Advancing Nature-based Solutions

This report highlights the opportunities and challenges of advancing Nature-based Solutions (NbS) in Canada.

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LCR Implementation and Communications: Workshop 3

This report highlights the key lessons learned from ICABCCI Workshop 3 about implementing and communicating LCR within local government contexts.

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Natural Assets: A Low Carbon Resilience Approach

An analysis of best practices and proxy data for accounting for natural assets, such as wetlands, forests, and coastlines.

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Update: Paying for Urban Infrastructure in Canada

This 2019 report updates and supplements ACT’s 2015 report Paying for Urban Infrastructure Adaptation in Canada.

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Low Carbon Resilience Interventions: Case Studies

Examples of LCR interventions illustrating benefits for adaptation and mitigation as well as co-benefits, funding and financing mechanisms, and key considerations.

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Vancouver’s Water Narrative

This report investigates how far Vancouver has come in its efforts to update its water management methods, using indicators defining a “Water Sensitive City.”

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LCR Planning to Implementation: Workshop 2

This report summarizes ACT's second ICABCCI partner community workshop on approaches to developing low carbon resilience.

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ICABCCI Partner Community Criteria

Criteria used to co-select ACT's ICABCCI case study partner communities.

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ICABCCI Partner Community Profiles

This set of thirteen ICABCCI partner community profiles outlines each community’s progress and aspirations on adaptation and mitigation.

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Climate Change Adaptation Governance in BC

Climate change adaptation is the process of preparing for actual or projected changes in climate averages and extremes. It relies on interpretations and values...

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Policy Brief: Biodiversity and Climate Resilience

This policy brief outlines climate and other threats to biodiversity and explores the benefits of a regional green infrastructure approach.

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LCR Opportunities and Challenges in BC Communities

This report highlights key results from a survey of 12 local BC governments on the potential for low carbon resilience and summarizes conclusions and next steps.

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Concept: Biodiversity-Led Green Infrastructure

This concept note lays out three key steps local governments can take on regional collaboration to achieve benefits for biodiversity and low carbon resilience.

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A Mecca of Biodiversity-Led Green Infrastructure

This workshop report presents a vision of Metro Vancouver as a mecca of biodiversity-focused green infrastructure in 2050.

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LCR Integration Opportunities: Workshop 1

This report summarizes key learnings from ICABCCI's inaugural workshop, which brought together 12 diverse BC communities.

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LCR Statement: National Professional Associations

This joint statement from four of Canada’s leading National Professional Associations commits to providing national leadership on advancement of LCR.

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Green Waterfront Design Charrette Report

The Green Waterfront Design Charrette brought together design experts and staff from five British Columbia municipalities to explore how shifts in land use and build

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This report focuses on the key role professionals

This report focuses on the key role professionals play as change agents in climate action, and illustrates best practices for planning and implementation of LCR.

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Best Practices for Low Carbon Resilience: Phase 1

In the spring of 2018, ACT (the Adaptation to Climate Change Team) at SFU consulted with practitioners on emerging climate action needs in their professions.

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Canada’s Top Climate Change Risks

This Expert Panel assessment responds to two important questions from the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat: What are the top climate change risks for Canada, and

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Low Carbon Resilience in Canada’s Energy Sector

This paper explores the co-benefits of integrating adaptation and mitigation in the Canadian energy sector

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Climate Change Adaptation Governance in BC

This report summarizes the results of a workshop exploring the necessary components for climate adaptation governance in Canada, what roles and mechanisms are requir

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Measuring Progress on Adaptation & Climate

The mandate of the Expert Panel on Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience Results was to propose indicators to measure progress on adaptation reflective of the fiv

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Taking Action on Green Resilience

This report presents conclusions from a national workshop with local governments on integrating adaptation and mitigation at the 2017 Livable Cities Forum.

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Still Creek: An LCR Case Study

Climate change impacts such as flooding and extreme heat will increase and be costly for cities to manage. Supporting ecosystem health will be key.

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Masters thesis on coastal resilience options

Masters thesis exploring relative merits and trade-offs between soft (green), hard (grey), and hybrid (mixed green and grey) approaches to coastal flood resilience.

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Community Based Water Monitoring in Canada

This report presents survey results from hundreds of organizations across Canada.

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Climate Risk: Getting to Action

Designed to be a conversation starter, this report summarizes key examples of climate change challenges and solutions for selected professions.

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Coastal Flooding and Climate Change

This report summarizes the results of a series of three workshops with Crescent Beach, Surrey community members investigating responses to sea level rise.

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Transformative Climate Change Planning

This paper explores the importance of integrating adaptation and mitigation to achieve low carbon resilience (LCR).

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Ecosystem Services in the Columbia River Treaty

Masters thesis recommending a mechanism through which the parties could price ecosystem services in a modern Columbia River Treaty

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Vulnerability, Resilience, and Adaptation Concepts

Report on Coastal Cities at Risk workshop exploring vulnerability, resilience, and adaptation concepts and practice in the context of risks posed by climate change,

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The Climate Nexus

This ACT publication addresses the "perfect storm" gathering at the nexus of water, food, energy and biodiversity and proposes pathways to solutions.

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Paying for Urban Infrastructure Adaptation

Local governments in Canada are on the front lines of climate change but the cost of adapting is a barrier to implementation.

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The Columbia River Treaty: Past Present and Future

Report from workshop reviewing the history, purpose and scope of the Columbia River Treaty, evaluating where it stands today and options for improvement.

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Valuing Ecosystem Goods and Services in the CRB

Long-term sustainability of the Columbia River and its communities depends on ecosystem function. This study reports best estimates of current and future values.

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The Columbia River Treaty: A Primer

This ACT-authored book clearly explains the nature of this complex water agreement between Canada and the US and key considerations for its impending update.

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A Border Runs Through It: CB Ecosystem Function

Study on the role of institutional cooperation between the US and Canada under the Columbia River Treaty in support of flow regimes that sustain ecosystem health.

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Climate Change and Canada's Crops & Food Supply

This report lays out key climate change challenges facing crops and food supply and summarizes policy recommendations for adaptation.

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Climate Change Adaptation and Water Governance

Climate change is increasingly affecting the way water moves through the hydrologic cycle and Canada must act on adaptation.

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Adaptation: Linkages with Social Policy

This report for the federal Policy Research Initiative outlines threats and opportunities posed by climate change for social policy and outlines pathways forward.

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Climate Change Adaptation and Extreme Weather

Climate change is driving increasingly extreme weather events, threatening severe damage to the infrastructure and systems that support life in Canadian communities.

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Climate Adaptation and BC's Low Carbon Economy

It is imperative that we significantly reduce our ecological footprint and move to a low carbon, resilient economy.

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Climate Change Adaptation and Biodiversity

This report lays out key climate change challenges to BC’s biodiversity and policy recommendations for action.

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Climate Adaptation: Planning for BC

This paper summarizes key principles of adaptation, explores climate challenges for nine top-of-mind issues, and makes recommendations to help advance action.

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About ACT

ACT at SFU was the first university-based think tank in North America dedicated to climate change adaptation and remains the only one focused on a comprehensive suite of adaptation research topics, spanning biodiversity, extreme weather, energy, water security, crops & food supply, sea level rise, health risks, population displacement, the nexus between water, food, energy and biodiversity, infrastructure adaptation funding, green infrastructure, and low carbon resilience (LCR) – the integration of adaptation and emissions reduction.

ACT’s mission is to bring leading experts from around the world together with professional practitioners, industry, communities, NGOs and all levels of government to explore climate change risks and advance opportunities for sustainable adaptation.

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Reports

ACT publishes research reports identifying policy opportunities and resources designed to bridge from theory to action in support of sustainable adaptation. The ACT database allows you to access all of this content in one place.

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Projects

  • Low Carbon Resilience

    12/10/2019

    Low carbon resilience (LCR) is a lens that coordinates adaptation and mitigation strategies in planning, policy, and implementation processes. LCR strategies can have co-benefits for health, equity, biodiversity and community livability.

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  • Nature-based Solutions

    12/05/2019

    ACT has been working since 2017 to develop research insights into ways climate adaptation can benefit biodiversity, and vice versa. Nature-based solutions are emerging worldwide as a low carbon, resilient option in urban and rural planning, and it's important that we begin to consider how these approaches can also be designed to benefit species struggling to survive and adapt in a changing climate. ACT is now embarking on the third phase of this work with a focus on regionalizing green infrastructure, which includes development of collaborative engagement activities and resources that will support advancement of low carbon resilience through strategic regional planning of nature-based solutions in southwestern BC.

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  • Core ACT Topics

    12/03/2019

    ACT was founded to study nine core topics that require climate change adaptation planning in Canada. Each topic was assigned a senior policy author and a team of graduate researchers, and featured research into climate change challenges and policy responses as well as workshops and other engagement and outreach. To date, ACT has released reports on five of the core topics - Biodiversity, Extreme Weather, Energy, Water Governance, and Crops & Food Supply. Work is currently underway with a variety of partners on the remaining four topics: Health, Sea Level Rise, Population Displacement and New Technologies.

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  • Coastal Cities at Risk (CCaR)

    04/05/2017

    From 2012-2016, Metro Vancouver was one of four international metropolitan areas, along with Manila, Lagos, and Bangkok, that took part in the $12.5-million research Coastal Cities at Risk network that ACT contributed to, funded by the Canadian International Development Research Council’s International Research Initiative on Adaptation to Climate Change (IRIACC).

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  • Columbia River Treaty

    Between 2015 and 2017, ACT completed significant work on the implications of climate change for the future of the Columbia River Treaty.

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Our Mission

ACT brings leading experts from around the world together with professional practitioners, industry, communities, NGOs and all levels of government to explore climate change risks and advance opportunities for sustainable adaptation.

About ACT