A look at policy enablers to scale natural asset management in the Prairies and beyond

With mounting evidence demonstrating that natural infrastructure provides more cost-effective and climate-resilient water services than grey infrastructure alone, it is important that more Canadian communities — especially those in the Prairies who face unique water variability challenges — adopt natural infrastructure solutions as part of a proactive asset management strategy.  One practical way that local governments can approach natural infrastructure is through natural asset management (NAM). 

With this in mind, NAI conducted a policy review and key informant interviews to explore provincial policy and funding programs and how they (or could be improved to) support an increase in NAM by local governments. For this we focused on five provinces: British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario.

Enabling Natural Asset Management Progress: Lessons from Five Canadian Provinces is intended to spark discussions on how to scale up natural asset management in the Prairies region and beyond. In this report, we identify factors contributing to progress in Ontario and British Columbia, two provinces that stand out as having strong enabling environments for local natural asset management. We examine good practices from all five province and offer initial recommendations to strengthen policy enablers at both the provincial and federal level.

This initiative was made possible with support from the International Institute for Sustainable Development’s Natural Infrastructure for Water Solutions (NIWS) program.