Emily Lowan’s journey from coffee-grounds advocacy to BC Greens’ leadership

When Emily Lowan was in her late teens, not so long ago, she would pedal around Victoria collecting coffee grounds for local farms to use as fertilizer.

Now, the 26-year-old from the Saanich Peninsula is leading British Columbia’s Green Party in a snap election campaign and running to represent the same region where she camped, snorkelled and crabbed in her childhood.

Lowan credits those experiences with inspiring a “deep reverence” for the natural world, and activating her political convictions.

“As a young person, I saw how deeply these ecosystems are under threat,” she said in an interview.

Ever since, Lowan said she has been on a mission to challenge what she described as “the politicians and the corporate forces that are threatening our democracy and a livable future on this planet” and put power in the hands of communities.

Lowan played a key role in a student-led campaign that pressured the University of Victoria into directing its investments away from fossil fuels, before climate advocacy with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and Climate Action Network Canada.

She won the Greens’ leadership contest last year, succeeding Sonia Furstenau.

Lowan said she recognizes why climate action isn’t top of mind for many voters.

“People have a really hard time thinking about climate when they don’t have their basic needs met, and so I want to do both,” she said.

“I want to take climate action and deliver that affordable life for regular people with, you know, a guarantee on good, green jobs, with universal child care and social housing.”

Lauren Latour was Lowan’s manager while she worked at Climate Action Network Canada between 2023 and 2025, co-ordinating efforts among non-profit and Indigenous groups while pushing for phasing out the extraction of fossil fuels.

Latour said Lowan has a “positive magnetism” that served her well in her bridge-building role with the network, along with her knowledge of climate policy in Canada and experience with organizing at the community level.

“She’s incredibly audacious. She’s not afraid to be bold in her campaign ideas and in her dreams and aspirations for her (work),” Latour said.

Outgoing Green legislator Rob Botterell, too, said Lowan has a clear vision for bringing young people into politics and pushing for “bold, courageous change” to tackle climate change, affordability and health-care challenges.

“Here is the leader of the future,” Botterell said of his first impression of Lowan.

Botterell had always intended to serve one term after winning in Saanich North and the Islands in 2024, becoming one half of a two-member Green caucus along with Jeremy Valeriote, who is seeking re-election in West Vancouver-Sea to Sky.

The retired lawyer said he “would have loved to carry on for the next couple of years” in the legislature and directed his ire at NDP Leader David Eby for “calling a completely unnecessary election” with two years left in the government’s term.

But Botterell said he was “thrilled” Lowan is running in Saanich North, where he fondly recalled knocking on doors alongside her and “watching constituents’ eyes light up when they recognize her and just seeing how well they connect.”

Botterell said Lowan is a leader beyond her years, and “somebody that you can trust.”

Lowan’s campaign in Saanich North is a family affair, with her grandmother — who previously ran a children’s book shore in Sidney, B.C. — dropping off signage materials at her office shortly before she spoke to The Canadian Press.

Lowan said her grandparents worked blue-collar jobs and opened a small business, enough to buy a home and provide generational wealth for the family.

“That is just not the reality for my generation,” she said.

“I’ve spent my whole adult life watching establishment parties manage decline as the lives of young and working people get harder.”

Lowan said people have “lost trust in a political class” across B.C.’s major parties, whose politicians have “bought in and sold out” to corporate interests.

But the Greens offer a different vision, she said, one that centres on young people, workers, renters and “everyone else who is being crushed by the status quo in B.C.”

Lowan said the province has a revenue problem, allowing major corporations to walk away with billions of dollars in what she described as “corporate welfare.”

She said the Greens’ platform will outline how to find the money required to fund affordable housing, child care and health care, including taxing the ultra-wealthy, while building up the economy to be more independent and resilient to shocks.

“We need leadership that isn’t corrupted by the system,” Lowan said. “We need young leaders with bold ideas and real hope to bring back half the population who has stopped voting, who has given up and tuned out.”

Lowan has said the two Greens had made a difference in the legislature and the snap election offered a path to growing and holding the balance of power.

“We can hold the government to account and get real results to make our province safer, healthier and more democratic,” she told a campaign event last month.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 14, 2026.

Brenna Owen, The Canadian Press