Building Climate Resiliency
The effects of climate change are being felt around the world and here at home. We’re seeing more severe weather, more floods and droughts, more invasive pests, and stress on our ecosystems.
Why do we need to take action and build climate change resiliency?
- The climate is changing. We need reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to our changing climate.
- To create a sustainable future, we must limit (or eliminate) our reliance on fossil-fuels by transitioning to clean energy sources.
- Society is not prepared for climate change. We must understand our vulnerabilities to climate change which will allow us to adapt, increase resilience and lower risk.
Spurring Action on Climate Change
For more than a decade, our climate change work has helped protect, enhance and manage our natural environment. It continues to do so.
With lead investment from the Region of Peel and others, we’ve sped up our core work to address stressors on the environment. Our efforts have included on the ground restoration and leadership to increase our resiliency. As the climate changes, we’re responding.
Peel Climate Change Partnership
We’re combining efforts and resources with our regional and municipal partners to build strategies for:
- Low carbon communities
- Flood resiliency
- Natural green infrastructure
- Public education and awareness.
CVC is leading the Flood Resilience Strategy to build flood resiliency in the Region of Peel and across the Credit River Watershed. Learn more about the Peel Climate Change Partnership.
Our Climate Change Strategy
In 2019, we released our Climate Change Strategy. This strategy provides a framework and guides our priority climate change actions. It outlines what we will do with partners and within our own operations.
Explore our climate actions, by category, to build communities resilient to climate change.
Climate Change Knowledge and Understanding
Intent:
We monitor, model and research the changing conditions of nature’s systems in the Credit River Watershed to continuously inform and guide our collective action in reducing risk from the impacts of climate change.
Actions:
We collect and analyze shifts in climate, groundwater, forest, stream and wetland ecosystems. We’ve detected climate change trends and we support science-based decision making.
Learn more about our monitoring and inventory programs.
We’ve built a strategic network of 58 real-time environmental monitoring stations. We can now better understand and predict rain events and respond to flooding, water quality threats and low water levels. We can also better support our partners in planning for and responding to climate change impacts to water resources.
Explore our real-time monitoring network.
We’re updating our flood plain and risk maps using climate change models. This helps us predict where floods may happen. It also helps us give guidance to those proposing land development in or near flood plains.
Explore our regulation mapping.
We’re working with our partners to better understand the social and economic benefits of nature and install green infrastructure. To protect the watershed, we are co-developing science-based tools to help inform cost-effective decision making.
Explore the Municipal Natural Asset Initiative.
Public Awareness and Engagement
Intent:
We inform and engage communities to inspire actions that positively impact our environment and adapt within a changing climate.
Actions:
We work to increase awareness among watershed residents regarding climate change impacts and resiliency. Our goal is to foster positive behavioural changes in our watershed like reducing our carbon footprint and adapting to the changing climate.
Discover how to get involved.
To inform sustainable choices, we provide landowners, property managers and others with necessary information, resources and science. We support the aim to build healthy properties and communities that are resilient to climate change.
Discover how to green your property.
With dedicated partners, we create, use and implement Sustainable Neighbourhood Action Plans (SNAP). This work focuses on sustainability and climate change resilience in vulnerable communities at a neighbourhood scale.
Explore SNAP.
Climate Change Mitigation
Intent:
We support climate change mitigation actions. Mitigation actions focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.
Actions:
Our Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy outlines our commitment to reducing our corporate greenhouse gas emissions. We’re developing reduction targets and taking steps to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels from our buildings, fleet vehicles and equipment.
Read our Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy.
We add value to land use planning by promoting and advising on enhanced carbon sequestration opportunities. Our efforts in environmental protection and tree planting work to reduce carbon in the atmosphere by capturing and storing it.
We are committed to investigating opportunities on our properties for additional carbon capture and storage to offset our corporate emissions through planting trees, restoring ecosystems and improving forest management.
Read our Forest Management Plan.
Explore conservation planning.
Climate Change Adaptation
Intent:
We support actions that respond to current, and prepare for, future impacts of climate change.
Actions:
At an organizational level, we’re adapting to the impacts of climate change. We’ve completed risk assessments that reveal potential climate impacts to our operations, budget, liability, reputation, and the health and safety of staff, volunteers, participants and visitors to our properties.
We’ve also identified adaptation actions to implement in response to anticipated impacts so we can manage risk and remain accountable to our partners, donors, taxpayers, and above all, to the environment through a changing climate.
We’re working to promote low impact development in communities in the Credit River Watershed. These efforts can help offset problems arising in many mature neighbourhoods:
- Many of our mature, urban communities lack modern-day stormwater management controls.
- Homes and businesses in older urban areas are particularly vulnerable to riverine and urban flooding, water quality issues, loss of biodiversity and canopy cover, urban heat, and health and wellbeing challenges associated with a changing climate.
- Many older buildings pre-date modern water and energy efficiency standards.
- Public green spaces of many older neighbourhoods have been degraded by invasive species.
Discover low impact development.
In managing the land, water and wildlife on their properties, rural non-farm landowners are affected by climate change. Rural landowners play an important role in protecting this special landscape. We support landowners initiatives that build climate change resilience.
Explore countryside stewardship.
Farmers face risk to their business from climate change. Rainfall and air temperatures are becoming more unpredictable during the growing season. Changing weather pattens reduce the certainty of returns. We promote and support implementation of strategies such as reducing tillage, covering crops and planting windbreaks to improve soil quality and resilience on farms.
Explore farm stewardship.
Many of the goods and services we rely on come from forests, wetlands, rivers, lakes and urban green spaces. When biodiversity is threatened, we may lose many of the things we count on. Biodiversity is key to healthy and resilient natural systems. We support and implement land management practices that protect biodiversity and connect people to the land.
Learn more about our natural heritage system.
Upcoming Events
Climate Change News
If You Build it, They Will Come Tree cavities, crucial for resting and nesting, can be scarce in […]
What is it? Riparian zone: the transition areas that span the gap between land and water. Rhapsody: a poem or […]
Help Stop the Spread Invasive species management and removal are critical to protecting the health and beauty of […]
Discover Nature-based Solutions
Temperatures are rising and the weather is getting wilder and wetter. But nature offers a solution. Nature-based solutions can cool our cities, clean our air and water, and protect our homes and livelihoods.