A workshop was held on the need and benefits of a Community of Practice (CoP) on Living Shorelines at the 2016 CZCA Conference in Toronto with financial support from Environment and Climate Change Canada.  Two years later, the CoP was officially launched at the 2018 CZC conference in St. John’s Newfoundland.  The mandate of the NbCS CoP is to support and steward the effective use of living shoreline ideas and principles, in the context of a changing climate, for application in cold regions.  The intent of the CoP is that it is:

• Used as a platform for practitioners to connect, share knowledge and collaborate to advance the understanding and development of living shorelines in Canada.
• Work as a network to support the development of regional and/or national design standards, building codes or policy and needs credible information and tools.
• Provide opportunity for education, knowledge sharing, capacity building, outreach, and advocacy.

More recently, in 2022 the NbCS CoP established regional knowledge hubs in Canada’s Atlantic, Great Lakes, Arctic and Pacific regions with the mandate to:

• Organize more frequent gatherings of like-minded professionals to share NBS best practices and experiences within Canada on a quarterly or bi-annual basis.
• Contribute to national initiatives and to facilitate knowledge transfer between practitioners.
  Create regional resources and networks for practitioners.
• Provide the opportunity for the regional hubs to come together into a larger conference setting at the biennial CZCA conference.