Two years in the making, the City of Charlottetown, PEI has now approved its first-ever Climate Action Plan! The plan guides the City’s response to climate change over the next five years and is as practical as it is ambitious.

“So much time and work go into these plans, and we didn’t want the end result to just sit on a shelf,” explained Katrina Cristall, Charlottetown’s Climate Action Officer. “We wanted to get as much out of the planning process as the plan itself. By focusing on collaboration in a meaningful way, we set ourselves up to have a ‘living plan’ and continue having those conversations.” 

The Climate Action Plan builds off two older strategies—the Integrated Community Sustainability Plan and the Community Energy Plan—but includes more measurable targets, climate language, and a sense of urgency to match Charlottetown’s reality following Hurricane Fiona. 

Notably, natural infrastructure and natural assets are a prominent feature of the plan.

Natural assets intersect with many of the City’s adaptation priorities, including protecting their coastlines from increasingly intense storm surges, and safeguarding their source water by reducing polluted runoff to well fields.

Alistair Ozon, Water Coordinator at Charlottetown, noted that they see natural assets as critical to adapting to climate change.

“When we’re looking at new developments, we want to realize the full value that natural assets provide for both adaptation and mitigation, compare them with engineered alternatives, and make sure we’re not undervaluing nature’s importance.”

click on the table below to enlarge.

One of the City’s immediate priorities are forests and the urban canopy, driven by the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona in 2022. One of the largest storms to hit Atlantic Canada (and one of the most costly extreme weather events ever recorded in the region), the hurricane led to the loss of kilometres of coastal land and sand dunes, as well as thousands of mature trees across Charlottetown.

Fiona brought attention to natural assets, and how impactful their loss can be. A number of restoration actions are listed in the Climate Action Plan—Ozon explained how they focused on available statistics and canopy coverage in other communities to create measurable goals.

“We have a much lower canopy coverage than other municipalities,” said Ozon. To return to the level of coverage they had just a few years ago, the City would need to plant over 10,000 trees a year. 

“We’re not just saying we need to plant more trees, but ‘here’s how many we need to be doing every year’ so we can continue to compare and reassess. It’s something we can operationalize.”

Charlottetown’s Progress in Natural Asset Management

Charlottetown is at an early stage of NAM, but new Climate Action Plan supports the City in pursuing condition assessments, levels of service, and valuations of their natural assets. 

Ozon and his team completed their initial natural asset inventory with NAI in 2021, which gave them a start in NAM. But advancing in NAM came with challenges, one being that the City does not yet have a fully developed asset management process. 

“Not having a background in asset management, there’s been a lot of learning about NAM on my end,” explained Alistair. NAI’s Roadmap Program, which Charlottetown completed last year, gave them a leg up. 

“Through the Roadmap Program we had the opportunity to sit down with lots of folks from across different departments and talk about what’s achievable in the short and medium-term, what might be longer term, and finding those who are willing to listen and integrate natural assets in their work.” 

Any local government can find opportunities to start NAM, but capacity, limited budgets and competing priorities are often barriers. NAI and other organizations work with communities to help close this gap.  Charlottetown has recently started a new project with ClimAtlantic — the Climate Adaptation Pathway project will focus on natural asset connectivity over the next 100 years and learn how the City can improve natural corridors to better support ecosystem services. 

“We’re still very early on in the project, so the final outcomes might evolve,” added Cristall. “But we’re hoping to engage with many of the landowners that play a management role in those areas across the city.”

Valuing Natural Assets and Communicating With Council

One of Charlottetown’s upcoming priorities is to complete a valuation of ecological services provided by natural assets. Ozon explained that having a dollar value could go a long way when communicating the importance of natural assets management actions to Council.

While developing the Climate Action Plan, the City, in collaboration with ICLEI Canada, completed a Cost of Doing Nothing report. The report provided a detailed analysis of social and economic costs associated with climate change, noting that Charlottetown’s natural asset infrastructure is at risk. According to the study, the potential losses from impacts to natural assets are greater than either the cost to conserve natural areas, or the cost to replace them with traditional infrastructure—something that caught Council’s attention. 

Said Cristall:“There are costs for acting, but there are even bigger costs to not acting, and natural assets are involved across the board.”

Dollars talk, but financial values shouldn’t be the whole conversation. Ozon stresses that intrinsic values like culture and biodiversity should not be overlooked.

“There’s only so many services you can put a dollar value on,” he said. “But if we can get people to appreciate one value a natural asset provides, it’s kind of like an umbrella. If people support using natural areas like wetlands for stormwater management, well that wetland is also supporting wildlife habitats and recreation.”

Charlottetown’s Advice? Find Your Resources, Understand Your Context

For those local governments who are trying to get started in natural asset management, both Ozon and Cristall provided a few words  of advice:

1/ Take advantage of available programs and networks

“So far it’s been opportunities like the inventory and the roadmap — ones that are subsidized and provide access to expertise that have really helped guide us through the process,” said Ozon. “I think having the goals within the Climate Action Plan, and our Official Plan that’s being updated will help us get some headway.”

He noted that other communities have reached out their team about natural assets, and there’s a strong willingness to share knowledge and lessons learned. “I would just recommend reaching out to a community they’re doing something that you’d like to work towards. They probably have great advice as to what worked and what you should avoid doing.”

2/ Build awareness of the benefits of natural assets across your organization

“Just build that understanding amongst staff, amongst the public, amongst council around why natural areas are so important and circling back to the services they provide,” said Cristall. “Continue having those conversations about how natural areas are one of our most effective tools to make the case as to why natural assets need to be a priority within the municipality.”

Cristall mentioned there can be a lack of awareness around natural asset management as it’s an emerging practice, but it’s also relevant to positions across the organization, such as engineering, public works, recreation, tourism, and of course climate change. 

“It might be that some departments are already doing natural asset management—whether tree maintenance, or monitoring—and just not calling it that,” she said. Having conversations with staff from different departments can offer fresh perspectives, build buy-in for natural asset management, and help identify opportunities to implement natural infrastructure approaches.

3/ Align natural asset management to your community’s context and priorities 

“Centering people at the heart of the discussion and really, building understanding of the issues, you can connect actions to people’s priorities, and that our approach is based in a diversity of voices that represent the community,” she said. “Create a channel of communication between municipal staff, Council, and the community members and organizations to ensure everybody is working together towards a common goal.”

Ready to plan with nature in your community? Apply to the  Natural Asset Management Roadmap Program today!

All photos courtesy of the City of Charlottetown.