Climate Adaptation
Caring for the planet, one neighbourhood at a time
- Deliver the city’s climate leadership plan, its electric vehicle and charging strategy, our zero-waste strategy and our mobility strategy
- Run regular hot- and cold-weather shelters and relief services
- Expand tree and native-species planting programmes
- Refresh the urban forest master plan, the tree protection bylaw and food security policy
- Require shore power for ships tying up at the outer wharf
- Teach households how to be ready for a climate emergency
- Strengthen local emergency response services
- Widen free transit services
- Find more parking bays for car share
- Work up a curbside management strategy
- Create incentives for households to upgrade their systems
- Finish the bicycle master plan
As the effects of climate change press harder, climate action plans have to widen to hold both mitigation and adaptation. We need to invest in cutting emissions and in coping with the impacts already being felt. The city has begun that shift, and the alliance will keep pushing the hybrid approach forward.
Carrying on with the city’s climate leadership plan will take us to an 80 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions and a move to fully renewable energy by 2050. Progress on the electric vehicle and charging strategy will grow the city’s charging network, speed up the adoption of EVs and open more electric mobility options. Public chargers in neighbourhood centres, at the curb and in parkades give drivers the confidence to switch, knowing they can charge near home or on the move. Our zero-waste strategy points the city toward a future where products and materials are avoided, reduced and reused rather than buried. And our mobility strategy sets out the values, policy positions, key projects and approaches that will shape transport here, identifying improvements in road safety, climate action, equity and affordability, and the fullest use of public rights of way.
Newer realities call for newer answers. We should press the province to write minimum cooling standards into tenancy law as extreme heat becomes routine, while locally we set up regular hot- and cold-weather shelters and relief services. At the same time the city can teach households how to prepare for a climate emergency, and strengthen local emergency response while working with the regional district on the regional side.
Active and alternative travel makes a real difference to the local climate response. Closing the free transit gap – the city already pays for passes for those aged 13 to 18, and would add a free programme for residents 65 and over – creates lasting change and gives people transit options for life, while the city keeps arguing for a province-wide programme that does the same. To draw drivers into shared-vehicle schemes we can designate more car share bays and increasingly reward development applications that include car share memberships and more shared cars. Further out, a curbside management strategy is needed to move past the idea that street parking is free of cost, impact or consequence.
The tree canopy and the healthy green space around it need stronger tree and native planting programmes, and the urban forest master plan and tree protection bylaw both need continual updating to keep pace with urban design and the densification we expect. Both documents should be living strategies, not fixed ones.
If the cruise trade here has a future, shore power has to be part of it. Internationally the industry has accepted, and in places embraced, the shift to shore power, and our port should follow. It is one step among many in a business that understands it must change if it wants to keep calling at small ports.
Incentives for individual homeowners, and for multi-family buildings, to upgrade their systems – heat pumps, for instance – would let people improve their own comfort in a way the whole street benefits from. Where those incentives go to landlords, protections will be needed so they do not turn into renovictions or steep rent rises. Bonuses in the form of extra density or faster processing could reward building green, without fossil fuels.
Over the past decade the city has put serious money into cycling infrastructure. Not every resident can make use of it, though, because of how far they travel or what their body allows. To help close that gap we can look at an e-bike incentive that puts active travel within reach of more people, while finishing the bicycle master plan.