By RIVEN MERROW
In conversations about Salt Spring’s future, the term resilience is often invoked with optimism: communities preparing for climate uncertainty, protecting freshwater, fostering continuity and building infrastructure that supports a vibrant, sustainable island life.
But what if true resilience doesn’t always mean doing more? What if resilience could also mean letting go?
A recent conversation with a long-time islander offered a striking counterpoint — what they called relinquish planning for resilience. Their position was not anti-environment, anti-community or anti-youth. It was something quieter, more haunting and perhaps more honest.
“Why build?” they asked. “Why promote growth, or push to sustain a young, growing community at all costs? What if, instead, we allowed the island to slow down, to retract from the ambitions of expansion and to let this settler moment fade in dignity?”
It’s not the kind of message you’ll hear at a development open house or sustainability workshop. And yet, in the shadow of a climate crisis, vulnerable aquifers and aging infrastructure, it feels oddly relevant.
This relinquish view imagines resilience not as an act of building, but as an act of strategic withdrawal. It suggests that sustainability may come not from development, but from de-development. From decline. From relinquishing density, tourism and the pressures of modernity. In its most radical form, it asks us to imagine an island that doesn’t just prepare for change but reverts toward ecological sovereignty.
This vision aligns with a freshwater reality. We know that many watersheds on Salt Spring are over-licensed, overdrawn and over-fragmented. We know that aquifer recharge is seasonal, variable and intensively affected by land use. We also know that each new parcel, pump or pipe adds to the burden. Under the relinquish view, resilience is not achieved by engineering more but by reducing demand, decommissioning systems and protecting watersheds through non-occupation.
Likewise, for Indigenous resurgence, this perspective may offer a long-overdue decentering of settler narratives. Rather than asking how settler communities can remain indefinitely “resilient,” the relinquish view creates space for re-emergent Indigenous governance, values and land relationships to breathe — without endless settler “improvements.”
In this way, relinquish planning may also serve environmental equity — not just in who has access to resources, but in relinquishing the authority to define care, stewardship and belonging to those whose relationships with this land extend from time immemorial.
And in terms of biodiversity, the logic is undeniable. What preserves an ecosystem more effectively than absence? A declining footprint. A trail left to grow over. A stream left undiverted.
This is not to romanticize collapse or ignore the realities of community care. But maybe it’s time we brought this contrarian view into the dialogue. Maybe resilience isn’t just about building for tomorrow, but about knowing when to slow. When to yield. When to let the forest take back the road.
Island resilience might mean not how much we can grow — but how gracefully we can let go. Relinquish to replenish.
The writer is a Salt Spring resident.