As spring floods devastate communities in western and northern Canada, the federal government is urging Canadians to come up with their own ideas for adapting to climate-related disasters.
Ottawa is in the final stages of completing the country’s first national adaptation strategy. On Monday, he launched a process of public engagement to hear from Canadians how communities and businesses will live with and minimize the impact of floods, heat domes, forest fires and similar disasters.
In a press release, Environment Minister Stephen Gilbo called climate change adaptation a “two-front war” and said businesses and communities must “play both attack and defense” to reduce emissions and find ways to reduce the impact of global warming.
“We need to reduce carbon pollution and we need to prepare for the impact of climate change,” Gilbo said.
Canadians have witnessed all kinds of severe weather in recent years. Last summer, extreme heat in British Columbia caused a deadly heat wave and forest fires destroyed the city of Lytton, British Columbia. The relentless rain then hit southern British Columbia in November, flooding communities and washing away roads and bridges.
Most recently, record floods in central and southern Manitoba have put the issue of climate adaptation at the forefront and in the center.
Environment Minister Stephen Gilbo called adapting to climate change a “two-front war” that requires businesses and communities to both reduce emissions and adapt to the future effects of global warming. (CANADIAN PRESS / Chad Hipolito)
Making communities more resilient
The government plans to launch its three-month period online consultationn having regard to these disasters.
Gilbo said the adaptation strategy could take into account measurable goals – for example, by estimating how many fewer Canadians would be affected by floods or forest fires due to identified measures.
A discussion paper released today also suggests some things that could be included in the government’s adaptation plan: relocating people from high-risk areas; standardizing the emergency warning system, expanding the network of first-aiders investing in equipment and designing roads, railways and other infrastructure to make them more sustainable.
Although the discussion paper does not go into so much detail, it points to the role of the health care system and nature-based climate solutions, such as planting trees or restoring vegetation. There is also no mention of how much it will cost to make the necessary changes or whether the public or private sector will bear the costs.
The Insurance Bureau of Canada, a trade association that represents the industry, estimates that it will cost the Canadian economy about $ 5 billion a year to deal with the severe weather damage caused by climate change.
Craig Stewart, IBC’s vice president of climate change and federal affairs, said those costs would have to be shared by insurers, banks, property owners and governments.
“The challenge is too great for governments to take on their own,” Stewart said. “It does not need to be taken over by governments.
The consultations end on July 15th, and the government intends to publish its final strategy in the autumn.
“A good national adaptation strategy will identify the specific things that need to be done,” said Ryan Ness, director of adaptation research at the Canadian Climate Policy Research Institute.
Ness said the strategy should identify flooding as one of Canada’s biggest climate change risks and one of the areas that requires immediate investment.
Such a strategy would set out a “game plan”, he said, which could include information on which communities face the highest risk of flooding and which will face the highest risk in the future due to climate change, while offers concrete solutions.
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