CWWA Climate Change Committee Summary 2013 Workshop Held at the Window on Ottawa — by Hiran Sandanayake, Chair of CWWA’s Climate Change Committee

Print this Article | Send to Colleague

On November 27, 2013 the CWWA held its second Climate Change Workshop as part of the annual Window on Ottawa.  The workshop, organized by CWWA’s Climate Change Committee, had many exciting presentations from across the country.   We are living in some "exciting times" as the familiar phrase goes.  Extreme events continue to impact Canadian municipalities in 2013.  In response to these challenges, the presentations in this year’s Workshop addressed Adaptation, Coping Strategies, Raising Awareness, and the latest in Climate Change Information and how municipalities are using it. We also had speakers from Calgary to give us updates on Emergency Management related to the events they have experienced this year.

We modified the format of the Workshop slightly this year to report on and obtain feedback for our National Survey and Resource Databank initiatives.  We envision that these activities will not only help to engage the CWWA membership but also provide important added-value take-away materials from the annual Window events.  We obtained a positive response to these initiatives and some welcome feedback. 

We also held a Panel discussion which stimulated engaging discussion amongst the attendees.  The discussion raised some provocative questions and some practical suggestions for moving forward.

We acknowledged that Climate Change impacts can be quite varied across the country and that the level of preparedness to these impacts can also vary substantially across the country.  As such the panel discussed some barriers to adaptation including the importance of access to appropriate climate change information, the ability of municipalities to predict impacts, the need to advocate adaptation at the municipal level, and the need for municipalities to connect with each other to benefit from stories of each others’ initiatives and successes.

We discussed the issue of Climate Change leadership in the form of provision of technical resources and information, provision of financial resources, coordination of efforts across regions, and providing clear mandates.  We asked, "Is there enough Climate Change leadership in Canada and where should it come from?"

Some practical suggestions which our Committee will act on in the coming year included engagement of political champions to advocate adaptation to extreme events and development of national tools for municipalities to understand, assess, and prioritize Climate Change adaptation planning and implementation. 

Back to Canadian Water and Wastewater Association eBulletin