Local responses to climate change - municipal role

NRU
April 20, 2016
By Leah Wong

Municipal governments are responsible for 60 per cent of the country’s infrastructure, which is one of the reasons why they have an important role to play in developing a low-carbon economy.

While the federal and provincial governments have a lot of data about municipalities, former City of Guelph mayor Karen Farbridge said they lack local context to implement solutions that are regionally relevant. Speaking at a conference organized by McMaster University’s Centre for Climate Change Tuesday Farbridge told participants that Canada’s urban municipalities will play an important role in ensuring Canada meets its environmental targets.

“There is an urgent need to accelerate the transition of cities to the low-carbon economy,” said Farbridge. “[Municipalities] are great at planning. We’re great at developing policy and great at doing pilots, but we need [implementation] scale and we need it fast.”

She added that local governments are finding themselves on the “front lines of responding to climate change” as they address forest fi res, floods and ice storms. Each of these events is focused in a specific geographic area and municipalities are often responsible for leading the emergency responses.

Across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area municipalities are developing strategies to mitigate the impacts of climate change-many in response to extreme weather events such as the 2013 ice storm and flooding in 2014.

The City of Hamilton, for example, adopted its Community Climate Change Action Plan last fall. Hamilton’s 10 priorities for climate action include expanding local transit, supporting local food production and developing a community energy plan.

The transportation sector represents the largest non-industrial source of GHG emissions in Hamilton. Though the city saw a 29 per cent reduction in GHG emissions between 2006 and 2012, it has been slower in reducing transportation emissions.

“In the last couple years we’ve started to see more improvement [in transportation emission reductions],” Hamilton city manager Chris Murray told participants. “More of a focus on pedestrian, cycling and transit use, I think, will point us in the right direction and make further gains.”

Presently Hamilton residents use cars for about 85 per cent of their daily trips. Local public transit is responsible for just 6 per cent of trips during peak hours, down from 12 per cent in 1986. To counter this trend the city has made improving public transit a priority with construction of the Hamilton LRT set to begin in 2019.

Ontario imports around $20-billion worth of food each year. McMaster economics professor emeritus Atif Kubursi told participants that increasing local production would create more jobs and generate revenue for municipalities such as Hamilton.

“There are many products we cannot replace. Nobody is [saying] that tomorrow we’re going to grow bananas in Hamilton,” said Kubursi. “But there are at least 10 types of commodities… which we have the ability to produce locally. If we were to match local consumption with local production there would be major economic benefits and there would be a reduction in emissions.”

He added that if producers in Hamilton were to replace 10 to 20 per cent of imported cauliflower, strawberries, apples, chicken and tomatoes with local products it would generate an increase in revenue of up to $47-million. While locally more emissions would be generated by increasing production, there would be a net decrease in the emissions required to transport and refrigerate goods from farm to table.

Like other Ontario municipalities, Hamilton is developing a community energy plan. Farbridge, who served as mayor when Guelph created its plan, said community energy plans define priorities around energy. In addition to having environmental benefits, community energy plans contribute to the wellbeing of residents. For example, reducing fossil fuel consumption improves air quality, increasing access to local food promotes healthier lifestyles and increasing transportation options improves mobility for residents.