Municipalities have identified the need to bring climate change into all municipal decisions. One mechanism being advanced by municipalities to do so is bringing climate change implications into municipal council reports. Climate implications sections speak to how these decisions affect climate (ex., GHG emissions) or how it can be affected by climate (ex., vulnerabilities to extreme weather or flood risk). Building climate change understanding across municipal staff, departments is critical to increasing the robustness of climate implications sections that can educate and inform municipal councils.
To advance this goal, CAP has developed a Climate Implications Repository that can track climate implications as they are developed and provide a one-stop shop for tracking and accessing municipal climate implications. Municipalities can view climate implications of other jurisdictions and submit to the repository.
CAP held a workshop in November introducing the Climate Implications Repository to municipal staff to develop an understanding of what makes for a robust climate implications and assess the value of crowdsourcing climate implications and interventions. During the workshop, municipal staff identified barriers to developing climate implications sections in council reports, identified top-level questions to build robust climate implications, and completed the first two crowdsourcing effort on climate impacts, interventions, and opportunities. Municipal staff identified the value of a crowdsourcing effort and agreed to quarterly workshops.
Workshops will be held quarterly in 2023 to continue climate implications crowdsourcing effort, building staff climate understanding across municipal departments and providing an opportunity to discuss draft council reports in development.
Resources:
Workshop slides: Final CIR Webinar Slides Dec 5
Workshop notes: Climate Implications Workshop Summary
Link to the Climate Implications Repository: https://council.cleanairpartnership.org/climate-implications/
Link to the Climate Implications Repository Submission Page: https://council.cleanairpartnership.org/submit-your-climate-implications/