Progress for biodiversity across city councils!
A few weeks ago, Sierra Club BC partnered with former Victoria City Councillor Jeremy Loveday to offer a series of workshops to help motivated residents to “Move the Dial” on biodiversity issues at their city councils.
Move the Dial workshops give residents effective tools for approaching their city councils to take action to support local biodiversity, such as passing resolutions, amending or creating bylaws, and taking other meaningful steps to restore ecosystem health in local communities.
And we have some good news to share – we’re already seeing wins for biodiversity.
The Metchosin city council endorsed a resolution that asks the Province to work with local governments and First Nations to establish a Local Natural Areas Protection Fund that municipalities can access to acquire and protect land rich in biodiversity. Metchosin’s endorsement means the resolution will be voted on at the Union of BC Municipalities in the fall.
The Saanich Natural Areas, Parks and Trails Advisory Committee adopted the same resolution at their meeting earlier in May, and the Saanich City Council will vote on the resolution at the next city council meeting on June 15.
These local community wins are especially important during this critical time for biodiversity and the momentum continues! Residents in a dozen municipalities and regional districts are using the skills and resources offered in the Move the Dial workshops to advance biodiversity resolutions where they live.
When people are empowered to take action in their communities, they help shift the paradigm toward sustainability. Take it from one Move the Dial participant:
“I found the ‘moving the dial on biodiversity’ (workshops) incredibly valuable in empowering me to advocate to my local government to make changes at the municipal and provincial levels. So often citizens have an intuition that we can and should be doing more to influence the health and safety of our communities but get lost in the nitty gritty of policy and process. These workshops made advocacy and policy change accessible and created regional solidarity.”
Want to move the dial in your community? We’re building a self-guided online workshop full of strategies and materials designed to help you gain the skills to be an effective “dial mover” at your city council and in your regional district – stay tuned for more details. Together, we can create a future that supports biodiversity and healthy ecosystems.
Featured image by Jens Wieting.
The group outside the Nuyumbalees Cultural Centre on We Wai Kai territory (Photo by Todd Biderman).