B.C.’s climate strategy has some gaps

The province released its long-awaited Climate Preparedness and Adaptation Strategy, which has actions on how British Columbia will invest in climate-resilience projects including floodplain mapping, wildfire prevention, and extreme heat preparedness until 2025.

The strategy has been in the works since 2018, and was supposed to be finalized in 2020, but was released in June. The development of the document was developed through six guiding principles, including nature-based solutions and emissions reduction. The actions in the strategy are grouped into four main pathways. 

One pathway focuses on partnerships, knowledge, and decision-making. Actions in this section include increasing climate awareness, considering climate change in decision-making, and reconciling with Indigenous Peoples. The goal is to collect more information and further understand how to enhance climate resilience in B.C. 

The second pathway is focused on building safe and healthy communities, with details on how to prevent wildfires and minimize damage caused by them, enhancing flood management, and implementing climate adaptation plans with the help of Indigenous communities. The goal is to protect communities from the effects of a changing climate. 

Strengthening resilient ecosystems and species during changing climates is the focus of another pathway. This includes improvement of watershed management, revitalizing wild salmon populations, and protecting B.C. coasts. 

The last pathway of the strategy is about having more resilient economies and infrastructure. Some actions include building roads better suited to handle floods, preparing agriculture to survive extreme weather, and forestry management. The strategy also includes planning and constructing buildings to minimize greenhouse gas emissions. The goal of this section is to prepare for the risks and opportunities of climate change for businesses while protecting infrastructure, according to the strategy. 

“The very fact that the province is tackling it and seems to be taking it seriously, that’s positive,” says Paul Richard, chair of the environment protection technology department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. 

“They put emphasis on … predicting potential floods from rivers washing out and just basic hydrography, making mention of working closely with First Nations is also positive. But that’s where it stops,” Richard says. 

In the strategy, while there’s good intentions and overall principles, he says there’s little in terms of specific actions that should be taken. 

“Specific things like when [actions] should be done by, what kind of budget is going direct to them — which is mentioned, but it’s fairly vague. And it’s lacking specific deadlines.” 

Several actions are listed as ongoing in the strategy with “key milestone” years. Most of the ongoing actions are focused mainly on collecting information and building relationships with Indigenous communities in climate adaptation. 

“It means we have good intentions, but it shows little else,” Richard says. 

The plan also lacks details on forest protections. 

“Part of what makes B.C. special is all the forest reserves, protecting the forests, the old growth forests, of which there’s not much left. But also the new forest trees … these hold a tremendous amount of carbon, and that carbon gets released if you have a catastrophic forest fire,” Richard says. 

He says this should tell us that we should think about forestry differently. 

“It’s not just chopping trees somewhere, because that’s done without thinking about biodiversity impacts … but also how much carbon we are leaving. I didn’t see that in any detail.” 

One topic not covered in the plan is liquified natural gas expansion. This includes the Coastal GasLink and LNG Canada pipelines that are currently being built. 

“The government is a big machine, it does a lot of things, it’s got its own inertia. And that document is missing the awareness that current practices really need to change in specific ministries,” Richard says. 

Richard compared the province’s amount of detail to some of the City of Surrey’s climate preparation plans, specifically their flood prevention plan. While the focus is different between the two, he says the amount of detail for a small part of the city’s climate adaptation plan is about the same as the province’s whole climate adaptation strategy. 

“I think it’s a step in the right direction, but overall, I’m not super impressed,” he says.

However, the emphasis on education is important, Richard says, because there is still a lot of denial particularly in North America. 

“People don’t necessarily … know the extent of change that is already upon us, that’s going to get worse, so seeing quite a bit of emphasis on community education is good.”

But the strategy is lacking community involvement and feedback, which Richard says is important for communities to best deal with climate change. 

“I think society will have to change towards more of a community-type approach than just a bunch of individuals doing their stuff,” he says. 

While all elements involving climate adaptation are important and all connected through the three lenses, having resilient food security is important, which was not covered in the strategy. 

“All of that is kind of tied to our natural biological resources. Ultimately as humanity and as people in B.C., this is what we rely on. Can we trust the weather to grow food for us? So, that’s the part for me — in the long term, it’s probably the most important,” Richard says. 

“We are more vulnerable to [climate change] happening, and that impacts how people connect.”