Developing Collaborative Planning Partnerships: Final Report

FINAL REPORT PDF (828 KB)

As a Watershed Planning and Advisory Council (WPAC), the North Saskatchewan Watershed Alliance (NSWA) has been mandated by the Government of Alberta (GoA) to develop an Integrated Watershed Management Plan (IWMP) for the North Saskatchewan River Watershed as a means of achieving the outcomes identified in the Water for Life Strategy.

Water for Life requires WPACs to develop their IWMP through a process of collaborative planning that engages four sectors:
  1. Industry: chemical and petrochemical, forestry, irrigation/drainage districts, livestock, mining, oil and gas, power generation.
  2. Non-government organizations: environmental, fishery habitat conservation, lake environment conservation, wetland conservation.
  3. Government of Alberta and provincial authorities: Alberta Agriculture and Food, Alberta Economic Development Authority, Alberta Energy, Alberta Environment, Alberta Health, Alberta Science and Research Authority, Alberta Sustainable Resource Development.
  4. Other government: federal, First Nations (one representative for each Treaty area), large urban, Métis Settlements, rural, small urban.
 
In December 2009, Abells Henry Public Affairs submitted a report to the NSWA outlining   recommendations for a collaborative planning engagement strategy, supported by a communications strategy and work plan. Following the recommendations contained in this report, the NSWA agreed to:
 
1.       Shift the NSWA’s IWMP engagement strategy from an approach that considers the entire watershed as a single region and engages each of the four sectors identified above separately on a region-wide basis, to one where the watershed is divided into three sub-regions (Headwaters, Central and Downstream) with community leaders from all four sectors invited to participate, so they can work together as a cross-sectoral planning team in each of the sub-regions.
 
2.       Hold one cross-sectoral IWMP collaborative planning forum every three months in each of the sub-regions of the watershed until the IWMP report is ready to be submitted to GoA. (A total of 15 forums; three in each of March, June, September, December 2010 and March 2011.)
 
3.       Add a new section to the NSWA website to provide all forum participants, NSWA members and the public with access to all information, presentations and reports prepared for these forums. This website section will be interactive, offering visitors the opportunity to not only read the information, but to join the discussion by sending their comments and feedback to NSWA for inclusion in the collaborative planning process.
 
4.       Develop brief Coffee Shop Discussion Papers (1-2 pages only) as a way of being responsive to the information needs of forum participants. Their purpose is to interpret complex scientific information in a form that is readily accessible and interesting to a general audience.
  
5.       Attend conferences, trade shows and community events to promote the NSWA and its efforts to protect the watershed, including the IWMP, directing people to the website to participate in the discussion.
 
This report focuses on the implementation of this collaborative planning strategy from December 2009 to March 2010. The first section describes in detail the decision making framework the NSWA has developed to support its collaborative planning process. The second section describes the steps taken to implement the collaborative planning strategy.

 
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