Low Carbon Resilience
ACT is a thought leader in low carbon resilience (LCR) planning and implementation. We help governments, practitioners, businesses, and funding organizations adopt and integrate approaches to reduce climate risk, emissions and advance sustainability co-benefits into their strategies and practices.
What is Low Carbon Resilience (LCR)?
Low carbon resilience is an approach developed and led by ACT - Action on Climate Team. It is a step change in climate action that coordinates and mainstreams adaptation, mitigation, and co-benefits in municipal planning and decision-making processes. This approach brings into focus the multiple considerations and trade-offs of policies, investments, projects and decisions made today while acknowledging their legacies for tomorrow.
Typically, climate adaptation planning (upper left quadrant) and mitigation planning (lower right quadrant) are done separately. This draws on separate budget streams and capacities across the organization, leading to siloed and, at times, contradictory approaches. When decision-makers coordinate and integrate data and planning approaches they set the stage for streamlined and more systemic solutions that, done well, reduce climate risk and emissions, while also advancing other community priorities such as equity, health, biodiversity, and economic development (upper right quadrant). An LCR approach can therefore represent a step-change toward sustainable development pathways.
The Evidence for LCR
Between 2018 and 2021, the Integrated Climate Action for B.C. Communities Initiative (ICABCCI), a project of ACT at SFU, partnered with 10 British Columbia local governments, ranging from small to large, and from rural to urban, at all stages of climate action with the goal of collaboratively advancing and testing the LCR approach in planning and decision making.
Our collaborations helped connect integrated climate action with a variety of community planning and decision processes and social, economic, and ecosystem goals. This has, in turn, identified entry points and opportunities for local governments to embed the LCR approach, for instance in corporate strategy, such as procurement, in asset management and project prioritization, and in community planning, such as land use, transportation, emergency management planning, urban forest strategies, biodiversity planning, ecosystem restoration, and social resilience planning.
A key outcome of this work is the LCR Planning Handbook. It outlines an integrated climate action planning process that is systemic and cross-cutting and that identifies synergistic opportunities between risk and emissions, while advancing climate action co-benefits. This prevents contradictory responses, streamlines capacity and resources, and moves climate out of the sidelines, instead embedding it as a crucial part of decision-making across the local government organization.
ACT is grateful for the generous support of the Real Estate Foundation of BC (2018-2021). We continue to share learnings and research findings from our case study communities and our peer learning network.
References
Cohen, S. J., & Waddell, M. W. (2009). Climate change in the 21st century. McGill-Queen’s University Press.