Document Tools

Simon Fraser University (SFU) researchers are involved in 10 of 27 new British Columbia-led climate change research projects funded by the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS).

Hosted and led by the University of Victoria (UVIC), PICS is a collaboration of B.C.’s four-research intensive universities — SFU, UVIC, University of British Columbia (UBC) and the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC).

The funding for the projects involving SFU amounts to $682,950 of the $1.8 million in new PICS funding aimed at finding solutions to the environmental, social and economic challenges and opportunities stemming from climate change.

Project durations range from eight months to 2.5 years and come under one of the PICS research themes: the low carbon emissions economy, sustainable communities, social mobilization and resilient ecosystems. Research projects under a fifth theme — carbon management in B.C. forests — will be announced later this year.

SFU researchers lead or co-lead half of the 10 projects involving the university. They are:

• Next Steps on B.C.’s Carbon Tax: Assessing Alternatives and Searching for Common Ground. Co-led by professor Mark Jaccard, Energy and Materials Research Group in the School of Resource and Environmental Management (REM), Faculty of Environment. This project will explore the design of alternative carbon tax policies for post-2012 through a mix of interviews, polling and economic modeling. This research will help decision-makers determine the trade-offs between different policy design issues and prepare a post-2012 carbon tax policy schedule that will effectively balance environmental, economic and social goals.
• Community Energy and Emissions Simulation Model. Co-led by Chris Bataille, an adjunct professor in the School of REM, this project will develop a user-friendly computer model to facilitate energy and emissions planning by local governments. The goal is to build local governments’ capacity to reduce green house gas emissions and contribute to a sustainable energy future.
• Toward Sustainable Communities: The Living Edition. Co-led by Mark Roseland, director of SFU’s Centre for Sustainable Community Development, this project will update Roseland’s very successful, made-in-Canada resource guide for communities seeking sustainability. Toward Sustainable Communities, due for release in 2012, will trace the rapid growth of sustainability over the last two decades and set the stage for future sustainable community development.
• Sustainable Communities Research Network. Led by Mark Roseland, this project will spark sustainable development at the local level in B.C. and beyond.
• Place-Based Policy Making and Community Resilience-Building for Climate Change. Political science professor Michael Howlett leads this collaborative project, involving academics nationwide and federal government departments. It will evaluate the capacity of local governments and communities to participate in multi-level government climate change decision-making and to implement high-quality evidence-based or place-based policy initiatives.
  
  

Backgrounder: Remaining PICS projects involving SFU are:

• Greenest City Conversations, aimed at fostering and evaluating public engagement on sustainability policies
• A Day in my Carbon Neutral Life, a project that will demystify the changes society needs to make in how people live, work, play and move around if B.C. is to become carbon neutral
• Assessing the Potential Aquatic Habitat Value of Streams Responding to a Changing Climate. This project will produce numerical models predicting the impacts of climate change on potential fish habitats in B.C. streams, based on forecast changes in stream flow and sediment supply.
• The Alouette River basin: the developing urban fringe at the interface with protected landscapes in coastal British Columbia and consequences for ecosystem resilience. This project will use long-term flow data from an urban and agricultural watershed to examine how changes in hydrology might affect water supplies for freshwater ecosystems downstream, and how different uses of water by humans might impact the fish and other species living in and alongside water.
• Climate and Ecosystem Dynamics in southern Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands. An historical perspective on strategies for restoration, management and population recovery. Researchers from Parks Canada and several universities, including SFU, will investigate how climate change has, and will, affect the ability to restore and manage Garry oak ecosystems – BC’s only native oak. The effect of fire suppression and deer browsing will also be studied, with a mix of on-the-ground techniques and ecosystem monitoring.

— 30 —

Comments