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Integrating climate policy into municipal plans and decision making

Over the past ten years and more, Canadian cities have been implementing policies and practices to address climate change adaptation through urban planning. Building climate adaptation policies into urban planning facilitates how cities address the intensity and adversity of extreme weather events (e.g., heat waves, floods, storms).

Climate change priorities can vary from city to city, such that “increased variability and the difficulty in predicting what is coming is one of the biggest challenges” in planning for climate change. For cities to be able to adapt to increased volatility and uncertainty in the weather, city plans need to be flexible, incorporating information as new research data and technologies emerge. Nature-based climate solutions can also be integrated into city plans, including “[w]ater features or green features, trees, grass” that also act as carbon sinks.

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) has advocated for including climate change data into community planning. The FCM developed the “Guide for Integrating Climate Change Considerations into Municipal Asset Management” as part of the Municipalities for Climate Innovation Program (2017-2022). The guide draws from drawing from the insights and approaches of eleven municipalities participating in the FCM’s Climate and Asset Management Network (CAMN) and the former Leaders in Asset Management Program (LAMP). The guide highlights community planning as a key tool for climate adaptation and shows how climate data is crucial to understanding both the types of changes to emerge and the ways that cities can adapt to climate change impacts. Regulatory tools such as zoning bylaws and larger-scale infrastructure plans would both require considerations “to incorporate climate risk, vulnerability and adaptation actions.”

Chapter 2, (p.11) of the guide presents four approaches to integrating considerations about climate change into municipal decision making:

  1. Starting as early as possible basing it on scientific evidence.
  2. Engaging and applying solutions across disciplines, sectors (energy, waste management, water treatment, infrastructure, health, and consumption) and all levels of governance.
  3. Providing clear short, medium, and long-term goals and establishing the commitment for these goals in [a] municipality’s asset management policy.
  4. Identifying implementation opportunities, create budgets, provide clear roles and responsibilities of key personnel, and create concrete measures for the assessing process.

Indigenous Peoples live in cities, and cities are located on Indigenous lands. It is crucial to consider the means for integrating climate change in municipal policy, urban planning, and design, rooted in Indigenous knowledges and experiences. For example, the Black + Indigenous Design Collective in British Columbia aims to increase opportunities for Black and Indigenous urbanists and designers to contribute and shape urban policy-making processes, when historically, Black and Indigenous Peoples have been excluded from urban planning processes. If cities are to be indigenized through climate change policy, it will be necessary to go beyond established principles for integrating considerations about climate change into municipal decision making, and better engage with the work of Indigenous designers, planners, and innovators and their contributions to the liveability and sustainability of cities.

 

By Leela Viswanathan

 

(Image Credit: Marcin Skalij, Unsplash)

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Planning for Climate Change in Canadian Municipalities

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Planning for climate change in Canadian municipalities can include different approaches undertaken by city governments to manage natural resources, land uses, transportation, infrastructure, and city services in order to mitigate, or adapt to, climate change. These approaches may also involve diverse members of the public in decision making processes.

An official plan (or general, community, or master plan), is a formal document that helps a city or community to outline a vision, and key objectives for various aspects of land use and development in their jurisdiction, and over a long period of time (sometimes 10 years or more). In Canada, cities of different sizes are required by provincial law to have an official plan, like in Ontario. Official plans can be amended from time to time too. In 2010, the City of Iqaluit (Nunavut) was the first municipality in Canada to incorporate climate change in its General Plan (see section 2.5). The extent to which municipalities include climate change goals in their official plans varies widely across Canada.

Some municipalities are seeking guidance to find innovative ways to address climate change through their official plans, and they have developed different kinds of partnerships to achieve their goals. For example, the Clean Air Partnership published a report based on their collaboration with approximately 30 municipalities in Ontario to seek ways to promote clean air initiatives and to address climate change through municipal official plans. In another example, the National Measures Report 2019, released by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), highlights how 400 municipalities, members of the FCM’s Partners for Climate Change Protection (PCP) program, developed 420 projects across Canada to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at the local level. These are projects, rather than plans, that show how city-operated facilities and services, as well as local businesses, homes, and transportation, are all vital to reducing GHGs in the atmosphere.

The Canadian Institute of Planners (CIP), working on behalf of planners across Canada, offers various informational resources on climate change and planning. The CIP’s Policy on Climate Change Planning, encourages professional planners to incorporate climate change-informed planning into all aspects of planning for cities and regions in order to meet an ethical obligation to the planet. However, among the barriers that prevent planners from incorporating climate change priorities into planning practice are the lack of political support and of up-to-date information, for decision making and forecasting.

The Climate Alliance, a network of 1,800 European municipalities – large and small, urban and rural – has developed a partnership with Indigenous peoples of the Amazon Basin to address climate change at the global scale and to emphasise the importance of sustainable forestry worldwide. Since Canadian municipalities are located on Indigenous lands, municipalities might consider assessing how their climate change priorities could align with the climate change priorities of the Indigenous communities whose lands they occupy. Such an effort may highlight shared or divergent priorities in fighting climate change, and the potential for communities’ resilience to climate change effects.

 

By Leela Viswanathan

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