Initiatives
Featured initiatives
Community-based Adaptation Planning Workshop -- Atlin, British Columbia
Preparing for Change -- Managing Climate Change Risks in the Atlin Area
Through funding from Indian and Northern Affairs' Aboriginal and Northern Affairs Community Adaptation Program (ANCAP), the Northern Climate ExChange held a week-long adaptation planning exercise in Atlin, British Columbia. During the last week of March 2007, three stakeholder working groups, with over 50 participants, met to discuss climate change issues affecting land-based occupations and traditions, local economy, and infrastructure and planning. Under each of these headings, the working groups discussed: the observed impacts of climate change in Atlin, the vulnerability of the community to changes, the community's capacity to deal with these changes or its "adaptive capacity", and what tools and existing frameworks already exist or are needed to cope with these changes.
The weekend workshop, which was open to the public, kicked off with experts presenting regional climate models for Atlin, and an introduction to the concept of "mainstreaming climate change", followed by presentations from the stakeholder working groups. The workshop attendees were asked to provide any additional information that they felt was missing from the stakeholder group work and to identify actions or tools for increasing the community's adaptive capacity as well as any barriers to these actions.
The success of this project can be attributed to the high participation rate of community members over the course of the week.
ACIA Outreach website
The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) was released in 2004. Due to a lack of ACIA web presence, the NCE developed an informative outreach website with encouragement from the ACIA steering committee chair.
Forest Management in a Changing Climate
The NCE, funded by Environment Canada's Northern Ecosystem Initiative, administered a project to synthesize available information on climate change for the southwest Yukon. The project conducted a preliminary exploration of forest management actions that could be undertaken to reduce the vulnerability of forest ecosystems, and the people and economies that depend on them, to climate change.