Tip sheet: Start resourcing your municipality for climate adaptation

This tip sheet will help you answer:  

• How do we prioritize climate adaptation when our staff is juggling multiple roles?
• How do we balance competing priorities and make the most of limited staff and financial resources?
• How can we find efficiencies as we undertake climate adaptation work?
• How do we collaborate across departments? 

Getting started

Build an understanding of why climate adaptation matters.

To gain support and funding for climate adaptation in your municipality, you first need to help people understand why climate change matters, how it connects to their responsibilities and what can be done to tackle it. Supporting this understanding is not a one-time effort, as different groups within your organization and community may require specific messaging or approaches to engagement depending on their experiences, concerns and priorities.  

Building understanding involves identifying who your audience is and what they care about, and then communicating with them about the connection between climate change and the things they care about. Your primary audience should be decision makers so you can get the people and financial resources needed for the work. Depending on your municipality, this may include managers, directors or potentially council.  

For support with building your and your team’s understanding of why climate adaptation matters in your community, use GMF’s Talking it through: Guide for local government staff on climate adaptation and check out the customizable PowerPoint tool.  

Involve others.

Many hands lighten the load and can lead to great results. Involve others by finding people who can contribute their skills, knowledge and resources to your municipality’s climate adaptation efforts.  

How can your organization prioritize climate adaptation efforts when staff are already juggling many responsibilities?  

Here are some tips to help you get started.

1. Identify and develop climate adaptation champions.

The most effective climate work is often led by people with a strong interest and desire to learn rather than those in specific roles. Individuals who are passionate about climate adaptation can help find information and funding, drive initiatives, motivate others and ensure that adaptation remains a priority. When empowered to do so, these climate adaptation champions can help your municipality build a coalition of actors and make a lot of progress.  

Finding champions within your organization involves reaching out across departments to identify people who have worked on climate or climate-adjacent projects. Look for individuals who have shown interest in sustainability or environmental issues.

Empowering a climate adaptation champion(s):

• Provide encouragement. Let your climate adaptation champion(s) know that, even if they have other core responsibilities, this is important to the community and that their work to contribute to climate adaptation is encouraged.
• Endorse the role. Giving formal recognition to the role of the climate adaptation champion(s) can help give them needed authority when engaging other staff on climate adaptation work.
• Connect with decision makers. Bring together the climate adaptation champion(s) and decision makers within your organization. This can help ensure that their ideas and initiatives receive the necessary support.
• Provide training and resources. Support the climate adaptation champion(s) in accessing training programs and resources such as workshops, online courses or conferences related to climate adaptation as this will enhance their knowledge and skills. For example, some resources currently available are:
  • The Green Municipal Fund’s Communities of Practice
  • The Green Municipal Fund’s Climate resilience training from GMF Partners  
  • The Government of Canada’s Climate Services Support Desk
  • The Government of Canada’s Applying Climate Literacy Foundations course  
• Offer incentives and acknowledge contributions. Consider offering incentives such as recognition awards, professional development opportunities or additional resources to motivate and reward your climate adaptation champion(s). Additionally, publicly recognizing the contributions they make can help them maintain their enthusiasm for the work.  

2. Develop and work in partnerships.

Many organizations, institutions and other stakeholders are now involved in climate adaptation, directly or otherwise. Collaborating with these groups can help fill gaps in your internal capacity and provide additional support for identifying and implementing adaptation initiatives.  

For example,

• Academic institutions can support with expertise and resources for research, data analysis or adding additional personnel, such as interns, to your adaptation efforts. Your information needs can often make an interesting project for students.
• Community organizations such as NGOs or local groups can connect with different people in your community, build local awareness and support, and help implement climate adaptation actions.
• Conservation authorities may offer expertise in critical areas such as risk evaluation, watershed management, flood prevention and ecosystem health.
• Regional and provincial governments offer funding, policy direction, technical guidance, tools, and regional coordination.
• Local and regional First Nations, Métis, Inuit and urban Indigenous Peoples communities and organizations have important Indigenous Knowledge systems, stewardship practices and other expertise that can guide adaptation efforts and strengthen their outcomes.

Additional details and guidance are outlined in the following resources:

• Tip sheet: Start collaborating on municipal climate adaptation includes tips on developing and working in partnerships.
• Tip sheet: Start preparing for climate risk assessment and adaptation plan and Tip sheet: Start assessing your local climate risks provide support for involving others in your climate adaptation efforts. 

Balance various community needs. 

Balancing community needs involves making decisions on how to allocate the resources you have to accomplish your community’s objectives and needs—both immediate and long-term.

How can you prioritize climate adaptation alongside other immediate community needs?  

Here are some tips to help you get started.

1. Identify the initiatives (plans, processes or projects) that your municipality will be undertaking over the next few years.

What activities or projects have already been identified as an immediate need in your municipality? Examples might include:

• infrastructure repairs or upgrades
• updating your municipality’s official plan
• implementing asset management practices
• training a new council after a local election
• adapting services to meet the needs of changing demographics and vulnerable populations (e.g., seniors, youth)

2. Identify connections to climate adaptation.

Review initiatives to identify connections to climate adaptation. For example:

• Infrastructure improvements, such as upgrading stormwater systems to account for changes in precipitation patterns, can reduce flooding risks now and help the community adapt to climate change.
• Your community plan and zoning can identify natural areas for protection, such as wetlands that help your community be more resilient to flooding or extreme heat.
• Data collected for asset management, such as an asset inventory and condition assessment, can support improved climate risk assessments.
• Operations and maintenance activities, such as regularly clearing culverts, can help your drainage and transportation services remain reliable when facing storms and flooding.  

In assessing these initiatives, you may find that meaningful actions supporting your community’s climate resilience may not always be explicitly climate-related.

Tip sheet: Start climate adaptation planning includes examples of climate adaptation initiatives that align with municipal work.

3. Identify and communicate co-benefits. 

Where there is a connection between existing activities or initiatives and climate adaptation, there is the potential for co-benefits—activities that both achieve immediate needs and contribute to longer-term benefits, or that have climate adaptation benefits and contribute positively to other areas of work. Often, activities or initiatives can be changed in small ways to achieve even greater co-benefits. For example:

• Regularly maintaining ditches and culverts as part of normal operations builds climate resilience by helping to reduce flooding during extreme rain events.
• Increasing urban tree cover can reduce extreme heat risk and support biodiversity.
• Implementing programs to retrofit homes and enhance the environment in vulnerable neighbourhoods (e.g., with improved insulation, permeable pavements and urban green spaces) can make these areas more climate-resilient while also addressing public health and safety concerns in marginalized communities.

It will be important to identify the co-benefits and then clearly communicate them to the decision makers who must balance both immediate and long-term community needs.

Tips for communicating co-benefits include:

• Highlight immediate benefits.
• Link to long-term goals.
• Identify opportunities to modify the activity or initiative for additional co-benefits.
• Use clear and accessible language.
• Share success stories.
• Engage the community to discuss what the co-benefits might look like for them.

Additional resources on communicating about climate adaptation topics can be found in:

• ICLEI’s Climate Communications Toolkit
• Re.Climate’s Climate Communications Playbook 

Next steps

Resourcing your organization internally is an important part of building the core of your climate adaptation efforts—people, partnerships and governance. For more information on ways to strengthen people, partnerships and governance, explore the following:

• Tip sheet: Start collaborating on municipal climate adaptation
• Tip sheet: Start building council momentum for climate adaptation
• Tip sheet: Start involving diverse voices in municipal climate adaptation 

Explore the Climate-Ready Communities Assessment Tool for additional insight and support. You can use the tool to evaluate your existing climate adaptation efforts, pinpoint areas for improvement and chart a clear plan for strengthening your community’s adaptation efforts.