Enhancing Resilience in a Changing Climate
About the Program
The Government of Canada recognizes climate change as one of the most pressing environmental challenges facing the country. It is investing substantially across departments to address this issue. Efforts to date have focused primarily on mitigation and reporting, following the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in 2005, but there is now a widespread recognition of the need for greater focus on impacts and adaptation.
The goal of the Earth Sciences Sector (ESS) program on Enhancing Resilience in a Changing Climate is to apply geoscience and geomatics expertise to assist Canadians in understanding, preparing for, and adapting to the effects of changing climate on their communities, infrastructure, and way of life.
Program Vision
The program vision is to address priority needs for increased resilience of people, communities, infrastructure, and ecosystems in Canada, in areas where Earth Sciences Sector (ESS) expertise can be most effective, by:
- Working directly with stakeholders from key economic and natural resource sectors, communities, scientific and professional institutions, governments and industry, within an integrated risk assessment framework, to deliver geoscience and geomatics knowledge and expertise on climate-change impacts, adaptation, and mitigation;
- Contributing data and insights from climate-change research and monitoring to federal policy makers; to national assessment, reporting, and negotiating teams; and to the international community to improve understanding of the climate-change issue.
Estimates of the economic and non-economic costs of climate change to Canada are still in their infancy, but these costs are generally considered to be negative (NRCan, 2004, Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation: a Canadian Perspective). The return on investment is likely to be very high if we put resources now into research leading to proactive and precautionary adaptive measures, both to reduce losses associated with current climate variability, and to increase resiliency to future changes in climate. This view is supported by current and past assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and by influential stakeholders across Canada. As an example, strategic rezoning of a single coastal community based on a $100k climate-change vulnerability assessment will likely save $10s of millions in reconstruction and disaster-relief costs. Similar returns would be realized in numerous communities and in other sectors addressed by this program.
Projects
The program is designed to achieve the long term outcome that Canada's resilience to climate change is enhanced through effective adaptation strategies informed by Earth Sciences Sector (ESS) geoscience and geomatics outputs. The program logic model shows the three interlinked paths that will be used to achieve this outcome, each with its own short term outcome, project(s) and activities:
- Sectoral policy - and decision-makers use Earth science information to appraise the resilience of their sectors to climate change
- Practitioners incorporate earth science information in the identification and characterization of vulnerabilities to climate change and adaptation options.
- Science community advising climate change adaptation policy and decision makers informed by effective change detection and projection.
Logic Model
Issues
Primary Issue:
- Adapting to a Changing Climate
Context/Policy linkage
- Climate is changing. To be prepared and remain competitive, implement an innovative “Made in Canada” policy, emphasizing new technology, developed in concert with provinces and in coordination with other major industrial countries.
Key Performance Indicators
- number of adaptation strategies published each year that are based on NRCan impact assessments
- number of published vulnerability studies based on NRCan work
- number of adaptation measures adopted that acknowledge NRCan contributions and are deemed successful
Outputs
Economic resilience
- Assessment of climate change Impact on water-reliant sectors
- Adaptation options for agriculture, oil sands production, habitat management
Community Adaptation
- Criteria and methodology for assessment of vulnerability
- Documentation of vulnerabilities for stakeholders
- Learning, decision-making tools adapted for planning use
Advising Public Policy
- Regional assessments of landscape, ecosystem response
- National datasets and databases on landscape change
- Paleoenvironmental reconstructions for impact studies and to constrain models
- Reports, contributions to synthesis products and national, international assessments
Outcomes
Immediate Outcomes:
- Sectoral policy-and decision-makers use Earth science information to appraise the resilience of their sectors to a changing climate
- Practitioners incorporate Earth science information in the identification and characterization of vulnerabilities and adaptation options
- Science community advising adaptation policy and decision makers informed by effective change detection and projection
Intermediate Outcomes:
- Key economic sectors dependent on natural capital, implement adaptation strategies for a changing climate using Earth science information
- Vulnerable communities adopt adaptation measures that increase public safety, resilience and sustainability
- Effective adaptation measures are put in place by governments
Long term Outcomes:
- Canada's resilience to a changing climate is enhanced through effective adaptation strategies informed by ESS geoscience and geomatics outputs
Activities
Economic resilience
- Spatio-temporal assessments for energy, agriculture and northern ecosystem services
- Development of models, methodologies, databases
Community Adaptation
- Collaborative work with stakeholders in coastal, drought-prone and Arctic communities/regions
- Knowledge transfer to urban communities and the planning profession
Advising Public Policy
- Glacier and permafrost monitoring
- Paleo-reconstructions
- Climate, landscape & water change & modelling
- Knowledge transfer to government policy groups
- Reporting, contributing to national and international climate change impacts and adaptations programs
If you have any questions, or require more information, please contact us.