How climate change is changing Canada – and how to make our communities more resilient

Climate change will make Canada look and feel different by the middle of the century and possibly sooner.

The question is whether we choose now to ready our people, industries and land in ways that allow us to define that landscape ourselves, maintaining – and in some cases even improving – our quality of life and economic competitiveness.

Monday’s release by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of its latest report on rising global temperatures will highlight the urgency of this action. It will tell us what we need to know in a country that experienced record-breaking temperatures last year. Deadly heat waves, devastating floods A whole town on fireThese impacts are already being felt in a variety of ways and will only grow.

This will make it clear that we must reduce climate change as much possible by implementing economic transformations that reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

But even in the very best-case scenario – which, by international consensus, would contain the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, up from about 1.2 C today – we would still have to reckon with more extreme weather and disasters.

Based on current trends, limiting the rise to 2C is a more realistic (and perhaps still optimistic!) goal. Canada is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, and this will make it more difficult to contain the increase to 2 C.

There is a growing recognition that building resilience to climate changes cannot be left behind in slowing it down. Both must be done. That was a theme at last fall’s landmark UN COP26 climatesummit in Glasgow, and the federal government is In the midst of development Canada’s first national adaptation strategy.

But it can’t just be about waiting for governments to come up with answers. Decisions foisted on communities to address future dangers – from large infrastructure projects to new rules around land use – are liable to be met with resistance if Canadians aren’t engaged from the ground up. Push strategies must be replaced by a pull strategy.

This means that we need to empower the public to make resilient choices. Canada’s geographic expanse and diversity means different corners face vastly different impacts. People need to have easy access to information about the risks in their area when deciding where to live, build, invest, or make lifestyle changes. And they need better education – from the public and private sectors – on how to safeguard against climate impacts.

However, we should also have the opportunity to imagine a Canada that is more resilient to climate change.

How can cities be designed to be more resistant against floods and excessive heat How can we improve our relationships with nature, agriculture, and the environment? How can we all be there for one another when disaster strikes?

There are so many possibilities. The more we look into the future, then the more creative ideas will be required.

There are many examples of resilience innovation being cultivated in Canada and other countries. Now is the time for us to take these lessons on a larger scale.

Health: ‘Things need to be overhauled’

At the world’s greenest hospital, a low-energy ventilation system circulates air that has been warmed with modular heat pumps and cooled with natural refrigerants. Antimicrobial fabric is used in the production of reusable uniforms. All waste is dealt with on-site.

Located in the Nordic region of Europe, Grønnköpingkið Hospital is a model of adaptation. The hospital can reduce its dependence on supply chains and energy consumption, which gives it a better chance to withstand extreme weather events caused by climate change. If the facility uses less energy, it will have a longer backup power generator.

If Grønnköpingkið seems too good to be true, that’s because it is. It’s a fictitious, digital creation, designed by the Nordic Centre for Sustainable Healthcare, headquartered in Sweden, to highlight the technologies and approaches already in use in some hospitals.

“Everybody wants a visionary,” said Daniel Eriksson, the centre’s founder. “But the fact is that there are already solutions that exist today. There are proven concepts.”

Canadian hospital executives and policy-makers at all levels of government are increasingly realizing the need to not just reduce emissions from the health sector, but to adapt to the threats associated with the level of global warming that’s already baked into our present and future.

At last year’s UN Canada was among 50 countries who signed up to a World Health Organization pledge for climate-resilient health systems. The move acknowledges the risk that climate change presents, from increased heat-related illness that could overwhelm emergency services to wildfire smoke, which could close operating rooms, high winds and flooding that could shut off supply chains, as well as the potential for severe health consequences.

In a recent report on the health of Canadians in a changing climate, the federal government said the overwhelming majority of health care facilities across the country aren’t doing enough to prepare for the risks related to climate change.

This is the case of British Columbia’s past year.

The 911 system was jammed in June by the once-in-1,001-year heat dome that had settled over the province. Nearly 600 people lost their lives. It laid bare the realities of the urban heat island effect, in which artificial surfaces such as concrete absorb and re-emit the sun’s heat more than natural landscapes do, causing localized warming. It could be mitigated through a greater tree canopy.

Then, in November, flooding of key B.C. highways and bridges meant dozens of people had to be airlifted to receive life-saving dialysis treatment – a consequence of the trend toward centralized health care.

“Adaptation has been neglected for so long,” said Dr. Melissa Lem, a family doctor in Vancouver and incoming president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. “Things need to be overhauled.”

In recent years, extreme weather events have posed a challenge to health care systems all over the world. The Texas Medical Center in Houston is perhaps one of the most striking examples of what can go wrong, and how to adapt. TMC is the largest hospital complex in the world and includes more than 20 hospitals and research centers.

2001’s Tropical Storm Allison caused critical infrastructure failures across multiple hospitals. Hundreds of patients were evacuated. Research losses were in excess of US$2 billion due to the storm.

In the two decades since, TMC hospitals have invested tens of millions of dollars to try to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen again. The campus was equipped with a combined heat and power plant, which eliminated the need to rely on the local energy grid. To reduce flood risk, the power system was also raised.

New Orleans’ Hurricane Katrina of 2005 exposed the fragility in hospitals built decades earlier. As indoor temperatures rose, Katrina saw staff using furniture to break windows. Although the windows were designed to be openable, they had been closed decades ago for safety reasons.

The Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston was inspired by the New Orleans experience. Robin Guenther, a New York-based architect in health care, was responsible for resilience planning and sustainability goals for the hospital. It opened in 2013.

As Ms. Guenther put it, hospital executives “had seen the social media footage from hospitals during and following Katrina and thought, ‘We don’t want to be in that movie.’”

Spaulding had several critical issues that were not done the right way. All the mechanicals – including backup diesel generators, boilers and air ventilation equipment – were put on the roof or on a penthouse level above the hospital floors. The building was raised to a level higher than the once-in 500-year flood level. This exceeded U.S. federal standards. Ms. Guenther also said that windows can be opened with a key.

One of the most important things To be more resilient to climate change, health care leaders can understand the vulnerabilities of their facilities. The Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care The climate change resilience checklist is a tool that can be used to do this. The checklist is used by hospitals all over the world and at least eight Canadian provincial governments. It focuses primarily on risk assessment, risk management, and building capability.

Neil Ritchie, the coalition’s executive director and a former hospital executive in Nova Scotia, said he hopes more hospitals will use the tool and make the necessary changes. “We’re starting to understand that this is more immediate than ever,” he said.

The University Health Network in Toronto pioneered the resiliency tool many years ago.

Ed Rubinstein, the network’s director of environmental compliance, energy and sustainability, said vulnerabilities were exposed and infrastructure upgrades are under way. Toronto Western Hospital and the adjacent Krembil Discovery Tower are expected to have the world’s largest raw waste water energy transfer system by next year. New generators will also be installed at the hospital. The enclosure will be located on a slightly elevated platform in a garden.

“More than ever before,” Mr. Rubinstein said, “people are motivated to do this.”

– Kathryn Blaze Baum, Environment Reporter

Agriculture: ‘The most urgent thing is to make a plan’

B.C. has led the country for the past ten years and a half in adaptation planning. With its Climate and Agriculture Initiative BC, B.C. has been a leader in agriculture adaptation planning.

The federal and provincial governments finance the program. This program brings together climate researchers, policy-makers, and farmers to map the specific risks faced in each region. The program recognizes that farmers are subject to different risks depending upon their location and type of operation. It also provides specific strategies for farmers to adapt to the changing conditions on their farms.

“It’s a good example of what needs to be done at a national scale,” said Sean Smukler, a professor in the faculty of land and food systems at the University of British Columbia.

It’s the type of detailed, long-term planning that doesn’t exist yet on a national level – at least with the urgency necessary to meet the challenge, Prof. Smukler said. “The most urgent thing,” he said, “is to make a plan.”

The B.C. program’s 2015 plan for the Fraser Valley, for instance – the area hit hardest by floods last year – had specifically warned of risks of flooding, both from extreme precipitation and snow melt. It advised farmers to plan ahead for possible crop loss, the relocation of livestock, as well as the possibility of flooding roads and disruptions to supply chains.

Even so, those plans didn’t predict the severity of last year’s weather events – and the fact that they’d arrive so soon, said Prof. Smukler. “And with that the planning and investment has not been enough in magnitude, or speed,” he said.

In many cases, that means dramatic investments in infrastructure – by farmers on their properties and by governments. All aspects of infrastructure, including water storage, drainage networks, dikes, seawalls, and dikes, need to be reviewed with an eye towards the future. The long term.

“These are kinds of things farmers can’t do on their own,” he said. “This has to be a societal investment.”

There have been some improvements. Twenty years ago, when University of Guelph climate researcher Barry Smit gave presentations to policy-makers, or to farmers about adapting to climate change, the question he often heard was: “But is there really climate change?”

At the very least, the conversation he’s met with by farmers now is: “Yes, [climate change]It’s here. What can we do about it?”’

“[Back then], People were looking to go back to normal,” he said. “I think now it’s pretty obvious we’re not going back to ‘normal.’”

Prof. Smukler claimed that the COVID-19 Pandemic experience helped to speed up the process.

The shortages experienced in early 2020 helped to illustrate to the general public the importance of building resilience into the agricultural system – preserving local food production, and protecting the country’s food sovereignty.

“When we talked [before] about agriculture, peoples’ eyes glaze over and they think it’s only a small sector of our economy,” Prof. Smukler said. “[They’d think] ‘We don’t really need to deal with this, we’ll just get our food from somewhere else.”

But the pandemic has helped people understand what happens when the ‘somewhere else’ is affected, too.

“If we don’t deal with our own capacity to adapt, then we’re trusting that California’s going to deal with its problems,” he said. “Otherwise, we’re going to be eating something other than the lettuce during the wintertime.”

– Ann Hui, National Food Reporter

Flooding

Climate-related flooding is a prime example of the need to communicate with Canadians about the risks they face and to find common ground in reorganizing communities to prevent disaster.

Even as catastrophes such as last year’s devastating rainstorms in B.C. offer a terrifying preview of what lies ahead – and the government-funded Canadian Institute for Climate Choices predicts a Fivefold increase in flood damages to homes and other buildings by mid-century – many people facing the greatest danger have been kept in the dark. The country’s flood maps are woefully out of date and difficult to access, and data is not made clearly available in real estate listings or other places it could help with informed decisions.

Placing such information at our fingertips – which the federal government has pledged to do, through updated flood maps at least – will make for some unpleasant realizations about what the future holds and how to prepare for it.

These preparations will include costly and disruptive renovations to protect our buildings and, on a larger scale investments in critical infrastructure like flood walls. They could even include the relocation of entire towns and neighbourhoods on land that is becoming unsafely flood-prone.

However, engaging people in at-risk communities in building flood resilience may also include discussing ways to make our homes and communities visually appealing, improve quality life and reduce social inequality.

Take into account the growing trend towards green infrastructure to capture rainwater.

The idea is to strategically position absorbent greenery where there is high runoff from heavy rains and melting snow. This could be rain gardens that are made up of deep-rooted plants placed in shallow depressions on public or private land. Greenery on the roofs of larger buildings and houses. It can be as ambitious and transformative as transforming the look and feel for entire cities throughways, or as simple as installing rain barrels outside homes.

Canadians can learn from European countries like the Netherlands and the Netherlands about how to embrace this approach on a large scale.

Philadelphia is currently spending more US$2-billion on its 25 year Green City, Clean Waters program. It aims to use primarily nature to manage rainfall over 10,000 city acres. It was launched in 2011, when the city was required by U.S. environmental regulations to address its sewer overflows – a growing problem for many cities whose sewer systems handle both storm and sanitary waters.

In an interview, Paula Conolly, who helped lead the strategy for Philadelphia’s water department and is now director of the Green Infrastructure Leadership Exchange, said the city was drawn to the green approach because it promised to be less expensive and less disruptive than just building more traditional water infrastructure. It also would bring “bonus value” to communities.

These bonuses go beyond flood prevention. They also include an attractive cityscape, improved air quality, and mitigation of the increasing threat from extreme heat. The benefits are especially evident in poor areas, which tend have higher flood risk and less green space than the affluent. This adds to social equity.

The program has been sufficiently successful thus far, at least in its most measurable goal of reducing the amount of untreated waste entering the city’s waterways, to have encouraged U.S. cities such as Washington D.C. to go down similar paths. But it’s also been a learning experience, from which others can draw.

“Probably the biggest advice is not to underestimate the total culture shifts that are required to make something like this happen,” Ms. Conolly said. That includes a shift in thinking across multiple city departments more accustomed to traditional infrastructure projects, stronger relationships between government and residents to generate uptake and get greenery where it’s actually wanted, and ensuring the new green spaces are well-maintained rather than allowing them to become eyesores that create backlash.

Canada has some promising initiatives, but they are still in their infancy. Vancouver’s Rain City Strategy, adopted in 2019, is probably the most ambitious of them. It aims to have 40 per cent of the city’s impervious surfaces covered by green infrastructure by 2050. The initial projects range from rain gardens to green roofs and tree planting to the most extreme. However, the initial spending of $10-million per annum on 60 community projects is still a small amount compared to some U.S. cities.

Other Canadian cities are also starting to experiment. Kitchener, Ont., has partnered to offer education, training, and modest incentives for hundreds of early adopters interested to install rain gardens or other forms absorption at their homes.

It’s about “showing people they can take individual action,” said Emily Amon, who runs water programs for Green Communities Canada, which works with Kitchener and other cities on such programs. She said that the more private property is used, the more support will be shown for larger public investments in green infrastructure.

Green infrastructure will not do the heavy lifting in flood-resistance. However, it could help to reduce the need for other, less attractive ways of doing that. It could help us all to make better informed decisions about the risks we face.

– Adam Radwanski, Climate Policy and Politics Columnist

Nature and Conservation

Climate change is not the only threat to Canada’s wildlife, but it is becoming a more significant one. Changes in forests, tundra and freshwater and marine ecosystems can all tilt the balances for certain species and threaten to undermine national conservation goals.

This is particularly evident in the North, which is the region of Canada that is experiencing the fastest and most rapid warming. There, the transition includes more intense wildfires, the “shrubification” of the Arctic as woody plants migrate north of the treeline, and the widespread muddying of rivers and lakes as shorelines that are no longer supported by permafrost erode and collapse, threatening fish populations.

“We can see the front line of the crisis here, where our species are really struggling,” said Chrystal Mantyka-Pringle, a conservation planning biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada who is based in Whitehorse, Yukon.

For biologists and land use planners alike, the future of Canada’s natural landscapes is becoming more dynamic and less certain. There is also a growing recognition by governments and other stakeholders that nature is not a side issue, but a crucial pillar for developing the country’s overall climate resilience. This has made it important to think strategically about actions that have multiple benefits both for nature and for humans.

“We’re seeing a needed change in the conversation,” she said. “The idea is, if we’re thinking long term, we can build resiliency back in the system and restore biodiversity.”

The discussion revolves around conserving what remains and expanding conservation measures in larger areas. That means taking into account the need for plant and animal species to shift their ranges in response to climate change – particularly in a south-to-north direction or from lower to higher elevations. It means paying more focus to corridors that link wild places in a way that prevents species populations becoming isolated.

“That’s something we really have not done a very good job with here in Canada,” said Kai Chan, a professor at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia, who added that forestry and agricultural practices that enable wildlife movement “need to become the norm.”

Researchers are also working to identify areas that will act as “climate refugia” – places where local and regional geographic factors will help buffer them against climate change and allow them to act as available habitat when other areas become less favourable.

In the boreal forest, which accounts for a large fraction of Canada’s total land area, potential climate refugia include wetlands, mountains, large lakes and coastlines – all of which should be considered when allocating areas for future protection.

Conservation groups say the payoff is that protecting nature also aligns with Canada’s climate goals. The southwestern shores of Hudson Bay are an example of an area that meets the criteria to be a natural climate refuge. It also sits atop a vast storehouse of carbon in the form of peat, which has the potential to exacerbate climate change if it’s disturbed. Canada can also meet its emissions targets by protecting the region from development.

Dr. Mantyka–Pringle pointed out that one of the positive side effects of climate change in the North is that some areas are showing signs of resilience. For example, although many streams and lakes are experiencing increased water temperatures and erosion issues, others are not. This allows researchers to identify the factors that contribute to resilience and prioritize areas for protection.

Canada’s challenge is to balance the need for long-term thinking with an economic system that has historically been focused on resource extracting on shorter timelines. This is one reason why many researchers and environmental groups support a shift toward Indigenous-led conservation – which stresses the connectivity of life and very long time horizons.

Conservationists may consider more direct measures such as assisted migration to move trees and other species out of their natural ranges to areas where climate models indicate they will be more able to survive the future. More controversial still is the concept of rewilding – bringing back lost species using archived DNA to help complete an ecosystem.

Dr. Chan said one potential candidate for such an extraordinary measure would be Steller’s sea cow, a marine species that was once a top grazer in the kelp forests of the Pacific Northwest but was driven to extinction in the 18th century.

The return of sea Otters to the same region is a success story for ecology, and has caused problems for local shellfish collectors. What’s missing from the picture is sea cows, whose grazing habits once shaped the ecosystem in a way that afforded shellfish more protection, Dr. Chan said.

“We have become quite convinced that if you could restore sea cows to these systems that it could make them much more productive and much more resilient to a range of different kinds of impacts,” he said.

– Ivan Semeniuk, Science Reporter

This article is part No Safe Place (a Globe project lasting a year on climate adaptation in the wake a series climate-related catastrophes in Western Canada).