Becoming a Climate-Ready City

Many of the City’s past and current actions are contributing to its ability to adapt to climate change, but existing plans, policies and procedures are not necessarily labelled as “adaptation actions”. The focus of the Climate Adaptation Strategy is to align current resources to increase the resilience of the Corporation from a strategic perspective. The actions presented in this strategy provide direction for the City to strengthen policies, develop new programs or practices where gaps exist, work collaboratively with key partners and other levels of governments, and undertake the steps necessary to integrate climate adaptation as a core function within the Corporation.

There is significant overlap between climate change adaptation and existing corporate priorities and many of the adaptation actions presented in this strategy contribute to goals identified in other plans, strategies, and policies. Examples include stormwater management, urban forest management, urban design guidelines, official planning, community emergency preparedness, and sustainability goals in general. The integration of the Climate Adaptation Strategy with existing plans will serve to pull everything together, bridge cross-departmental gaps, and increase the City’s resilience to climate change impacts while building on existing strengths.

The vision of the City’s Climate Adaptation Strategy is to build resilience within the Corporation to reduce the risks inherent in climate change while taking advantage of opportunities and building upon existing adaptive actions.

The intent of this strategy is to provide strategic direction to the City of Thunder Bay in order to achieve this vision and become a climate-ready city. The goals, objectives, and key principles that were developed to do this are listed in Table 4 while the actions identified have been grouped into seven strategic directions and are presented in section four of the strategy. Details on the work completed to develop these goals, objectives, key principles, and actions are provided in the Milestone Three Climate Adaptation Action Plan.

The goals of the Climate Adaptation Strategy are the foundation around which the objectives and potential adaptation actions for the were identified. These were developed based on the City’s nine priority impacts, stakeholder engagement, and additional background analysis. They provide the framework to move forward in achieving the climate adaptation vision.

As per the ICLEI BARC Five Milestone Framework, while the climate adaptation goals were developed as statements of intention to guide the City’s efforts at a high level, the objectives address specific issues within the context of a goal and are designed to address the SMART criteria (strategic, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound). The objectives describe the City’s approach in addressing the priority impacts and represent a detailed articulation of the ways in which the vision will be achieved.

It became evident that some of the opportunities for climate adaption planning were common to all goals and would be essential to the success of the overall strategy. These items were designated as key principles and separated from the other objectives in recognition of their overarching relevance to all goals.

The 45 climate adaptation actions identified in this strategy represent options the municipality can employ to act on the potential impacts of climate change. These are presented as potential short, medium, and long-term climate adaptation actions which would contribute to the realization of the overall climate adaptation vision, goals, objectives and key principles.

While identifying the City’s adaptive actions, several unifying themes emerged. These are presented as seven strategic directions and provide a clear direction for the City to move forward with the implementation of its actions. The City’s seven strategic directions and their associated actions are the core of this strategy are and presented in section four.

Table 4: Goals, Objectives & Key Principles informing the Strategic Directions and Actions presented in section four of the strategy.