Evaluating the Outcome of the Cheakamus River Water Use Plan: Long Term Collaborative Planning Successes and Failures

• Main Author: Price, Geoffrey
• Other Authors: Kerr, Gillian
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2024
• Subjects: School of environment and sustainability; First Nations
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10613/27668; https://doi.org/10.25316/IR-19325

2024 Collaborative planning has been used as a tool for water use planning throughout British Columbia to increase social benefits of hydroelectric production. This study evaluates the Cheakamus River Water Use Plan (WUP) based on its capacity to meet WUP objectives and collaborative planning principles. These values are captured by a document analysis (DA) of BC Hydro documents and an interview analysis (IA) of transcripts from discussions with participants. The result of the DA suggests that BC Hydro has been successful at fulfilling their duties through meeting plan objectives, having diverse representation, a high level of inclusion, influence, and commitment of the stakeholders. Weaknesses are related to issues of communication and negotiation, not identifying timing for reviews and revisions, and lack of participant funding. Results from the IA concludes that the process is partially successful because of participants being non-committal to declaring success due to issues of communication, work that still needs to be done and distrust. Success in the IA is related to the development of high-quality information, expansion of Squamish Nation’s role, diverse representation, and the extensive level of inclusion, influence, and commitment of the stakeholders. The key conclusions of this research are that First Nations rights to self-determination, trust, communication, and high-quality information are central to the success of long-term collaborative processes like the Cheakamus River WUP. The extent to which the Cheakamus River WUP met its objectives and principles of collaboration is inconclusive, as the process is not an outright success or failure.