Alanna Komisar, Sustainability, Decarbonization, Climate Adaptation Sr. Advisor at Mantle Developments couldn’t have started the public panel in a better way than by defining what the different stages at the heart of an extreme climate event are. For example, “Chronic stressors” which are longer-term changes to typical conditions including increased droughts due to longer dry seasons or changes to annual average precipitation. If infrastructure serves a human need on an everyday basis, it is infinitely more important in the face of those extreme climate events. It is important to understand the people in the communities that are affected and what their needs are. The most pressing need is to be able to remain safe during first responders’ intervention and a return to a stable situation. Alanna introduced the “Shelter-in-Place” and “Fail-Safe” concepts. “Shelter-in-place” refers to an indoor space, ideally, one’s own home, where you can safely wait unless being told to evacuate and “Fail-Safe” refers to non-catastrophic consequences when equipment fails during an extreme climate event. With a globalisation of these concepts, at risk communities would be able to recover from this type of event better, faster and with less damage.

Cheryl Evans, Director of Flood and Wildfire Resilience at the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation (ICCA), University of Waterloo continued by highlighting the roles of structures like the ICCA, which help communities improve their resiliency associated to climate change and extreme weather events, to go beyond mitigation and address adaption. Before sharing resources on flood and fire resiliency tools that can be implemented for low cost (all available on the ICCA website), Cheryl explained that the fact that there are more weather-related damages now is linked to human agency and decision-making. Development in high-risk zones, lack of regulation and lack of investment in prevention all contribute to a higher number of climate-weather-related events. Investment in resiliency should be reconsidered though. With every dollar applied towards resiliency measures, there is a return on investment between $6 and $9 per house depending on the type of resiliency. The benefits of this type of investment would be felt long-term as the infrastructure resists to new extreme climate events.

The last speaker of the public panel, Vanessa Mitchell, Environment and Climate Change Project Manager at The CSA Group, addressed the lack of regulation Cheryl mentioned and brought to light the work The CSA Group does as a leader in standards research, development and advocacy. The CSA Group develops standards toward climate resiliency. Currently, having climate resiliency standards is on a voluntary basis, depending on the will of businesses and institutions. However, these standards are now making their way to the municipal level, which will involve more businesses and institutions and ultimately have a larger impact. Even without creating new standards, climate adaptation is being embedded in existing ones, which helps resiliency become a common aspect to plan for in building construction. The CSA Group is working with the ICCA to develop those standards. Another useful tool currently being developed is a user-friendly climate resilient framework for building owners and managers, with the help of BOMA Canada among other organisations.

For this Challenge, the participants identified renters as one of the groups affected by the question of resilient residences and designed solutions to address their unique situation.

Community is at the heart of this Challenge and more importantly, the creation or restoration of connections between the different actors. Engagement and conversations are a great tool to achieve it and a starting point could be to have renters and landlords sit down at the same table. Renters sometimes face obstacles when it comes to making changes in their accommodation because they don’t own it – homeowners could facilitate this. Adding resiliency features is a good return on investment because it prevents from having costs associated to reparations when an extreme climate event happens. However, this cannot be a one-way conversation and understanding the landlords’ point of view is also necessary.

Most times what is preventing this connection is the lack of information and awareness of what can be done. It is why sharing positive stories, like that of landlords who are helping build more resilient homes, will help bring visibility. Sharing useful information like incentive programs for landlords or how backyard suites can play a role in providing resilient residences is also important. These initiatives are designed for a small scale, but larger developments need to be included as well and the route to increase the resiliency of their infrastructure falls more along the line of regulations with community benefits agreements and social policy frameworks.

Something to keep in mind when thinking about community and wanting to build community engagement programs is to understand where renters or landowners get stuck on their resiliency renovations journey and what they are not doing. Once that piece is understood, involving the relevant stakeholders will be key to removing the obstacle. Most of the time, the trades (e.g. plumbers for flooding or any water-related event) are these relevant stakeholders as they work closely with homeowners and offer expertise.

To learn more, click here to view the training materials.

With the work done on this Challenge, the group came to the conclusion that there is a lack of education on the topic of resiliency retrofits that needs to be filled. An innovative way to approach this issue is by adding resiliency information to existing home renovation shows. It is a way to have the information circulate outside of environmental groups and introduce the topic to the general public.

The group’s focus eventually became the financial aspect of resiliency retrofits, highlighting the fact that existing funding programs are not accessible to all as upfront financing is necessary most of the time. Thinking about the different funding mechanisms and how to leverage them when it comes to initiating the adoption of resilient residential retrofits is the way forward. This could be done by adjusting existing funding programs to include resiliency or by finding new, innovative and sustainable funding programs. Thinking outside the box and moving towards insurance mechanisms is also to be considered, especially as insurers are highly motivated in making buildings resilient.

Some funding programs to look at are public/private partnerships, the Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) programs to resiliency, Community Economic Development Investment Funds (CEDIFs), community bonds or tax credits.

While funding programs are crucial when undertaking retrofits, the public panel speakers pointed out that a balance of financial incentive and non-financial incentives will help the communities go further. The reality is that sometimes people taking care of and supporting one another in the face of extreme climate events is more important than a financial incentive and structural approach to resiliency.

To learn more, click here to view the training materials.