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Calgary's climate course

What the city's resilience strategy means for citizens and the services they use

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Despite releasing a resilience strategy in 2018, the City of Calgary has yet to declare a climate emergency alongside other Canadian cities like Edmonton, Vancouver and Halifax. PHOTO: Pixabay

Municipalities across Canada have been declaring local states of climate emergency since 2019, but Calgary’s City Council seems content, for the time being, with its Climate Resilience Strategy.

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This strategy was approved on June 25, 2018, and outlines Calgary’s actions to improve energy management, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and implement risk management measures to respond to the ever-changing environment. It looks to reduce city-wide emissions to 80 per cent of 2005 levels by 2050. 

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The 104-page report contains three sections: the strategy itself, as well as the Climate Mitigation Action Plan and the Climate Adaptation Action Plan. 

 

Bistrin Opacic, a director-at-large for the Glenbrook Community Association in Calgary, thinks municipal governments should be responsible for communicating the risks of climate change to their citizens.

 

“The number one thing cities can do is educate people in whatever way they can,” he says.

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Local governments have a significant stake in the matter of the climate crisis because of how close to citizens they operate, often regarded as the most accessible level of government to the public.

 

“So many of the things we need to change or to improve to deal with climate change are actually in the hands of municipalities,” according to Keith Stewart, a senior energy strategist with Greenpeace. 

 

“You can, kind of move things through a municipal government in a way that you just can't provincially or federally.”

 

Below is a breakdown of the report’s sections, as well as their respective goals and purposes.

 

Climate Resilience Strategy

 

“The aim of the strategy is to maximize the resilience of Calgary in the context of a changing

climate guided by local and global policy settings and specific mitigation and adaptation

actions to address climate change.”

 

The city plans to roll out the resilience strategy in two phases. The first phase was the introduction of the strategy, following plans to ensure that Calgary can continue to service its citizens efficiently and effectively while collaborating with industrial, commercial and institutional sectors to transition to a low-carbon economy.

 

The second phase aims to provide Calgarians with options to manage the impacts of severe weather events, improve energy management and reduce emissions. This phase will also continue the implementation of actions identified during phase one. 

 

Climate Mitigation Action Plan

 

The plan “identifies the role and actions of The City [of Calgary] to ensure services, enabling activities, regulations and operations are provided to reduce emissions and enable the low-carbon economy.”

 

It identified five themes and 10 programs that encompass the largest areas of impact for emissions and energy, and specific outcomes for each of these areas.

 

The five themes identified in the report are: buildings and energy systems; transportation and land use; consumption and waste; natural infrastructure; and leadership. 

 

Some of the programs include creating energy performance standards in new and existing buildings, low emission vehicles, consumption and waste reduction, and becoming a leader in climate change mitigation.

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The upward trend of Calgary's greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 to 2017, broken down by sector. GRAPHIC: Zach Worden

Climate Adaptation Action Plan

 

“The Climate Adaptation Action Plan for Calgary identifies the risks and vulnerabilities from severe weather events to City services and operations. It involves an iterative process of risk assessment,” according to the report.

 

The adaptation plan also includes a number of themes and programs. Its five themes are a series of actions to manage climate risks in Calgary, including:

  • Reducing Calgarians’ vulnerability to the impacts of climate change

  • Strengthening the built environment to ‘weather the storms’

  • Maximizing the services provided by natural systems

  • Preparing for increasing risks of flooding, drought and declining water quality

  • Preparing for our climate-altered future through collaborative decision making

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Results from a poll of 500 Calgarians in the 2019 Climate Resilience Strategy update. GRAPHIC: Zach Worden

One Year Later

 

In 2019, the City of Calgary released an updated report for the Climate Resilience Strategy and Action Plans.

 

This report identified that of the 244 total actions from the city’s initial strategy presented the previous year, 36 were completed, 166 were in progress and 42 had yet to start during the first year of implementation.

 

Also included in the report was the result of a survey of 500 Calgarians who shared their opinions on four climate change-related questions.

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Many of the initiatives that were completed or underway at the time existed prior to the creation of the strategy or could have been easily modified to include climate action, according to the report.

 

A statement from the City of Calgary climate panel said that many of the “internal projects did not include substantial climate goals that engaged external partners. Some climate actions appeared to be siloed efforts that risk not being implementable because the project did not consider the full scope of climate goals and implementation factors.”

 

New projects were also unable to get off the ground because of the city’s resource constraints, despite having stakeholders prepared to contribute to these projects. The initiatives were more complex with a high likelihood of having a significant impact. 

 

The panel came up with six recommendations for Calgary entering 2020:

  1. A focus on implementation

  2. Prioritizing for the delivery of desired outcomes

  3. Ramping up partnerships

  4. Aligning climate actions with other city initiatives

  5. Communicating effectively and regularly with stakeholders and the public 

  6. Establishing priorities and clear, precise targets and performance measures

 

The City of Calgary did not release an updated report in 2020, in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the next one expected in May 2021. Since the 2019 update, the city has not revised its strategy to address climate change and has yet to commit to declaring a state of climate emergency.

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