Examples of LCR interventions illustrating benefits for adaptation and mitigation as well as co-benefits, funding and financing mechanisms, and key considerations.
Canadian local governments face a perfect storm of limited capacity, aging infrastructure, and climate change impacts. Leaders and staff are experiencing increasing public pressure to ‘future-proof’ communities from the projected impacts of dangerous climate change by both reducing emissions (mitigation) and preparing for impacts such as flooding, sea level rise, and heatwaves (adaptation). While mitigation and adaptation have often been planned separately, there are major benefits to integrating them, using a lens referred to as low carbon resilience, or LCR. LCR approaches have the potential to streamline climate action resources, identify and align policy, and pursue co-benefit opportunities. In short, applying an LCR lens on planning and decision-making across diverse sectors increases opportunities for achieving the transformative, systemic levels of change needed in the 21st century.
