October 31, 2013  

 

“It’s hard to imagine us ever running out of trees.”

So said a former employer to me, many years ago. He had traveled extensively throughout British Columbia, and was commenting on the magnificently abundant nature across the province. We were discussing the importance of natural resources to BC’s economy—and more to the point, our industrial capacity to remove entire forests, vast swaths of wilderness that might never be seen again. He simply couldn’t imagine that might be possible.

Yet in recent years, we’ve witnessed pine beetles’ infestation of our central forests, massive variations in annual salmon returns on BC’s coasts, and wildfires that have razed both mountainsides and neighbourhoods. In the context of a changing climate, it is well within the realm of imagining that some of these priceless landscapes may be damaged or lost forever. The abundance of our natural environment is all too easy to take for granted.

It is in this very context, and in recognition for her determined and strategic approach to mitigating these risks,that Carol Newell is being honoured with the Real Estate Foundation of BC’s 2013 Land Champion Award.

I was very much looking forward to speaking with Carol about this recognition, and about her work. I spoke to Carol at her Cortes Island home, calling her from a hotel room in Baltimore, where urban renewal has honoured the history of place, while looking ahead to a sustainable architectural future.

To connect with Carol Newell is to migrate into a land of profound metaphor, where biodiversity is the model for resilient economics, and the natural cycles of flourish and decay are the models for the generative flow of capital. For Carol, the “grand diversity and generosity” of nature is something not to be mastered, but to be emulated: “Mother Nature has figured out economics in a way that works.”  READ THE FULL ARICLE>>