BC communities have made admirable progress in adapting to climate change. However, many communities in the province are still in the early stages of climate change adaptation. While lists of adaptation options exist, oftentimes these lists leave out costs, making it more challenging for communities to weigh the options.
West Coast Environmental Law (WCEL) and Kerr Wood Leidal (KWL) identified this need, and from the fall of 2020 to the spring of 2021, we engaged a team of three master’s students in the UBC School of Community and Regional Planning as part of a studio course.
The project aims to create a “menu” of climate change adaptation options with associated costs, based on the actual experiences of communities that have implemented the adaptations. In addition to sharing common solutions and cost estimates for local governments, the menu includes notes about the benefits and challenges associated with these solutions, as well as potential funding sources and local conditions that may influence costs.
For the first phase of the project, the scope of the menu was focused on adaptation measures related to wildfires and stormwater flooding, based on the team’s interests and partners’ assessment of community needs. Future work on this project may expand to include other types of climate risks.
Read more about the development of the Climate Cost Menu in this blog post.