To inform planning for future urban development and climate change adaptation, the City of Saskatoon completed a pilot project to assign measurable value to its natural assets. The Natural Capital Asset Valuation pilot project generated an inventory of local natural assets, identified the specific ecosystem services they provide and assigned financial value to those services. The project, which received funding from the Municipalities for Climate Innovation Program (MCIP), provided valuable information for the management of Saskatoon’s natural assets.

Read this case study to understand how assigning measurable value to natural assets can inform municipal strategies for asset management and climate change.

What was the aim of the project?

A municipality’s green infrastructure—the water, soil, plants and animals that provide various services to residents—is largely made up of its natural assets, or natural capital. Within Saskatoon’s city limits are more than 1,400 wetlands, a portion of the South Saskatchewan River, grasslands and forest or shrublands. These natural assets provide important services to the community but have not traditionally been recognized for their value. As a result, they may not be included in municipal strategies for asset management or managing climate change risks.

The City of Saskatoon needed a way to assign measurable value to its natural assets, enabling planning for future development and for climate change impacts. The city tackled the Natural Capital Asset Valuation pilot project to evaluate the ecosystem services provided by the city’s natural assets and measure their financial value. Through the pilot project, the city set out to develop an accounting and reporting framework, create an inventory of natural assets, assess their vulnerability and complete a valuation.

What steps were involved in the project?

The pilot project had three phases, completed by municipal staff with assistance and input from internal and external subject matter experts. While the municipality had originally intended to use accounting metrics—such as life cycle costing, maintenance costs and replacement costs—to value natural assets, the plan changed due to the departure of the team member with the expertise to establish those metrics. Staff realized that the accounting framework originally proposed, whose application would have been a first in Canada, was too ambitious. The project was reframed, moving from a detailed accounting framework to a simplified one focusing on ecosystem services.

In the first phase, the city worked with the Meewasin Valley Authority, a non-profit organization, to compile an inventory of natural assets. The project dealt only with natural assets larger than 2.5 ha in size and located within the city limits to keep the project scope manageable and to leverage key existing partnerships within that area. The city chose two natural assets for the initial detailed valuation portion of the project: the Small Swale, a glacial channel scar that connects to the South Saskatchewan River and includes a native grassland and wetland, and the Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area, which consists of wetlands, native grasslands and forest. The two assets included a representative mix of habitat types, have been studied previously and have been discussed often in council in relation to ecosystem vulnerabilities and nearby development.

The second phase involved identifying the specific ecosystem services that would be used for the valuation of the two chosen natural assets. To do this, the city drew guidance from a number of sources, including the framework set out by the United Nations in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity initiative and discussions with subject matter experts. An advisory committee with internal and external stakeholders helped to identify ecosystem services, collect data and review the final report. In this phase, the city—through an extensive consultation process—also completed a vulnerability assessment to determine the climate change risks facing the natural assets in its inventory.

In the third phase, the city used the value transfer method to assign value to the ecosystem services identified. This involved reviewing literature and consulting with a diverse group of subject matter experts to find values established for similar ecosystems in other studies. The priority was to first use any values already established within Saskatchewan; for example, values from Saskatchewan were obtained for nutrient removal and wetland/grassland carbon sequestration. If unavailable at the provincial level, the team then sought data from Canada (e.g. for cultural services) as well as from a global ecosystem service valuation database (e.g. for the supporting services value for wetlands). The city completed a full valuation of the two natural assets selected for this project and extrapolated the results to the other assets in the inventory, calculating average value per hectare.

What was achieved?

A core benefit of the project was increased awareness and appreciation of ecosystem services as well as greater understanding of the knowledge gaps that must be addressed to properly value and manage Saskatoon’s natural assets.

The work yielded a number of technical and operational findings, such as the amount of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) stored in the soil and biomass of the city’s natural assets, the recreational services provided by key natural assets and the identification of at-risk areas to be prioritized for asset management planning.

The city was able to assess the annual financial value of the ecosystem services generated by the two assets evaluated in the pilot, as well as their habitat value in financial terms. The project also roughly estimated the total annual value of the natural assets in the city’s inventory: $48.2 million per year.

Overall, the project was the first step toward the implementation of a valuation system for the city’s natural assets. The natural asset inventory completed for the project established a baseline for the ongoing identification of significant natural assets within city limits. Although it wasn’t possible to set up a full valuation framework using accounting metrics, the project increased the city’s knowledge and expertise enough to enable a high-level cost-benefit analysis for managing natural assets.

Insight and lessons learned

• There is value in getting started, even when circumstances are not ideal: Although the city did not have all the data or expertise needed, the process of creating the inventory and completing the pilot valuation laid the groundwork for further progress.
• The use that will be made of project outputs should inform the choice of project methodology: In the end, the simpler method the city adopted yielded results that were at the right level of detail for this initial step.
• Lack of federal accounting standards can limit the ability to value natural assets, depending on internal municipal capacity and readiness: Natural assets are not yet a reporting requirement under Public Sector Accounting Board (PSAB) standards. Without PSAB guidance, it can be difficult for Canadian municipalities to establish consistent standards for financially valuing natural assets. This posed a challenge for the City of Saskatoon (where buy-in was not universal across the corporation) and contributed to the decision to use the value transfer method.
• When assigning numerical value to ecosystem services, it’s important to include the caveat that the numbers are not complete: The project team faced information gaps and the challenge of extrapolating values from other studies—and ultimately knew that all the values established were just estimates and that the totals were under-valued.
• Stakeholders and experts should be involved as much as possible from the beginning: Input from internal and external subject matter experts and stakeholders with different views on ecosystem services (including cultural services) helped define and value those services.
• Time constraints and limited data may impact the level of detail that is achievable: The short time frame for completing phases two and three of the project, and the limited data available on some of the services provided by the natural assets, contributed to the city’s decision to transfer values from other studies of similar areas rather than establish its own method for calculating the value of natural assets.
• Staff turnover and departmental silos can impact project scope: The scope of the project had to be altered following the departure of a key staff member. Departmental silos and varying states of readiness also limited the city’s capacity to assemble a multidisciplinary team with the full range of expertise (as well as a centralised data bank) needed to complete the project as planned.
• Learning from other municipalities contributes to success: Knowledge shared by other municipalities, through publications and a webinar hosted by the Municipal Natural Asset Initiative, helped staff define and scope the city’s natural assets.

"You can’t always wait for every piece of information to be in place before you start. The main thing is to get started and keep the ball rolling, while identifying gaps along the way."

– Twyla Yobb, Watershed Protection Manager, City of Saskatoon

Next steps

Incorporating accounting metrics into natural asset valuation is a longer-term goal that is linked to the development of national standards through the Public Sector Accounting Board. Until such a time, the City of Saskatoon is moving ahead with building its knowledge about ecosystem services and taking steps to incorporate the valuation into the management of natural assets.

The city’s Corporate Asset Management Plan (2019) and the Green Infrastructure Strategy (2020) are the main documents through which the team will further its work on natural assets. Under these strategies, city staff will request funding in 2022 to develop management plans for natural assets—although COVID-19 may affect the availability of funding.

The recognition of natural capital is also influencing changes to the land use designation process, and the natural asset inventory will be used to inform future city Sector Plan amendments. The inventory will identify natural assets that the city may wish to conserve and will provide preliminary boundaries for consideration in the planning process. 

The city has been working with Meewasin Valley Authority, which maintains the riverbanks of the South Saskatchewan River, to explore how to move forward with management of the natural assets in the inventory.

By the numbers

Related resources

City of Saskatoon’s Natural Capital Asset Valuation Pilot Project

Contact

Twyla Yobb
Watershed Protection Manager, City of Saskatoon
twyla.yobb@saskatoon.ca

This project was part of the Municipalities for Climate Innovation Program (MCIP), a five-year, $75 million program funded by Infrastructure Canada and delivered by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM).

The City of Montreal’s Rehabilitation of the Pointe-Saint-Charles industrial park project is the 2020 winner in the brownfields category of FCM’s Sustainable Communities Awards.

The Pointe-Saint-Charles industrial park is built on part of a 123-hectare former landfill site. When contamination from the site was observed in the Saint Lawrence River, temporary containment and pumping measures were put in place until a more permanent, sustainable solution was identified. Now an impermeable barrier prevents further leakage, and an innovative treatment process is being used to remediate the site.

Project creates permanent barrier while toxins are removed

Since the project site was used as a landfill for 100 years, the contaminated material was as deep as 16 metres. To fully stop contaminant migration into the Saint Lawrence, the project team built an impermeable cement-bentonite wall to permanently block the flow of groundwater and associated contaminants and hydrocarbons. To remediate the brownfield site, water is pumped from a network of wells and directed to the appropriate treatment method for the type of contamination. This process is designed to limit the use of raw materials and generate less waste.

Remediation of the brownfield improves the area for residents, businesses

The environmental impacts of the project are being carefully measured to ensure the groundwater levels remain similar to what they were before the impermeable barrier was built, and to monitor contamination levels in the water being pumped. The system has the flexibility to automatically adjust the pumping rate as well as the treatment process. In addition, the project contributes to improving the living environment in the business park as part of the City’s urban development plan.

By remediating the site, the City will be able to improve residents’ access to the Saint Lawrence by redeveloping an expressway into an urban boulevard along the river and adding a bike path connecting the downtown area to the West Island and the South Shore. Over 200 trees will be planted on the site to foster ecological diversity and migratory bird nesting. With these improvements to make the industrial park more appealing, the City hopes to attract new businesses to the area, and in the coming years the City will be able to sell several lots, both economic benefits of the project.

Technical challenges led to innovative solutions

One of the challenges the project faced was the presence of ammoniacal nitrogen, which can be toxic to wildlife and contributes to deteriorating health of waterways. Few treatments exist, and the most common one is sensitive to changes in temperature, pH and effluent. The innovative struvite precipitation treatment that the project team used is less sensitive to change and produces a salt composed of nitrogen, phosphorus and magnesium that can be used as fertilizer, creating a virtuous circle. It is a new technology that can easily be replicated in other communities.

Another challenge the project faced was the construction of the barrier wall itself. Extensive investigative work and detailed plans were required to mitigate the risks of building among waste materials in an urban area with sensitive underground infrastructure, such as fibre optics.

The City of Vancouver wanted to better understand the needs of city residents who are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change—specifically extreme heat and wildfire smoke. To do so, it partnered with Evergreen, a non-profit organization, to engage groups whose voices are not often heard in public decision-making on climate change. Seniors, low-income citizens, those with physical and mental health conditions and people who are homeless, are more likely to be exposed to climate hazards and are less able to adapt to climate change. By engaging these groups, Evergreen was able to produce practical recommendations that will inform the city’s current adaptation measures and feed into the next update of its Climate Change Adaptation Strategy, strengthening the strategy’s equity component. The project was part of the Municipalities for Climate Innovation Program (MCIP).

Read this case study to learn how engaging with marginalized community members can help you develop better municipal climate adaptation strategies.   

What was the aim of the project?

Although Vancouver was one of the first cities in Canada to adopt a climate adaptation strategy (in 2012), the city recognized that it still needed to learn more about vulnerable populations and address equity more deliberately within its climate work. In 2017, Vancouver partnered with Evergreen to consult with city residents who are most vulnerable to heat and poor air quality, in a project funded by MCIP. The aim was to better understand the challenges, needs and preferences of these groups and use that information to inform the city’s climate adaptation planning, policies and actions and its extreme heat response. The research and consultations addressed three main topics: current experiences of climate change, concerns over future risks, and priorities for addressing climate change impacts.

What steps were involved in the project?

The planning and implementation of the project proceeded in two main phases. In Phase 1, Evergreen did a literature review of adaptation solutions in North American cities that address the needs of vulnerable populations. The project report includes 13 detailed examples as well as the full list of solutions. They then developed a stakeholder engagement plan in partnership with local community service organizations. After identifying key principles for engagement, Evergreen developed a menu of options that could be customized for each group, and drafted questions for interviews and group sessions—all in consultation with the city.

In Phase 2 of the initiative, Evergreen conducted the engagement activities, starting with interviews of staff from local community service organizations to obtain context and advice for community engagement. The interviews focused on the major climate issues faced by their constituents, current adaptation strategies, priorities and possible solutions for helping their constituents with climate adaptation.

The next part of Phase 2, which took place from June to November 2019, involved guided discussions with nine groups of community members, and customized surveys with 306 community members at local events. Evergreen engaged 546 people in total, including homeless and marginally housed individuals, people living in supportive housing, residents of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, people with low income, people with disabilities, women, LGBTQ people and seniors. The discussions also included people who spoke languages other than English, veterans and newcomers.

These engagement events were used to gather input on the lived experiences of vulnerable groups and work with the groups to identify the most helpful tools, programs and strategies. Each activity was customized to meet the specific socio-cultural needs and interests of the particular group and events were offered in five different languages. These events were built around activities and topics that the groups were already interested in and were held at familiar locations. For example, one group of seniors liked to go for walks, so Evergreen organized an urban forest walk through neighbourhood parks to observe signs of climate change and discuss how the seniors coped with extreme heat. Another activity gathered input from participants through a carnival-themed spinning wheel at a community block party.

What was achieved?

The process yielded valuable insights about factors affecting vulnerability of residents and their current challenges and behaviour when dealing with heat and smoke. Much was learned about their needs in relation to matters like indoor and outdoor cooling areas, education and awareness, transportation and access to water.

With this feedback, Evergreen prepared key recommendations for the City of Vancouver in a number of areas. These recommendations included topics such as engagement strategies, the design of public and green spaces, options for funding and resourcing, optimizing cooling rooms and clean air shelters, building design and policies, and public drinking water and washrooms. Evergreen also highlighted the importance of outreach and communication and integrating principles of reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples.

Notable insights included the value of tailoring adaptive features to reflect the way vulnerable groups use public spaces—such as increasing tree canopies and other sources of shade in places where people stand in line for food and services. City staff also learned more about where people spend their time during heat waves, including public buildings and arenas—and that people who are homeless may visit malls to cool off, but are not always welcome there. This information will help to build the business case for funding public cooling spaces. The consultations also revealed that it may make sense to design segmented solutions for different groups and prioritize those with the greatest need. For example, each group uses cooling spaces differently: seniors prefer quiet, which may not be compatible with the needs of residents with children. People who are homeless need places to store their belongings and may be accompanied by pets.

Insight and lessons learned

• Consultation with community agencies is an important step in designing appropriate engagement activities: Stakeholder interviews with frontline staff provided context and informed the development of engagement activities for each community.
• Seeking input on communities’ lived experiences supports effective planning: The quotes from residents and the statistics about their behavior and needs have proven to be powerful when communicating with senior management—for example, they can help improve plans relating to heat response and provide justification for specific interventions.
• Proper engagement and outreach takes time: Initially, the project was planned to last for six months, but it ultimately took about a year—and would have benefitted from an additional year. This would have allowed more time for all the project steps as well as a chance to get feedback from groups about the usefulness of proposed interventions.
• The seasonal timing of climate adaptation conversations matters: Interviews with city staff and partner organizations started in October 2018. It was difficult to get input on issues related to extreme heat and wildfire smoke when people were focused on preparing for winter; the community engagement was therefore planned for the next summer.
• Customized engagement yields results: The engagement activities and questions were targeted to reflect the socio-cultural values and interests of each community. This attracted people who don’t normally participate in traditional meetings or surveys and resulted in more in-depth feedback. Offering multiple pathways for engagement was a key to success.
• Tailored adaptation solutions for different groups can help to address equity concerns: It quickly became apparent that the very diverse targeted population wasn’t a monolith, both in terms of how individuals currently experience the impacts of heat and smoke, and in terms of how they might make use of adaptation solutions in future.
• Unusual suspects can support fostering resilience within vulnerable communities: Building managers can be important conveyors of information to the residents they interact with and can also support the effective and safe operation of buildings to better manage heat.

“The project’s recommendations will improve our response. For example, by catering to different groups who use cooling centres, or by placing trees and awnings in places where people are lining up for services and gathering—these are really tangible things we had not thought of before.”

– Brad Badelt, Assistant Director, Sustainability, City of Vancouver

Next steps

City staff have reported on the outcomes to council, and in February 2020 the consultation results and recommendations were presented to the City of Vancouver's Climate Change Adaptation Steering Committee. The presentation was well-received, as were some of the practical suggestions, such as the idea of adjusting drinking water fountains to have a higher water arc, making them more hygienic.

Timing issues meant that the community input was not gathered in time to feed directly into the 2018 update to the city’s Climate Change Adaptation Strategy. However, the recommendations are beginning to shape and improve the city’s current adaptation actions, for example relating to thermal comfort in non-market housing, urban tree canopy and cooling rooms. In the summer of 2020, the city set up temporary shaded areas in outdoor spaces where people could gather and located a series of cooling centres based on input from the consultations.

The project’s recommendations will be incorporated into the next update of the strategy, which happens every five years. The feedback will also be used to inform updates to other city plans: most notably the city-wide Vancouver Plan, but also sector specific strategies (relating to health and housing among others) and heat response plans. Because of the shift to online engagement platforms due to COVID-19, the city has not yet reported back to the community on the actions taken in relation to their feedback, but plans to do so at in-person gatherings in the future.

By the numbers

Related resources

• City of Vancouver’s Climate Change Adaptation Strategy
• Evergreen’s full project report
• Evergreen’s project page

Contact

Brad Badelt
Assistant Director, Sustainability, City of Vancouver
brad.badelt@vancouver.ca

This project was part of the Municipalities for Climate Innovation Program (MCIP), a five-year, $75 million program funded by Infrastructure Canada and delivered by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM).

The City of Vernon, BC, Drainage Infrastructure Prioritization Plan is the 2020 winner in the asset management category of FCM’s Sustainable Communities Awards.

In recent years, the City of Vernon, BC, has been challenged by climate-related events, including flooding, landslides and wildfires. To mitigate future impacts, the City applied a climate change lens to evaluate the vulnerabilities of their drainage network. This enabled them to prioritize their flood mitigation planning process.

City used asset management approach to evaluate drainage system

The City of Vernon is located in the North Okanagan region of BC, where climate change projections show increasing precipitation and more frequent storm events that include heavy rain. By applying an asset management approach and assessing their drainage infrastructure through a climate vulnerability lens, the City developed a risk assessment framework, mapped overland water flow paths and developed a prioritized list of drainage projects that can be incorporated in the City’s capital planning.  

Detailed topographical imaging used to show water flow paths

To collect the information they needed to assess risk, the City partnered with a provincial initiative to capture LiDAR data (a digital mapping tool) for the entire Okanagan Lake watershed. This let them affordably access the data they needed to calculate the most likely water flow paths from the moment a drop hits the ground until it reaches a receiving body of water. By modeling a once-in-a-hundred-year rainfall event, the City predicted flooding and related impacts on infrastructure.  

Outcomes include protecting watershed and optimizing infrastructure investments

Almost all stormwater drainage in the City flows into creeks that lead to Okanagan Lake, and these streams have been shown to have poor water quality. The Drainage Infrastructure Prioritization Plan identifies and prioritizes works that will prevent further impact on the watershed and other natural assets, as well as critical infrastructure assets such as roads. Infrastructure that may be affected by climate change in the years to come is identified as higher priority, such as within environmentally sensitive areas, or proximal to areas of higher population. Overland flow paths through steep slopes that have the potential to cause erosion are also high priority for protection or improvement. Overall, the plan will help the City direct funds to projects that provide multiple benefits and reduce the highest risks. By linking the economic impact of drainage infrastructure failure to risk, the City can make better-informed decisions about infrastructure investments and the risks to service delivery.    

Data collection and management proved challenging

With nearly 5,000 individual storm sewer segments and 16,000 unique overland flow routes in the city, managing large amounts of data proved to be the project’s biggest challenge. The project team developed a methodology that combined GIS data with information from available reports and designs in order to estimate flow rates. While the method did not capture the subtleties of detailed hydrologic modelling, it was adequate for the comparative assessment required. Finding topographic data that covered the study area was another challenge, which the project team overcame through its partnership with the Okanagan Basin Water Board to capture LiDAR. In the future, the City expects to face challenges related to overland flow routes. With a high level of impervious areas in the city already, the city will have to inform residents and developers about how water moves through the region and work together with them to restore natural flow paths and protect existing ones.