Atlin Workshop:
Preparing For Change –
Managing Climate Change Risks in the Atlin Area
Report prepared by
Katharine Sandiford and Michael Westlake
Northern Climate ExChange
Yukon College
31 July, 2007
Introduction
When the Northern Climate ExChange (NCE), a program of the Northern Research Institute at Yukon College, considered applying for Impacts and Adaptation project funding from INAC’s ANCAP program, we faced the challenge of choosing a community that would be the best suited for this kind of work.
Community-based climate change adaptation planning is a field in which the NCE is gradually becoming a niche-expert. Already identified as a leader in northern climate change adaptation and risk assessment, the Atlin project is the first example of an NCE-run community-based adaptation workshop – the first of many more workshops like this to come. In fact, in a recent visioning session of the NCE, community-based and participatory climate change adaptation planning was identified as one of our primary roles and functions well into the future.
In choosing where we could run a pilot workshop, there were certain characteristics in a community that we were looking for:
- existing baseline of general climate change awareness
- engaged in other climate change related projects
- high level of community capacity
More than any other community in the region, Atlin fits this description. Climate change capacity in Atlin is listed as follows:
- recipients of ANCAP funding for hydroelectric project (for greenhouse gas reduction)
- high level of awareness about climate change and greenhouse gas reduction
- community-run recycling program (previously One Tonne Challenge funded)
- University of Idaho's Glaciological & Arctic Sciences Institute, the Juneau Icefield Research Program (JIRP) and The Foundation for Glacier and Environmental Research (FGER) working on climate change and glacier recession issues in Atlin for decades and have research base in town.
- Extremely high volunteerism and community capacity
The project ran without a glitch. Over the week that we hosted our workshops, over 50 different individuals participated – that’s nearly 15 per cent of the population. The impact of such a high level of participation means that a wide variety of interests, opinions and sectors were represented. From the discussions, working groups, presentations and activities, a significant amount of relevant ideas and information was gathered and disseminated. The incredible success of this project can be attributed to the high participation rate of community members over the course of the week and more importantly, the willingness of the community to as a whole take ownership for it. This is the first step in a much longer process of community based adaptation planning in Atlin, BC and he Northern Climate ExChange remains committed to supporting the community of Atlin through the many years of this process.
The structure of this community based adaptation workshop, developed and organized by Michael Westlake and Katharine Sandiford of the Northern Climate ExChange and Robin Sydneysmith of C-CIARN BC, was highly unique. In this process, three separate facilitated stakeholder working group sessions were used to; identify the observed impacts of climate change in Atlin, the vulnerability of the community to changes, the communities’ capacity to deal with this change, and what tools and existing frameworks already exist or are needed to cope with these changes. The information shared and collected in the stakeholder working group sessions formed the basis of an important climate change baseline for the community and source of information which was presented back to the overall community at the weekend workshop for comment and solutions based discussions. In order to stimulate discussions around this at the weekend workshop, we brought in experts to present regional climate models for Atlin, and introduced the concept of “mainstreaming climate change”.
Special guests James Ford and Tristan Pearce, of ArcticNorth Consulting, brought to the weekend workshop a high level of knowledge and expertise, drawing on the adaptation work they have done in the High Arctic. The overwhelming message they delivered: mainstream climate change within every decision-making process and every function and role played in the community. They made it clear how much easier and cost-effective it is to do this now rather than to wait – or to make climate change a separate issue or isolated department or duty. Please see Appendix 4 for an overview of their presentation in Atlin.
From the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium, Trevor Murdock and Katrina Bennett presented their pioneer work in regional-scale climate modeling. Their Atlin region maps were their first series designed to be used as a community planning tool. Designed as a work-in-progress, the scenarios they presented went back at the drawing board due to the detailed feedback they received from the workshop attendees. A final product incorporating the community feedback can be found in Appendix 5 of this report.
We are extremely grateful to all the people of Atlin who participated and helped us develop our adaptation planning workshop process. If there is one thing we learned, it is that at the heart of adapting to climate change is the ability to adapt to change in general. Atlin is a town that has seen dramatic changes since its gold rush history. With each subsequent shift in economic regime, new fluxes of people come and go, yet at the core, its residents always hold the attitude that they can survive and adapt. We were impressed by the pride, commitment and can-do attitude expressed by participants.
Thanks especially to Nan Love, our Atlin-based coordinator, whose enthusiasm and hard work ensured the success of the project.