Climate Innovation Pathways
Community-centred Climate Innovation Pathways
We leverage climate innovation pathways as an strategic, inclusive, and adaptive approach to solving complex climate-related challenges. Co-designed by our researcher and partner collaborators, SFU Climate Innovation is advancing five innovation pathways to align actions, actors and resources over time toward transformative outcomes in Canada and beyond.
Our community-centred climate innovation research-for-impact pathways support integrated, long-term trajectories of change. These interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral spaces bring together diverse solutions, governance processes, and financing tools to address root causes of climate vulnerability and injustice—while building low-carbon, resilient, and regenerative communities.
Our Principles
- Addresses Root Causes Tackling systemic issues, not just symptoms.
- Chart Multiple Paths Enabling conditions for innovation and tailored local fit.
- Expand Action Arenas Embedding strategies for social and ecological transformation across whole watershed scales.
- Realise Co-benefits Optimizing for impact and shared common good.
- Inclusive Processes Building trust, equity and upholding health and human rights to support effective outcomes.
- Proactive and Transformative Addressing approaches to overcome barriers, ensure fairness, and de-risk for climate-ready, resilient futures.
Climate Innovation Pathway 1: Multi-Hazard Risk Assessment and Community Resilience
This climate innovation pathway focuses on helping communities identify, understand, and prepare for a range of climate-related hazards—such as floods, droughts, wildfires, storms, and heatwaves—that may occur simultaneously or in rapid succession. It involves combining scientific data (e.g., climate projections, hazard maps) with local and Indigenous Knowledge to assess risks in a holistic and inclusive way.
Key elements include:
- Mapping impacts, vulnerabilities and risks, and capacities at the community level.
- Co-developing local early warning systems and response plans.
- Integrating climate, social, and economic data to prioritize adaptation actions.
- Empowering local leadership and institutions to coordinate resilience-building efforts.
The goal is not only to assess hazards, but to build long-term resilience by enabling communities to anticipate, absorb, adapt to, and recover from climate shocks—while strengthening social cohesion and local governance in the process.
Integrated Energy Systems and Regional Resilience
Climate Innovation Pathway 2: Integrated Energy Systems and Regional Resilience
This pathway supports the transition to sustainable, low-carbon, and resilient energy systems tailored to the specific needs of communities and regions. It emphasizes the integration of renewable energy sources (such as solar, wind, hydro, and bioenergy) with local energy storage, smart grids, and demand-side management (DSM) to ensure energy reliability and equity.
Key components include:
- Community-led energy planning to align solutions with local values and priorities.
- Decentralized energy generation to reduce dependence on centralized infrastructure.
- Energy efficiency upgrades in homes, public buildings, and businesses.
- Equitable access to affordable, clean energy—especially for vulnerable populations.
- Workforce development and training in clean energy technologies.
By integrating technological innovation with local ownership and governance, this pathway enhances regional energy independence, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and builds resilience to climate and economic disruptions, such as grid outages or fuel supply shocks.
Low Carbon Resilient Communities and Neighbourhoods
Climate Innovation Pathway 3: Low Carbon Resilient Communities and Neighbourhoods
This pathway promotes strategies that simultaneously reduce greenhouse gas emissions (mitigation) and increase the ability of communities to adapt to climate impacts (resilience)—a concept known as low carbon resilience (LCR). The focus is on neighbourhood-scale and community-driven solutions that are place-based, inclusive, and co-designed with residents.
Key approaches include:
- Natural assets and green infrastructure (e.g., urban forests, rain gardens, permeable surfaces) that manage stormwater, reduce urban heat, and store carbon.
- Climate-smart land use planning that reduces risks to and emissions from transportation and buildings, and zones for resilient planning and development.
- Affordable, energy-efficient housing and retrofits that lower energy use, reduce household costs, and increase comfort and resilience.
- Integrated active and low-emissions transportation networks like walking, biking, and public transit.
- Community hubs and social networks that support preparedness and collective action.
- Transforming governance and financing - Effective LCR implementation relies on aligning governance and finance. That means:
- Embedding climate equity into funding criteria.
- Co-developing projects with underserved or climate-vulnerable groups.
- Ensuring that budgeting reflects the true costs of inaction and the co-benefits of action (e.g., health, job creation, biodiversity).
This pathway is grounded in equity, co-benefits, and local empowerment, ensuring that climate actions do not just reduce emissions but also improve health, safety, affordability, and social inclusion at the community level.
Regenerative Bioregions and Economies
Climate Innovation Pathway 4: Regenerative Bioregions and Economies
This pathway focuses on transforming local and regional economies to work in harmony with natural ecosystems, emphasizing regeneration over extraction. Grounded in the principles of bioregionalism, it encourages communities to align economic activities with the ecological characteristics and limits of their surrounding landscape— defined by natural boundaries such as watersheds, ecosystems, or agricultural zones, rather than political borders.
Key strategies include:
- Co-developing a bioregional fund - a place-based financial mechanism designed to support regenerative food systems, climate action, and ecological restoration within a specific bioregion
- Restoring ecosystems (e.g., wetlands, forests, soils) to enhance biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and climate resilience.
- Supporting and financing circular and local economies that minimize waste, reuse resources, and retain value within communities.
- Revitalizing Indigenous and traditional land stewardship practices.
- Financing and scaling regenerative agriculture and agroecology that restore soil health and improve food security.
- Creating green jobs and sustainable livelihoods rooted in care for the land and people.
This pathway is about reweaving ecological health, cultural identity, and economic well-being. It moves beyond sustainability to regeneration—where communities not only reduce harm, but actively contribute to the healing and flourishing of their bioregions.
Indigenous Leadership and Climate Action
Climate Innovation Pathway 5: Indigenous Leadership and Climate Action
This pathway centres Indigenous rights, knowledge systems, and self-determination as essential to effective and just climate action. Indigenous Peoples have stewarded their lands and waters for millennia, offering place-based governance models, ecological insights, and holistic approaches that are deeply aligned with climate resilience and regeneration.
Key elements include:
- Supporting Indigenous governance and legal systems (e.g., inherent rights, laws, and protocols).
- Upholding Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) in all climate-related decisions and projects.
- Revitalizing and applying Indigenous knowledge in areas such as land and water stewardship, fire management, and food sovereignty.
- Investing in Indigenous-led climate solutions, including clean energy, housing, and conservation initiatives.
- Building respectful, reciprocal partnerships that recognize Indigenous leadership as equal and distinct—not as stakeholders, but as rights-holders.
This pathway calls for a shift from inclusion to Indigenous leadership, recognizing that climate justice is inseparable from reconciliation, decolonization, and the protection of Indigenous lifeways and homelands.