This article summarizes key insights from a recent webinar exploring equitable climate adaptation. An expert panel discussed examples, approaches and strategies around local climate adaptation through an equity lens, sharing insights into local climate priorities and resources to support community climate adaptation projects. 

Many municipalities are beginning to centre equity in their responses to climate change. Equitable adaptation involves understanding the history and context of the systems we work in—and recognizing that many are systems of privilege and inequality. It means finding new ways of thinking about things and new ways to do them.

 
Doing so means building relationships: engaging, collaborating and partnering with equity-owed groups to ensure they get what they deserve.  

Emmay Mah, executive director of Toronto Environmental Alliance, suggests that municipalities look at the “partnerships they need to have in place with community agencies, organizations and neighborhood groups to protect residents in extreme situations, but also to build community climate resilience over time.”

  
But this work can take a long time, and as Ewa Jackson, managing director of ICLEI Canada, points out, it isn’t always an easy fit with the way municipal projects are typically designed, funded and administrated.

  
At the same time, the climate is lending a real sense of urgency to get these projects. 

“These are no longer hypotheticals,” says Rachel Mitchell, then-senior manager of programs at Clean Foundation. We're having to deal with climate impacts at an increased frequency, certainly with the severity of the impacts as well.”

 
Brad Badelt, then-director of sustainability for the City of Vancouver, says equity-focused climate adaptation is an area that the city is still learning about, but one that it’s already “playing catch-up” with too.  

Seeing adaptation through an equity lens 

Mah says it’s critical that the well-being of the communities that are directly and/or disproportionately impacted by climate change are placed at the centre of municipal climate adaptation plans.  

What does that look like? Badelt describes a tree-planting project in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood as “a small but really concrete example of shifting practices to focus on adaptation measures where they are most needed.” 

 
The area is dominated by concrete and asphalt, making its residents very vulnerable to the urban heat island effect during Vancouver’s now regular heatwaves. Over a few years, the city shifted from planting as many trees all over as possible everywhere to focusing more on areas like this one, where planting is much more difficult.  

Planting here is also more expensive, because they city has to remove concrete to make tree wells. “There's a lot of maintenance involved, but obviously the need and the benefits are much higher here,” says Badelt.

  
But equitable adaptation projects don’t always have to be about physical infrastructure. Social infrastructure is equally important. 

  
It's really important that local governments take up the responsibility of properly resourcing frontline community infrastructure - Emmay Mah, Toronto Environmental Alliance 
 

Leveraging existing social infrastructure

  
Mitchell says a good way to engage with equity-owed groups is to first engage with the organizations that work closely with underrepresented groups, even when there’s not an obvious climate connection. “Maybe it's the United Way or another group that's working with under-housed individuals,” she says. 

  
Mah agrees, suggesting that a good place to start is by looking at existing social infrastructure: mutual aid networks, community support models and neighbours helping neighbours. These structures, Mah notes, are prime tools for multi-solving during a crisis.  
Mah outlines some research Toronto Environmental Alliance did (with support from the City of Toronto and the Atmospheric Fund), which found community organizations that had already done some work on preparedness or capacity-building for emergencies were able to pivot much more quickly to support residents in a crisis. 

For example, community volunteers in Toronto’s St. James Town’s high rises had started training to be prepared for an extreme weather event before the pandemic. When it hit, they were able to spring into action, reaching out to residents in their buildings who needed support, going floor to floor to deliver food and checking in with isolated seniors.  

After seeing how effective these community responses were, the City of Toronto committed to dedicating resources for local support networks when it adopted its new net-zero strategy, recognizing them as cornerstones of social and physical infrastructure.   
Mah says they’ll keep working work with the city to look at how these can be integrated into climate resilience plans, calling it “a work in progress.” 

Making adaptation project design and funding more equitable

If we want municipal adaptation projects to be truly equitable, there is still a lot about them that may need to change.

Jackson points out that municipal adaptation project design can be at odds with a focus on equity, which is based on shifting the balance of power. Shifting power requires building trust, which takes time, but many municipal projects face accelerated timelines. Building relationships in a time crunch is close to impossible—especially with groups with long histories of inequity and marginalization. 

“Bringing people together to collaborate only in phase one or phase three when you need something is, by definition, transactional,” says Jackson. “Equitable climate adaptation or equity in anything can't be transactional. There needs to be a minimum degree of collaboration. Otherwise, it's just consultation, which is very different than equity-building.” 

Jackson suggests using more flexible models, like the agile project design method, but recognizes that funding models may need more agility to match.  

Another solution is finding ways to get over some of the legal hurdles of empowering community groups to do more. Again, leveraging social infrastructure that is already in place. This thought was echoed by the other participants. 

“It's really important that local governments to take up the responsibility of properly resourcing frontline community infrastructure”, Mah says. “And that translates to funders of this work as well.”  

Watch the related webinar

Featured tools and resources:

Case study: Climate adaptation through an equity lens

FCM anti-racism, equity and inclusion efforts 

ICLEI Canada, Equitable climate adaptation: Considerations for local governments

Tessa Watkins, Wheel of privilege (available in English only)

Climate Atlas: Indigenous knowledges 

Indigenous Climate Hub, Climate change adaption (English only)

City of Vancouver, Sea2City design challenge (English only)

Community Resilience to Extreme Weather (CREW), Neighbourhood heatwave response project (English only) 

Toronto Environmental Alliance (TEA), Sowing the seeds for local climate leadership: A learning guide for resident engagement using a connected communities approach (English only)

Toronto Environmental Alliance (TEA), Community hubs and community-based responses to the COVID-19 crisis: Lessons for building a more equitable, resilient and climate-safe Toronto  (English only)

Climate Caucus Handbooks (English only)

Government of BC, Systems-based approaches for climate resilient infrastructure (English only) 

HealthyPlan.City

Climigration Network, Lead with listening: A guidebook for community conversations on climate migration (English only)

This article summarizes key insights from a recent webinar exploring how climate data can inform and support municipal adaptation initiatives. An expert panel discussed what climate data is and shared their experiences in applying it to municipal adaptation initiatives, showing us how municipalities are uniquely positioned to use data to respond to the changing climate and strengthen their adaptation efforts.  

Building municipal infrastructure and other assets used to be reasonably straightforward. Local governments relied on sound methods and materials, followed building codes, allowing communities to enjoy the fruits of these labours for years to come. 
Now, if municipalities want to build physical assets that withstand future climate impacts, they will have to do more. Traditional building codes are based on historical climate values, when weather patterns were cyclical and somewhat predictable. That doesn’t reflect today’s reality.  

“There are building zones emerging in the southern parts of the country with climates that haven't necessarily even existed in Canada in the past,” says Casey Clunas, a policy analyst at Environment and Climate Change Canada. 
If we want to build for a changing climate, we need to use new tools. 

Which climate data tools should you use? 

Clunas works with the department’s Canadian Centre for Climate Change Services. She says municipalities make up a large portion of the centre’s users, because they manage so many of the things that are most impacted by climate change. 

 
The centre offers guidance, training and resources that help users understand and use climate data for decision-making around adaptation. One of those tools is ClimateData.ca, a portal with high-level, high-resolution climate data for the whole country. 

The centre is just one source that municipalities can turn to for climate data. While Clunas recognizes that over saturation of quality climate data resources online can lead to overwhelm, she suggests a slight reframe of this challenge: “it highlights the fact that you have many options.” 

 
Sara MacRae, manager of climate and energy for the County of Dufferin (about an hour north of Toronto), and her team worked with ICLEI Canada’s Advancing Adaptation Program to develop the county’s adaptation strategy and action plan. They used the BARC (Building Adaptive and Resilient Communities) framework, a five-step planning tool designed to help local governments prepare for climate change impacts by evaluating how likely a set of climate events are to happen and the potential consequences if they do.

 
We use data-driven tools in conjunction with more qualitative and narrative-based methods of learning about how our communities experience the impacts of climate change - Jillian Prosser, City of Calgary 

Dufferin County used climate data and modelling in tandem with local expertise and experience. “And wherever possible, we employed an ensemble approach,” says MacRae. This means running multiple climate models simultaneously, which can provide a more accurate projection than using a single model for things like future, annual, and seasonal temperatures and precipitation. 
 

Similarly, the City of Calgary used about 40 different indices to build its Community Climate Risk Index. Jillian Prosser, who led the city’s Climate Adaptation Team at the time of the webinar, says this tool helps the city to understand its top climate hazards and how they could affect its most vulnerable people, communities, locations and assets so the city can respond accordingly. 
Calgary also uses climate data alongside other, complementary methods.

  
“We use data-driven tools in conjunction with more qualitative and narrative-based methods of learning about how our communities experience the impacts of climate change,” says Prosser.

  
This work includes organizing community working groups and engaging with people to understand they’re impacted and how they feel they could be better supported in a changing climate. 

Using climate data to design with co-benefits in mind 

Their complementary approaches have helped both municipalities prioritize adaptation projects that centre on social equity. High on the list for both was building community resilience hubs. 

MacRae says the county’s resilience hub pilot project reflects its goal to strengthen social infrastructure to better manage climate-related health and safety risks for residents by improving community connectivity.

 
In “everyday mode” the hub would serve as a multifunctional community space. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, it will be this,” MacRae says. “It could offer bookable space event areas, a bike repair station and basic first aid supplies, for instance.” 
When a crisis hits, the hub would shift into “disruption mode.” It could become a family meeting spot, a place to distribute emergency supplies, a place to communicate critical information and more.  

Finally, during “recovery mode,” the hub would continue to support the community by offering mental health programming, community services and resource distribution to help people recover and rebuild after a disruption. 

The building design itself will also be shaped by climate data, as Dufferin County is expected to experience prolonged periods of extreme heat. MacRae says they’ll look at incorporating features like shaded areas, drinking water access and misting stations. 
Meanwhile, the City of Calgary prioritized building a community resilience hub in its Sunalta neighbourhood. 

 
“We started to understand which components of vulnerability are key to addressing climate risk in this community,” Prosser says. In Sunalta that vulnerability translates to a high percentage of racialized people, unemployment, recent immigrants and land covered with paved surfaces.  

The hub will be a purpose-built facility with a commercial kitchen, café and programming spaces. It will function as a social enterprise, which means the income it generates will go back into the community.  

Prosser describes how climate data guided the building design, with the hub’s heating and cooling systems geared to meet future demands. This climate-ready approach includes modifications to the building envelope, energy system, roofing and exterior modifications. Greenhouse gas mitigation and adaptation measures were also embedded in the design. 

“Rather than creating this hub for climate that we no longer have, it’s being built for the climate that we’re inheriting,” she says.

Watch the related webinar

Featured tools and resources:

Case study: Climate adaptation through an equity lens

City of Calgary, Community Climate Risk Index (English only)

Climate data for a resilient Canada

ICLEI Canada, Building adaptive and resilient communities

Are you preparing to submit an Adaptation in Action implementation project application?

Watch this webinar recording to learn how to strengthen your submission. This session shares practical guidance informed by recent application rounds to help you navigate a competitive funding environment. You will hear directly from GMF outreach and funding experts on how to present your project clearly and avoid common challenges.  

In this session, we explore questions such as:

• What are the key elements of a strong application?
• If you have several project ideas, which one should you prioritize for this funding?
• What does meaningful engagement and collaboration look like?
• What types of projects can this funding support?
• How will your project be evaluated?

While the session briefly touches on feasibility studies, it is focused primarily on helping communities strengthen their applications to implement on-the-ground climate adaptation solutions.

Speakers:

• Agathe Moreau, Outreach Advisor, Community Canopy and Adaptation
• Taranjeet Kaur, Advisor, Funding – Adaptation

The webinar was delivered in English with French simultaneous interpretation (SI).  

FCM’s Local Leadership for Climate Adaptation initiative is delivered through our Green Municipal Fund and funded by the Government of Canada. 

This toolkit is coming soon.

Urban trees are everywhere—lining streets, shading playgrounds and beautifying neighbourhoods. Sustaining that canopy, however, requires more than just hitting planting targets.

That’s why municipalities across Canada are developing urban forest management plans (UFMPs): strategies that define how trees are governed, maintained and protected over time.

Our guide, ‘Creating an Urban Forest Management Plan For Your Community’, supports this work, helping municipalities set clear, long-term goals for their urban forests. 

With a background in business management, Miles Peart is the Manager of Urban Forestry at the City of Vaughan. He has led numerous forestry projects, including Vaughan’s first-ever UFMP; he describes the plan as a “playbook” that advances stewardship of “green infrastructure assets.”

Pulling from the Tree Cities of the World program, co-led by the United Nations, Peart outlines core pillars for urban forest governance: knowing your tree inventory—including location, species, size and more—setting an ordinance to govern trees in the jurisdiction, allocating adequate resources at the city-level to create and implement the UFMP, and establishing clear responsibility and accountability between staff.

A successful UFMP requires coordination between several municipal departments, from housing to transport. “There’s nothing better than the UFMP exercise to bring everybody together to highlight the importance of trees as assets,” Peart says. 
 

The pressures shaping urban forestry, from climate to housing 

Jeff Boone, Project Manager at the City of Saskatoon, has worked in urban forestry since 2006. He says that Saskatoon’s UFMP, approved in 2021, was developed largely in-house, with consultant support on tree protection and canopy targets.

Creating the plan was no simple matter; the prairies see major temperature swings—from plus to minus 40—and shifting weather patterns, where a single storm can wipe out thousands of trees.

As well as dealing with extreme weather, Saskatoon’s trees are mostly made up of elm and ash, Boone says. This lack of biodiversity poses a risk to the city’s canopy; Boone is particularly concerned about Dutch elm disease, a fungal infection clogging the trees’ water systems.

The pressures on the canopy are not only environmental. In Vaughan—one of Canada’s fastest-growing municipalities—another pressure is housing demand. Peart is candid about the tension: existing trees aren’t always in the right place when it comes to future developments — for example, they might stand in the way of a new sidewalk being installed.     “Our jobs are really to look after the trees for our grandchildren,” he says. “The decisions we make here today have to strike that balance between many competing priorities.”

How a community manages its urban forest will determine whether future generations inherit neighbourhoods that are cooler, more resilient to climate risks such as flooding, and more supportive of public health and wellbeing.
 

Creating a strategic urban forest document that accounts for this “wide variety of circumstances” can be a challenge, Boone adds—but like Peart, Boone has found that UFMPs are a “very, very useful document in laying a foundation for internal departments working together.”

Thanks to Saskatoon’s UFMP, when Council approves a plan—such as an active transportation strategy—Boone’s team are more likely to be at the steering table from the get-go, fostering greater collaboration when it comes to tackling issues like building more sidewalks. While conflict remains inevitable, “working together at the outset can at least smooth the edges of the conflict a lot,” Boone says.
 

Equity depends on who is involved, and how

Successfully implementing a UFMP is no small feat, and it’s important to celebrate milestones. “[It’s] the best opportunity to engage with all kinds of stakeholders,” Peart says, from City councillors to residents to community partners.

Those community partners are critical to the sustainability of a UFMP.

“Don’t just draw a box and think, ‘this is what urban forest planning is,’” says Peyton Meters, Engagement Manager at pipikwan pêhtâkwan, an Edmonton-based Indigenous public relations and engagement agency. “Let that bloom and let those seeds get planted from the different partnerships you make.”

For Meters, that means moving beyond simply informing or consulting communities. Referencing the International Association for Public Participation spectrum, she encourages municipalities to work toward deeper involvement and collaboration, where residents are not only reacting to plans, but helping shape and carry them forward.

Meters adds that many communities are already running urban forest activities, and that low participation is often a reflection of how organizations engage with communities, and not whether people care. “Everything starts with relationship first, and then the work can happen next,” she says.  
 

Saskatoon offers a practical example. Boone explains that residents had previously been required to water city-planted trees placed in front of their homes during the first period after planting. As a recent UFMP outcome, the city removed that requirement “so we could create more equal access to that tree-planting opportunity,” he says.

The trees didn’t change, but the expectation did. By removing the watering obligation, the city reduced the burden on residents who might not have had the time or capacity to take that on.

Peart brings it back to basics. In municipal work, he says, staff are “in service to people”—not only to trees. Urban forest decisions, in that view, need to make sense in everyday terms: safety, public health, equity, careful use of tax dollars and resilience in the face of climate change.

Looking ahead, when it comes to creating UFMPs, Meters says that Indigenous worldviews encourage planners to think beyond today’s challenges. “We're not only thinking about what's going to be important for your municipality here and now,” she says, “but for the seven generations in the future.”     

The perspectives highlighted in this article are explored further in the webinar “Develop an urban forest management plan for your community’’, which features examples of how municipalities are building urban forests that are adapted to their communities’ needs. 

This article shares key takeaways from “Develop an urban forest management plan for your community,” a past webinar hosted by GMF.

Watch the webinar