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Reflections on the conversation with Emanuel Machado

Leandra Vanbaelinghem

Mr. Emanuel Machado brought about the perspective that natural assets should be part of the asset management of cities. At first, this was confusing to me because I thought it was already established. Something that resonated quite powerfully from this presentation is the idea that balancing the ecology of assets and the usage of assets should be aimed for, but that if this cannot occur, the health of the asset (natural or semi-natural) should be prioritized as opposed to the services and uses we want to get out of the asset. Adopting this view of governance broadly would help prevent us from acting on assets beyond what is sustainable. This idea also neatly addresses one of the limitations of sustainability management: the focus is often too much on mitigation or sustainability improvements rather than pausing and asking whether a process or activity should be happening at all. This connects quite well to one of Mr. Machado's main points, which is that we should be putting the environment before the economy. He supported this statement with the example that priority should not be mitigation, given that Net zero buildings and electric cars will not change much of our situation. Although the applicability of this idea in the real world is likely to face many constraints, I agree that it is a path forward. It was also quite humbling to hear, as my research is essentially on assessing alternative Heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) technologies for potential mitigation strategies. Promising and optimistic information about city management was also described, which made me feel hopeful and grateful for having people like Mr. Machado. For instance, I learned from Mr. Machado that reducing water usage and expanding riparian habitat allowed for increased water flow despite the growing community of Gibsons. This shows that natural or semi-natural water assets can be managed by the city and made healthy and resilient despite increasing usage demand.

Something fascinating to learn was the Gibsons resilience model. Models usually analyzed independently, like forestry and water distribution models, would be combined into one single interconnected model. This model would explore different situational scenarios and help distinguish prioritization strategies. This reminded me of the first presentation on digital construction by Dr. Chen, where her research area also attempts to holistically capture all of a system's processes and interconnectedness. Lastly, it was also very interesting to see the circular workflow diagram of linkages between asset management. In this circular diagram, one of the steps is the assessment of assets, which my group is essentially focusing on for our Brandt's creek project. I think this is a valuable assessment tool that could be worth investigating and applying to Brandt's creek.

Thomas Letcher-Nicholls

I am really thankful to Emanuel Machado (Chief Administrative Officer to Council in Gibsons) for his time in coming to speak with us; he gave a really interesting presentation, and it was really great to see someone speak so rigorously and informatively on sustainability in local government!

Mr. Machado spoke in terms of ecosystem services and natural assets, which is a very different vocabulary and language than I use – and usually I would be critical of this. But as Leandra has pointed out, Mr. Machado affirmed the importance putting the environment before the economy and is doing important work in sustainability. I am also sympathetic that as a council member, it is Mr. Machado’s job to do practical, important work for his community, and I think that is really admirable! Nonetheless, it made me think of the reading that we did last week, “The City is not Innocent: Homelessness and the Value of Urban Parks” by Jessie Speer & Eric Goldfischer, in which the authors argued for the importance of going beyond the language and logic of “economic value” when it comes to the natural world. I actually think that Mr. Machado is doing this already and in great ways – maybe just in a different vocabulary.

One of the key things that I was drawn to in Mr. Machado’s presentation was his emphasis on the importance of data, measurement and modelling. My group is proposing to do water testing, and I felt reassured that this is important because Mr. Machado explained that before anything gets done, there is a long process of investigation and research – and I think this is really great in and of itself, and a direct contrast with what has happened in the history of Brandt’s Creek, which has not been given attention and has seemed to be modified without much (any?) thought at all.

I was also impressed by the rigour and interconnectedness of the circular diagram for resource/ asset management that Mr. Machado explained – and I was reassured by the expertise evident in this local council’s management. Mr. Machado’s approach seems at odds with what we have heard so far about Kelowna council’s approach to Brandt’s Creek – how Mr. Ray Lewis explained in his presentation that both the community’s water testing and their concerns about the concrete plant were ignored. My hope is that the knowledge generated by something like our project around water quality could be mobilised, put into action, or made into policy by a progressive Council focused on sustainability!

Hoda Pourpirali

Tom, the way you relate concepts and topics to each other is really interesting to me. Like referring to an article we presented about it.

For me, like you, talking about data and modeling was an interesting topic, and that pie chart was important and interesting for asset management. It seems that Brent Creek and the issue of water quality testing is an issue that many people mention, but in the end, no final solution has been found for it.

Sofia Bahmutsky

Emanuel Machado, the Chief Administrative Officer from the Town of Gibsons BC spoke to the class about his work and some very interesting facts about Gibson’s sustainability policies. Emanuel mentioned how in recent years his job has transitioned into a Chief Resiliency Officer. I found it very useful and interesting how a small town in BC is leading the way and being recognized for the efforts towards sustainable development of the town.

Emanuel mentioned the interconnectedness of ecosystem services and how the town operations have been shifting from individualized sectors (like water services, street services, etc.) to a team of crews with a holistic blend of crews. Emanuel elaborated a extensively about ecosystem services and the concept of “natural capital”. I have done projects in my previous work about the quantification of ecosystem services and trying to assign a monetary value to elements of nature or services provided by nature. I think that this is incredibly challenging, and I have some disagreements about relying on this technique. When I was trying to accomplish this type of work it was most challenging to determine how to assign a monetary value. Some methods suggest surveying the local population and ask how much they would need to be paid in order to accept losing the resource, for example how much would you accept in exchange for the local forest? A different approach was to survey and ask how much someone would pay for the service, for example how much you would be willing to pay monthly for clean air or water? Thinking of ecosystem services has a good intention, but it is also degrading because I believe that nature has intrinsic and inherent value that should not and cannot be quantified. I think it is biased to think of nature in a service way, so for me it was really problematic to understand how these types of monetary evaluations can be done fairly.

In the later part of the session Emanuel spoke about the current project of building a predictive model to predict the resiliency of the town, understanding interactions between many variables. As I am currently working as a data scientist, I really liked seeing this approach and harnessing the power of volumes of data. I hope the project is successful and I would definitely be interested to know more about it!

Hoda Pourpirali

Dr. Emanuel Machado’s presentation was super engaging. The way he spoke about sustainability in local government was interesting to me. Their effort in establishing sustainability sights in a small city in British Columbia is admirable. His emphasis in the presentation was on putting environmental issues first in comparison with economic aspects. The thing that I am not sure how well could be implemented but it’s super promising if environmental aspects of the city assets are put in priority.

One of the presentation points that impresses me was the circular diagrams of resources and asset management which engaged me a lot.

His talk about valuing the price of natural resources reminded me of the issue of density in urban development or the carbon issue of carbon monoxide production by factories. For example, in my country, Iran, people can buy the designated green space for each apartment by "purchasing the excess density determined in the comprehensive city plan". The result is that the city is full of high-rise buildings without enough green space and as a result, the rights of other citizens are lost.

Or many factories want to compensate for the environmental damage of producing carbon monoxide and toxic gases by paying money, but in my opinion, they actually do more damage to the environment.

Shaiyan Siddique

Mr. Emmanuel Machado is the Chief Resiliency Officer for the town of Gibsons, BC. The presentation by Mr. Machado was particularly interesting for me since Mr. Machado explained how the town of Gibsons has taken the approach of asset management and valuation for its natural and built environment. The concept of environmental and natural resource valuation has been a part of my research interests for quite some time. Prior to my involvement in the field of industrial ecology, I had the opportunity to work on projects involving the economic valuation of functional and cultural ecosystem services provided by eco-tourism spots, and a network of creeks for a remote hill tribe. From that experience, I know that the importance of environmental valuation lies in its ability to effectively communicate, to the mass population and particularly to policymakers, the value of services provided by nature which is often otherwise considered obscure or abstract. Since it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to accurately determine the true value of ecosystem services, it is the norm in this field to mark any estimates as a conservative, minimum value. I also find the underlying techniques of such valuation to be fun and interesting food for thought, as they tend to be interdisciplinary with concepts from economics, psychology, biology and other disciplines intertwined.

Particularly for the town of Gibsons, what I found very interesting is how they have included both natural and built environment under the umbrella of the blanket term “infrastructure”. This opens up more ways for the direct management and protection of the natural features by the city. For example, I remember seeing maximum occupancy limits for different buildings and infrastructure across towns in Canada and the world. Incorporating natural features such as aquifers as part of the municipal infrastructure could allow the town to enforce similar use restrictions for their protection. Furthermore, incorporating the natural environment into the definition of infrastructure would also allow the city to budget for their maintenance, improvement and protection. This was indeed confirmed by Mr. Machado, who mentioned that previously the majority of the town’s budget went towards roads and built infrastructure development, while now the lion’s share of the budget is spent on afforestation and environmental protection initiatives. What’s interesting is that apart from improving the health of the environment, such initiatives correspond to direct economic benefits for the residents of the town in the form of lower home insurance rates due to the reduced risk of extreme environmental events.

Mr. Machado also confirmed that the town of Gibsons has already started reaping the benefits of some of its environmental sustainability policy initiatives. For example, Mr. Machado mentioned that the water from the Gibsons aquifer used to be unfit for drinking in the past. In recent years, due to the initiatives taken by the town to improve the aquifer, such as setting up water quality monitoring wells across the town, the aquifer health has improved significantly. This makes me hopeful for the future of Brandt’s creek.

Leandra Vanbaelinghem

Shaiyan, your previous work project on the economic valuation of ecosystem services is very intriguing, and it sounds like you could relate very well to Mr. Machado's work. Your idea that communication is one of the crucial obstacles to environmental valuation makes complete sense and sounds very tricky. This makes me wonder how communication must vary between regions and populations with differing living dynamics and priority values and how a region's wealth contributes to this monetary worth. I agree with Shaiyan's statement that improving the health of the environment economically benefits the residents in the long run as well as their own health. However, I wonder to what extent this is true beyond extreme locally linked weather events. After all, many natural disasters are occurring in regions that have contributed less to climate change and arguably better environmental health.

Gabrielle Heschuk

So far in the course we have heard from many different experts about their research within the realm of sustainability, but Emmanuel Machado was able to provide his perspective from lived experiences working on sustainability issues in British Columbia. Emmanuel Machado was super knowledgable and provided a valuable perspective on the importance of creating sustainable solutions even for areas that may be considered small and perhaps insignificant. This is one of the main takeaways that Emmanuel Machado did not outfight say or talk about bur rather when reflecting on his efforts in Gibsons and trying to connect it with Brandt's creek there are similarities that can be drawn upon. Such as, the fact that Gibsons is a small coastal town in British Columbia that may be overlooked by the bigger cities and towns in British Columbia for natural asset management and simultaneously the section of the creek that we are looking at is quite small and it stretched across an area that is currently inhabited with many unhoused individuals and is often forgotten about and overlooked by many people living in Kelowna.

Thinking about this idea of the importance of considering and protecting smaller areas and their significance also links back to many ideas that we have discussed previously with the guest speakers with incorporating traditional ecological indigenous knowledge. Every system and every entity is worth preserving and protecting as they are a part of a bigger system that is all interconnected.

One thing that Emmanuel Machado mentioned was the importance of placing the environment above the economy, as Leandra and Tom pointed out. This idea to many would seem far-fetched and against most pro-growth strategies that cities have adopted, but to me and I am sure most of my classmates, this idea is necessary. For so long the western world has placed economic profit above all, leaving the environment to suffer the consequences. It was refreshing to see that there are people in positions of power that are able to harness change that share this same value. Emmanuel Machado discussed many different efforts the town of Gibsons have implemented in development with environmental consciousness. We could use this same set of values and apply it to Brandt's creek, how development can be done with environmental protection at the forefront.

Annie Furman

I very much appreciated Emanuel Machado taking the time to zoom in from Gibsons to speak with us about his role as Chief Administrative/Resiliency Officer for his town. I will admit that I was initially somewhat off-put by Mr. Machado’s focus on “ecosystem services” and “natural assets,” very economics-rooted terminology that in my usual research implies a certain connotations of “economic value” of nature that the eco-theatre creative community generally tries to steer away from. (I’m also reminded of the Speer and Goldfischer article “The City is not Innocent: Homelessness and the Value of Urban Parks” that my group presented on last week, which also touched on some of the dangers about assigning certain types of value to nature.)

That said, as Mr. Machado explained more about his work in Gibsons, I think it became more apparent to me that from a city council perspective, using this sort of language might have the greatest impact in enacting change and adopting mitigation adaptations. I was shocked when Mr. Machado said that less than 10% of Canadian cities have done the sorts of risk management assessments that Gibsons has done about how dependent the city is on nature providing “services” to residents. Maybe in a setting where the target audience is so frequently focused on how budget lines impact the long-term resiliency of a community, the framing of “ecosystem services” can be a valuable method for inspiring governments to conduct assessments about how resilient (or not) their constituency is.

I was also intrigued by Mr. Machado’s anecdote about how it’s harder to get people to care about trees than water, because trees get in the way of property development and potentially lower landscape value. I wonder how the value of landscape aesthetics changes across communities in different geographic regions — that’s actually a topic of focus for another subgroup of Dr. Garrard’s Kelownafornia research group that I’m involved with.

Gabrielle Heschuk

Annie, thank you for your perspective and reflection on Emanuel Machado's presentation. I liked that you reflected on his positionality in Gibsons as a Chief administrative/resiliency officer and his perspective leaning more towards economically rooted terminology to talk about his work. Although I agree that sometimes talking purely from an economic standpoint can be off putting and perhaps derails from what the topic of conversation is, the reality of today especially within local government, most decision making are rooted and propagated through economic prosperity. In my research many of the most convincing reasons to change people attitudes, decisions, and behaviours are rooted mostly in economic terms and whether or not they can benefit economically. I do think that this is not where peoples attitudes need to be but it is the reality of many industries. Thank for bringing this up and it allowed me to reflect on this as well.