City working on climate change action plan

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This article was published 15/09/2022 (1254 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The city has its eye on developing a climate change action plan that will guide Brandon’s environmental policies for the next 30 years, but it’s not doing it alone.

The city is hosting an open house next Tuesday at city hall, where residents are invited to learn more about the project and provide their own input.

It will be the first time Brandon’s climate plan has been updated since 2013, and it’s much longer in scope than any strategy the city has put forward since starting in 2007, according to Lindsay Hargreaves, the city’s environmental co-ordinator.

The city’s prior achievements in addressing climate change include becoming the first municipality in Manitoba to complete all five milestones for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities Partners for Climate Protection program.

The city has been working on the open house since May, Hargreaves said. It’ll be a drop-in event in the Brandon City Hall foyer between 5:30 and 7:30 p.m.

“There will be different storyboards mapping out what’s been done in the past, the new greenhouse gas inventory, what it would look like business as usual, and what it would take to reach net-zero by 2050,” Hargreaves said.

By “business as usual,” Hargreaves means what the climate could look like if efforts to prevent and mitigate the effects of climate change aren’t taken.

The open house will also show residents the climate change effects the city has already witnessed, such as flooding and extreme heat.

“We’ve experienced different climate events, we’ve had several 300-year floods in 10 years,” Hargreaves said.

The city has experienced intense storms and drought, she said, raising the question of what Brandon is going to do to mitigate such events and adapt for the future.

“It does affect everybody. Whether people want to admit it or not, it does play a role on city infrastructure and planning.”

In past years, the city has implemented programs, like green carts to divert organic waste from the landfill, and rain gardens to capture some of the rainwater that falls on the city.

The open house will ask residents about further initiatives they and the city can partner on.

Programs like the rain garden initiative are about working with nature rather than against it, Hargreaves said.

“Every small step counts towards bigger steps,” Hargreaves said. “Something on a personal level will amount to something on a larger level … if you decide to walk, bike, take the bus for one or two commutes a week, that helps your carbon footprint.”

The new plan will consider how politics, regulations and other factors, like international agreements, have changed the nature of climate strategies since the last update was prepared, she added.

With a top-level city plan also in the works to guide development in Brandon until 2050, Hargreaves said it was good timing to have both plans worked on at once so they can align.

“I’m excited that it’s a 30-year vision,” Hargreaves said. “The past ones were only seen in five-year increments, so it’ll make it easier to plan and put things forward given that it and the city plan are both 30 years.”

The goal is to present a draft plan to the new city council either by the end of this year or the beginning of 2023.

The city also has an online climate policy survey open until Oct. 9 at surveymonkey.ca/r/BrandonClimateChange.

An outline of the city’s climate action plan and previous climate actions can be found at bit.ly/3S0LTsI.

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