Key Issues

Sea level rise (SLR) is one of the most defining challenges facing contemporary society. Already, over 60% of the world’s population is living in coastal areas. In addition to climate change, coastal areas are confronted with ongoing urbanization, aging infrastructure, habitat fragmentation, and spatial injustice. This raises serious questions, including: What does it mean to design socially and ecologically inclusive coastal environments? How can coastal adaptation work hand-in-hand with decolonization? What spatial and temporal scales should be used to address the future of coastal areas? How can we think differently about coasts and their dynamics? 

Living with Water explores answers to these questions by first and foremost honouring and upholding the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). The Province of British Columbia has recently unveiled a five-year, 89-point action plan, which foregrounds goals, outcomes, and actions around the following themes: self-determination and inherent right of self-government; title and rights of Indigenous Peoples; ending Indigenous-specific racism and discrimination; social, cultural and economic well-being.

Within this context, Living with Water understands it is fundamental for colonial institutions and researchers to drastically re-examine value systems, community engagement processes, governance systems, regulatory frameworks, and planning horizons. In so doing, opportunities arise to foreground marginalized voices and perspectives, broaden the solution space, and develop just, integrated, and cross-jurisdiction adaptation measures.

  • Values-Based Approaches

  • Broadening the Solutions Space

  • Collaborative Governance

Project Scope

B.C.’s South Coast, including the Fraser River Delta, Burrard Inlet and Squamish Delta, is home to an ever-growing human population of nearly 3 million, it hosts critical habitats for coastal species such as salmon and migratory birds, and is an emerging economic node within the Pacific Rim. The region has a complex jurisdictional environment, which includes multiple levels of government, dozens of municipalities and First Nations, as well as quasi-governmental authorities that occupy coastal areas, including the Port of Vancouver and Vancouver International Airport. The entire region is situated within unceded, non-surrendered First Nation territories.

Climate change projections show BC’s South Coast could be facing sea level rise of up to one meter in the next eight decades as well as increased flood scale and frequency. This will result in risks to residents, ecosystems, food security, and critical infrastructures.

Values, Solutions, Governance

Coastal flooding spans geographic and jurisdictional boundaries, and as such requires effective tools and frameworks for flood management across shared ecosystems and shorelines, including frameworks for collaboration, integrated policies, and design guidelines. Living with Water addresses this by developing new design and decision-making tools that:

  • Foreground community values, Indigenous perspectives, and Indigenous Knowledges in coastal adaptation planning;

  • Broaden the solution space by developing decision-support tools for the planning, design and implementation of alternative flood adaptation solutions (e.g. nature-based solutions, multifunctional flood defenses, community-led relocation);

  • Provide recommendations for regional governance arrangements to guide integrated solutions to coastal flood adaptation.