Program Highlights 2010
in spite of shock after shock to their economic structures, these communities
continue to survive and thrive. they are reinventing their economies
constantly — moving from commercial fishing to marine monitoring;
from manufacturing to tourism; from timber harvesting to non-timber
forest products.
These people-connected-to-place, as we refer to them at EC, have learned through direct experience that
the future is unpredictable. They are teaching us that resilience has some common attributes at its core.
Resilient communities, as a matter of course, incorporate both traditional knowledge and modern science
to understand ecosystem change; exert effort to revive lost languages; respect a diversity of cultures; address
issues of food security and public safety; and design economic systems that add value to natural resources
and use products closer to their place of origin.
Because they teach us so much about what we need for our common future, Ecotrust Canada has maintained
two very long term and embedded community programs — one in the Skeena Region and one in Clayoquot
Sound. Our mission in these places is to create and demonstrate new ways of doing business in every sector,
so that business, the environment and the people are able to adapt and thrive. Year over year, these communities
and the partnerships we have made within them are woven into our daily work and inform our strategic
thinking as an organization. They provide a safe place to test ideas, to launch experiments, to get sound
feedback, to regroup, to build resilience.
Throughout this annual report, threading its way through all our programs and initiatives, you will see
reflections of our people-in-place approach.