This article summarizes key insights from a recent webinar on turning climate adaptation plans into local infrastructure projects. An expert panel discussed the challenges in moving from project planning to implementation, offering strategies, tools and insights for prioritizing projects, getting buy-in and securing funding.
Municipalities of all sizes across Canada are building climate adaptation strategies into their municipal plans. But many are finding that going from planning to implementation of tangible infrastructure projects can be challenging.
How do you know which projects to prioritize? Can you get buy-in for them? And how will you fund them?
These challenges can be even greater for smaller municipalities, which face the similar or greater climate risks but with fewer dedicated staff and less funding to address them.
Morden, Manitoba (population about 10,000) has been hit with flooding, drought and extreme heat in the same calendar year. As the city completes its climate adaptation plan, deputy city manager Shawn Dias says they’ll need to choose new projects carefully. "Knowing that we've experienced these extreme events and that we want to implement adaptation measures, it's now figuring out the priority—where we want to focus our efforts,” Dias says.
Using climate risk data to prioritize projects
Huron County, Ontario, also is no stranger to extreme weather, recently completed a community climate risk assessment.
Former climate change and energy specialist Derry Wallis says the county leaned heavily on risk scores when deciding to prioritize winter travel emergency preparedness as a first project.
“Because it was such a high risk, our public works team created a web page on the County of Huron’s website to showcase both access to county road data in real time as well as the provincial highways in rural areas,” Wallis says.
Climate hazard maps are another tool municipalities can use to help them focus their efforts. “You can think about which hazards have the greatest likelihood now, mid-century and end-of-century,” says Ewa Jackson, managing director of ICLEI Canada.
Jackson describes how ICLEI’s climate hazard maps look at extreme heat, flooding, permafrost thaw and wildfire hazards across the country. Working with modelers and climate scientists, they use historic data, publicly available mapping and future climate scenarios to assign a likelihood score. They’ve also designed a high-level climate risk assessment for localized projects or assets.
These tools are part of ICLEI’s Climate Insight platform. It includes other tools to guide municipalities through project realization, such as geospatial maps with datasets that can be layered, and a curated solutions finder.
As well as helping prioritize new projects, the data generated from tools like these can help build buy-in.
Co-benefits: Looking beyond the climate lens
“When it comes to convincing your council, getting staff on board and having all the pieces of the puzzle line up perfectly, another key piece is maximizing co-benefits,” says Rachel Mitchell, director of community climate initiatives for Clean Foundation.
Jackson also finds that focusing on co-benefits to be an effective strategy for getting projects approved and implemented. Projects that will improve quality of life while solving a climate problem are always good candidates.
Mitchell shares a case in point from Pictou, Nova Scotia. The community looked at how addressing climate risks like rising sea levels lined up with other community priorities, like redeveloping the waterfront in a way that supports local businesses, makes things more accessible for residents and encourages tourism.
“A clear prioritization that that looks at what the community needs beyond just the lens of climate change makes it a lot easier for councils to say, ‘okay, we will provide a percentage of funding,” Mitchell says.
Getting over the funding hurdle
You’ve prioritized a project, you’ve got buy-in—now you’ve got to figure out how to fund it.
Dias recommends being careful at this stage. Don’t put forward a project with a large portion anticipated from possible funding, because if you don't get that funding, the project dies.
Instead, he suggests that once a project has been prioritized it should be included in the capital budget. This way it’s clear that the project is going to move forward no matter what, although the hope is always that a grant will reduce costs for the municipality.
Everyone on the panel mentioned that finding and applying for funding is extra challenging for small municipalities, where staff often have to work “side of desk.” Wallis finds it helpful to follow closely the funding sources that you already know of for the project you have in mind, and to reach out to contacts who can share other sources you may not know of already.
Funding partnerships: Think locally, apply regionally
Everyone agreed that spending already limited time applying for funding that hundreds of other applicants also want feels counterintuitive.
Jackson suggests that one way around this is to form regional partnerships. Pooling resources and applying for a larger amount of funding can be more efficient for applicants—and it’s often more attractive to funders.
To this end, Mitchell suggests building relationships with neighbouring communities whenever possible. If that’s not possible, she says not to dismiss working with one further away. Partnering with a community a hundred kilometres away with a similar scenario can work too.
“It does make it a lot easier if you can pool those resources, talk to each other,” Mitchell says. “Then you’re a little less lonely navigating this space, and I think that makes a big difference.”
Watch related webinar
Featured tools and resources:
- Adaptation Actions to Implement Climate Resilience: A GMF resource to help municipalities identify actions to take to address climate risks in their communities.
- Climate Insight: A free online platform for Canadian communities to find relevant, actionable data and information on building low-carbon, resilient housing and infrastructure.
- Getting Ready to Finance Toolkit: Designed to help municipalities prepare resilient infrastructure projects for financing, it contains tools to identify and prioritize infrastructure projects and case studies of projects that can be done with innovative financing.
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