Extreme weather risk prompts need to adapt: report
It’s true: The weather is getting worse, from unprecedented snowfall in the Maritimes to record-breaking heat in B.C. And there’s a growing scientific consensus that extreme weather is becoming more frequent as a result of climate change.
Now a new report from the Adaptation to Climate Change Team (ACT), based at Simon Fraser University, argues that the increasing risks posed by extreme weather demand climate-adaptation policies that will allow regions across Canada to strengthen their capacity to deal with the fallout.
The report, entitled Climate Change Adaptation and Extreme Weather: Making Canada’s Communities More Resilient to the Impacts of Climate Change, maps out how Canadian communities must adjust to meet the growing threat.
Its key recommendations include establishing a national climate action centre, an integrated national public alerting system and a climate information service, to ensure emergency-response organizations and individuals receive timely warnings of climate hazards.
The report was written by University of Western Ontario professor Gordon McBean, director of policy studies at the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, and Dan Henstra, assistant professor of public administration and local government at the University of Windsor. AMEC, an international engineering and project-management company, funded the report. The study is the result of three multi-stakeholder conferences and a comprehensive review of the literature undertaken over the last six months, which were funded by Zurich Canada and B.C.’s Ministry of Environment.
McBean and Henstra will join ACT executive director Deborah Harford and Western professor Gregory Kopp at a news conference on Wednesday, Sept. 9 at 11 a.m. at Western’s Insurance Research Laboratory for Better Homes to discuss the findings. The lab, also known as the Three Little Pigs Research Project, examines all aspects of house construction, including duress from harsh weather conditions such as the tornadoes that damaged structures across southern Ontario two weeks ago.
“Canadians spend many millions per year to clean up after these extreme weather events,” says McBean, “and the cost is going up every year. Displacement, trauma and risk to life will only increase unless we undertake a coordinated, comprehensive program of disaster risk reduction across the board, at the community, provincial and federal level.”
Backgrounder: ACT and report authors
ACT is a Simon Fraser University-based research program designed to address the fact that Canadians face major impacts of climate change such as violent storms, sea-level rise, water scarcity, energy challenges and health risks.
A five-year series of six-month sessions on timely climate change issues, ACT brings leading experts from around the world together with industry, community and government decision-makers to explore the risks and generate recommendations for sustainable adaptation.
Sessions feature multi-stakeholder conferences and public dialogues that raise awareness and study the problems posed as well as potential solutions. These events support a policy research and development process led by an expert working with a team of graduate researchers to develop policy options for sustainable adaptation to the impacts.
Gordon McBean, lead policy author for ACT’s second set of findings, has a long involvement in climate change studies. A lead author for the first and second Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessments, he is a professor of geography and political science at the University of Western Ontario and director of policy studies of the Institute of Catastrophic Loss Reduction. He is chair of the international Science Committee for the Integrated Research on Disaster Risk of the International Council for Science, the International Social Sciences Council and UN’s International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. He is also chair of the Board of the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, President of START International, and member of several advisory groups on climate change adaptation.
Dan Henstra, policy co-author for ACT’s second set of findings is an assistant professor of public administration and local government in the Department of Political Science at the University of Windsor. His research interests include public policy and administration, federalism and multilevel governance. Dr. Henstra has significant experience in policy research and analysis and has participated in projects funded by government departments such as Infrastructure Canada and Natural Resources Canada. His research on public policy, particularly in the field of emergency management, has been published in academic journals such as Canadian Public Administration, Canadian Public Policy and Public Administration Review.
Gregory Kopp is a professor in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of Western Ontario. He currently holds a Canada Research Chair in Wind Engineering and is a Director of the Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel Laboratory. He has been responsible for the wind risk mitigation and adaptation research for the ‘Three Little Pigs’ Project at the Insurance Research Lab for Better Homes where he works on all aspects of wind effects to residential construction.