LIVING WITH WATER
LIVING WITH WATER
Research group investigating flood response and coastal adaptation in the unceded Xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Səlilwətaɬ, Lək̓ʷəŋən, and Semiahmoo territories.
Living with Water approaches sea level rise as an opportunity to develop a new relationship with water along the South Coast of British Columbia.
We focus on expanding the solution space for decision-makers, planners, and communities by providing new perspectives, resources, and decision-support tools to foster the conception and implementation of innovative and collaborative coastal flood adaptation solutions. We are grateful for the generous support from the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions.
Living with Water Values
Values are the meanings given to behavior and events based on what is considered desirable. These meanings influence how situations are interpreted, perceived, and acted upon. As such, what is considered appropriate, effective, and successful adaptation is determined by what people, groups, sectors, and decision-makers deem important. Values change as the physical and political conditions of the world change; therefore, climate change and the research it engages are constant processes of re-evaluation.
Living with Water makes explicit the values which guide our approach to adaptation while encouraging an evolution of these values as we learn more from the communities we collaborate with, especially the Host Nations on whose traditional and unceded territories our project focuses on.
Living with Water also recognizes that while adaptation science and policy have always been guided by values, the content and influence of these values have not been made explicit. Modern research paradigms have excluded Indigenous and local knowledges, leaving out important opportunities to redefine and co-define benefits across society, especially around climate adaptation.
We value the rights and knowledge systems of Indigenous Peoples as critical to researching and developing equitable climate adaptation plans. We commit to pay special attention to the relations of power and histories that have excluded Indigenous knowledges, perspectives, and priority-setting in regional and municipal contexts.
What Do We Value?
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Reconciliation
Decolonization
Place-based learning
Relationship building; and
Reciprocal Engagement
Respect for Self-Determination
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Multiple ways of Knowing and Relating to the World
Two-eyed seeing
Interdisciplinarity
Mosaic Thinking, doing, and learning
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Land, Water, and People
Stewardship
Community
Intergenerational Care
Healing/restoration
Systems Thinking and Interconnection
How do we Act on Our Values?
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Reconciliation
Living with Water engages in the process of reconciliation by building accountability into our research practice that includes:
Acknowledge and learn about historic injustices and systemic violence, especially in the local context.
Identify more equitable climate adaptation processes.
Resist extractive research and partnership practice by learning/understanding/employing decolonial research methodologies.
Support self-determination and initiatives of importance as defined by partner Nations.
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Multiple ways of Knowing and Relating to the World
Recognize difference as an integral component to rigorous research methods where varying positionalities, ways of knowing, and skills strengthen process and outcome.
Ensure Indigenous perspectives and principles are central to the research process.
Encourage team members to explore their positionality as researchers to challenge our own biases.
Confront racist and exclusionary attitudes and research practices at both individual and institutional levels (even if/when that poses risks to the credibility of institutions that we are affiliated with)
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Land, Water, and People
Center care as both a process and solution by considering multi-generational impacts of our research and proposals on human and more-than-human communities.
Look for ways to usefully heal/restore lands and water from a place of respect and Indigenous leadership.
Consider systems thinking across time and space to examine interconnectedness.
