by hans peter meyer
This is the first of several interviews with participants at the BC Land Summit 2009. Several are posted in this June issue of the Communities in Transition Information Resource. Additional interviews will be posted in subsequent months.
Sheila Harrington is the Executive Director of the Land Trust Alliance of BC (LTA) one of the sponsors of this year's BC Land Summit. This is the second BC Land Summit. I talked to Sheila on May 19, 2009 just as she was leaving the LTA offices on her way to the Summit at Whistler.
hpm: Tell me a little about how the LTA got involved in this year's Land Summit.
Sheila: Our involvement started about 2 years ago. It's important that the professions know more about land trusts and the LTA, that they're more a part of the scene than they have been. I went to talk to both the BC Society of Landscape Architects (BCSLA) and the Planning Institute of BC (PIBC) about this, and to let them know that we, at LTA, are a professional association ourselves, with annual conferences that they could be part of. They said, "Well, we're planning the Land Summit for two years from now. Perhaps you'd be interested in joining us?" I took that back to the LTA Board. Board members decided it would be a great opportunity to communicate our message, which is how important land conservation is in land planning and anything connected to land.
hpm: What was it like to work with these other organizations in the planning of the Summit?
Sheila: At our initial meeting I was pleasantly surprised to hear the kinds of issues being raised, and who was raising them. Across the "land use industry" people are expressing a need to address things like conservation, green building and development, growth. There definitely is an interest in addressing the deeper issues.
It's been exciting, working on the Summit. It involves all professional organizations involved in land use activities in BC – appraisers, landscape architects, planners, real estate agents, land trust members, etc. It's a golden opportunity to learn more about each others' fields and to have a broader impact on working on the land.
hpm: What kind of response have your members given you to the conference, given the economic situation?
Sheila: Not as many of our members are coming as I'd hoped. I'm sure that this has to do with finances. A lot of foundations have reduced their funding. Some have completely cut back their funding. Some have gone from 2 intakes to 1. Land trusts have seen their funding significantly reduced this year. Consequently, we don't have the kind of attendance this year that we usually do at our annual conferences, which usually involves ourselves.
hpm: What are people missing by not attending?
Sheila: It's a very different conference than what our members are used to. It's a much broader program. Because it involves several other organizations it's an opportunity to learn about where other land use people are coming from. For example, they get to learn about what First Nations are doing, to communicate to others about what land trusts are doing. That's our number one focus here: to communicate our message to other professions. There are a number of sessions on the program that are specifically about conservation options.
We're also going to release some research that we've been working on for a year on how to bring conserved land into the carbon offset market. This is being released in Richard Hebda's presentation on Friday.
hpm: This must be very exciting for the LTA.
Sheila: It is. We've been working on this research and the report for over a year, and the Land Summit is the official public release.
hpm: Is there anything else that you're particularly excited about seeing at the Land Summit?
Sheila: My focus will be on my responsibility to moderate specific sessions. I was on the program planning committee, so I'll be moderating sessions that I was involved in planning. I'm doing one on First Nations in the Lillooet / Squamish region. In addition, there's a session on Biodiversity BC. This will be the public release of the Biodiversity BC Atlas. This is a very significant event. They've been working on this atlas for 5 years.
Outside of my particular sessions, I'm particularly looking forward to hearing Robert Kennedy, one of the keynote speakers.
And, because we've got over 800 people, I'm very interested in meeting people from across BC who are involved in land use issues. That's a lot of people and quite a cross section of land use perspectives.
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End note:
The 2009 BC Land Summit was a gathering of over 800 land use practitioners from across the province. The Summit took place over May 20-22 in Whistler, and was hosted by
• The British Columbia Association of the Appraisal Institute of Canada
The Real Estate Foundation of BC was a major funder of the event in 2004 and again in 2009.
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