Planning for Climate Change

Canadian Institute of Planners World Town Planning Day Canadian Society of Landscape Architects

Climate change is affecting Canadian cities, towns and landscapes from coast to coast to coast. Our communities and environments face a range of impacts, including extreme weather, forest fires, heat waves, droughts, floods, rising sea levels, and many more.

Addressing these risks is a daunting challenge, but it’s also an opportunity to create new collaborations and build innovative solutions that can make climate resilience part of all aspects of Canadian life. The Prairie Climate Centre, the Canadian Institute of Planners, and the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects are working together to ensure that planning professionals have the climate information they need to design resilient natural and built environments.

Are you using the Climate Atlas for planning purposes? We want to know! Tell us all about what you're working on, and let us know if we can help or support your work: info@climateatlas.ca

Planning for Climate Resilience

Featuring members of the Canadian Institute of Planners (CIP), this video showcases how the planning profession is at the forefront of developing policy, capacity, and climate resilience within communities and environments across the country.

City of Selkirk Climate Change Adaptation Strategy

In the summer of 2018, the Prairie Climate Centre (PCC) and the City of Selkirk partnered to collaborate on the development of the City of Selkirk’s climate change adaptation strategy. Working with a multi-disciplinary team comprised of the City of Selkirk’s Capital Asset Management Program team and city service experts, the PCC facilitated a two-day climate adaptation planning workshop.

From the workshop and in close collaboration with the PCC, the City of Selkirk staff developed a final adaptation strategy. The CCAS was designed to integrate seamlessly into the City of Selkirk’s long-term business planning process, ensuring the adaptation actions generated from the strategy are implemented and not left “sitting on a shelf”.

The final CASS is an excellent example of designing municipal adaptation plans for successful implementation. In May 2019, The City of Selkirk was awarded the 2019 Canadian Network of Asset Managers’ (CNAM) Tereo Asset Management Award for their climate change adaptation strategy.

CBC Manitoba: Selkirk prepares for climate change so next generations aren't 'in a panic'

Atlas Guidebook

The Prairie Climate Centre launched the Climate Atlas of Canada in April 2018. Since its release, the tool has become a key source of climate change information for researchers, decision-makers, and local community leaders across the country.

To support this broad range of users, we built a guidebook to better facilitate both public education and professional decision-making. The guidebook provides an overview of the interactive features of the atlas, including the variables, maps, videos, and graphs it provides. Importantly, it also describes the basics of how to use the data, graphs, and statistics to better understand the climate data presented throughout the atlas.

We are releasing the guidebook in partnership with the Canadian Institute of Planners and the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects, which are leading professional organizations with a strong commitment to education and action on climate change. We are thankful to CIP, CSLA, and their respective memberships for their commitment to building climate resilience into all aspects of their work, and we hope that the atlas and the new guidebook meaningfully support their ongoing efforts.

This version of the guidebook refers to the last version of the Atlas (version 1), but it still contains a lot of great information about working with climate data. We are currently working to update the guidebook for the current atlas (version 2) and expect it to be ready by late summer 2021.

Download the Guidebook (6MB PDF)