This year will once again prove to be another record year for severe weather damage and catastrophic losses in Canada. According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, just four catastrophic events in only two months (July and August), caused a combined total of more than $7-billion in insured losses, shattering the previous annual record of $6.2-billion in 2016. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the Insurance Bureau of Canada estimate that the worst impacts of climate change will cost $5.3-billion per year shared among all orders of government.

Between the slow progress in the COP negotiations, and the IPCC’s recent assessment that climate change is accelerating faster than previously thought, it is time to confront the question and challenge: how will communities in Canada be supported to deal with more frequent and severe climate risks and disasters into the future? How can we use existing data, tools, and technologies to avoid or minimize the impacts of heat, drought, wildfire, flood, erosion, extreme weather, and sea level rise (adaptation), rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions that accelerate climate change (mitigation), and do so in a way that multi-tasks, supporting key community goals such as biodiversity, equity, and livability. We outline three promising areas of strategic investment and intervention below.

To support the resilience of communities, climate risks and emissions need to be integrated and accounted for across a range of community planning and project decisions. To date, funding to communities has been siloed with funding available either for climate mitigation (e.g. funding to reduce carbon emissions such as electrifying buildings and fleets) or adaptation (e.g. funding to reduce risk such as improving flood defences) preventing more systemic thinking and responses. In contrast, the City of Port Moody, B.C., working with ACT, SFU, is in its third year of implementing an integrated climate action plan. This plan includes actions that range from including risk, emissions, and co-benefits as key decision criteria in corporate policy, land-use planning, buildings standards, procurement, and in an extreme weather response plan that aims to reduce emissions and inequity. Overcoming siloes not only prevents contradiction, but also supports more systemic thinking about synergies and trade-offs, in the transition to a low carbon resilient future.

Natural asset management and green infrastructure strategies are cost-effective ways for local governments to deliver important community services, ranging from stormwater control, flood protection, carbon storage, and moderation of urban heat. The City of Port Moody, with ACT, is integrating nature-based solutions (NbS) as a crucial low carbon resilient strategy with multiple benefits. In 2023, the City undertook an inventory of its trees and shrubs, open water, marshes, lakes and streams. If lost, the services provided by these assets would require $377-million in engineered solutions to replace them. And this is without accounting for other community benefits related to biodiversity, health and livability. Putting nature on the balance sheet moves the value of ecosystems and the services they provide, from zero to significant.

Finally, drought, fire, flood and extreme weather do not respect community boundaries; they impact the bioregions and watersheds that communities depend on. Most people understand that they rely on the health of ecosystems and ecological processes in their surrounding watersheds to provide life-supporting services, such as water quantity and quality, storm water and heat management, and wildfire barriers, etc. So, when we lose portions of our natural world, we are losing a significant key in buffering our communities against climate change into the future. Now, more than ever, it is crucial to experiment with bioregional governance models, financing communities and Indigenous peoples to work collaboratively to protect and restore the health and resilience of the watershed and territorial ecosystems upon which they depend.

These three promising approaches—overcoming silos in climate action funding, introducing nature into municipal and regional government balance sheets, and supporting innovative governance and financing that advance overall health and resilience in watershed ecosystems, offer innovative, more systemic approaches to dealing with the accelerating risks of climate change and the unnerving impacts for communities across Canada. Rather than waiting and watching the climate disaster tally rise on the public books, being proactive and marshaling pre-disaster financing now is a necessary step in encouraging more systemic strategies and solutions that protect and buffer our communities from accelerating impacts and costs of climate disasters, building resilience and sustainability in the process.

SFU Climate Innovation and ACT—Action on Climate Team work with and for communities, building resources and tools to move best available climate and sustainability research-to-impact.

Dr. Alison Shaw has worked as a scholar, a science-policy strategist, and a sustainability consultant and organizational coach. She has experience leading cross-cutting climate change and sustainability science and policy research, and in mobilizing knowledge, developing tools and creating partnerships. Dr. Shaw is the executive director of both SFU Climate Innovation and ACT—Action on Climate Team. Lauren Vincent is a professional engineer with a decade of experience in consulting, research, and climate solutions. She applies her background working on both adaptation and mitigation approaches to climate change to integrate and optimize co-benefits in climate action approaches. Lauren joined ACT— Action on Climate Team, SFU, as the associate director in 2023.

The Hill Times