST is probably the greatest single tool to improve governance on the planet in a generation. It will lead to much better, much more informed, much more ecologically sound decision making."
Imagine…you are on a journey with a group of planners, stake holders and community members. Your group floats at 30,000 feet above your region, where you are able to see the effects of your decisions played out over a 40-year future. Picture… an interactive community meeting in which people are able to see a variety of different regional futures; futures that are simulated based on choices of the audience.
Let's play, shall we? Easier said than done! In two hours we barely made it through ten questions as heated debates kept taking place amongst the participants. Fortunately our facilitator and Community Engagement Coordinator for the GBFP, Randi Kruse, kept us focused and streamlined the process. We computed all our choices and six minutes later we were shown a projection of our common future in 40 years. We scored poorly, only achieving 20 percent of the potential for sustainability in the Georgia Basin region. Randi reassured us and told us that she has had head-splitting sessions with QUEST that went on for over 10 hours with no clear consensus and even poorer results.
This is the purpose of QUEST; to educate and confront the participants through a process of future visioning that includes them as contributors to sustainable change. Beyond the game simulation, QUEST provides its makers with invaluable data on community engagement and sustainability.
What happens after groups and individuals have played QUEST? From here communities will be encouraged to begin implementing their vision through GBFP's other sustainability tools. STAR (Sustainable Tools and Resources) (www.sustainabilitytools.ca) are online tools and resources for individuals and organizations to help them realize sustainability projects in their communities.
STAR has a database of information that will serve as a guide on how to plan and manage sustainability projects. For example on the STAR website you can create an account, set some projects in motion by entering a contacts list, set time lines, organize and plan a project from visioning to implementation, sift through examples and information on creative actions for sustainability, view others' projects, learn how to budget and so on. STAR is linked electronically to the GB Digital Library and the GBFP site.
The Georgia Basin Digital Library (GBDL: www.georgiabasin.info) is a series of web services to promote community-based learning and participatory planning. The GBDL has five components, News and Information, Ideas and Perspectives, Local Stories, Library Collections, and Future Scenarios. News and Information is about sustainability-related local and international stories, Ideas and perspectives gives functional ideas and views for the region, Local Stories is a community mapping application, Library Collections collects sources on spatial data, and Future Scenarios the GBDL with QUEST scenario modelling. On the web a Bowen Island pilot project is available for viewing under Local Stories (see sidebar for web address).
Climate Change Calculator (www.climcalc.net) is the last tool of the GBFP. It is advanced interactive software developed to increase awareness on our personal greenhouse gas contribution through our lifestyles and daily activities. On the website we can calculate our greenhouse gas emissions using information in seven separate categories: home heating, hot water, appliances, local travel, out-of-town, recreation and waste. This gem of a software even calculates information based on climate conditions and needs for each Canadian province and territory.
* For More Information:
- Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife: www.wa.gov/wdfw
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (USA): www.noaa.gov
- For maps go to: www.pyr.ec.gc.ca/GeorgiaBasin/maps_e.htm
- Canadian Georgia Basin website: www.pyr.ec.gc.ca/GeorgiaBasin
- American Puget Sound Action Team website: www.wa.gov/puget_sound
*Feature sponsored by Friends of Cortes Island Watershed Sentinel Fund
[From WS June/July 2003]