June 21, 2016

New Report: Top Asks for Climate Action – Ramping Up Low Carbon Communities

We just had a read through the recently released report  Top Asks for Climate Action – Ramping Up Low Carbon Communities authored by Karen Farbridge, an adjunct-professor at York University’s Faculty of Environmental Studies, University of Guelph-based researcher Atiya Jaffar,  and the Columbia Institute’s Charley Beresford.

 This is a great document which provides the evidence based for an increased focus by Provinces and the Federal government on local and regional planning and action to address the low carbon challenge. We love the focus on integrating climate and energy policies within the land use planning framework, a theme that permeates throughout the sections on Capacity Building, Smart Growth, and Local Energy. This theme of integration at local and municipal scales of planning and action is a core area for Ontario Climate Consortium research.  We conducted a major study in 2015 on land use and climate as part of the comprehensive review of the Ontario land use planning framework, and are leveraging this work to develop a research and practitioner partnership to advance community energy planning in a multi-level governance framework.

We noted with enthusiasm the recent release of Ontario’s Climate Change Action Plan, and Proposed Amendments to the Ontario Growth Plan, which together should help to address some of the challenges to integration that this report, and some of our recent research, has highlighted.  We will be convening discussions on these fronts in the coming months, with an initial workshop being planned for July 21st, so stay tuned on that front.