New Publication: Evaluating the quality of municipal climate change plans in Canada

Dave Guyadeen, University of Guelph, Assistant Professor in Rural Planning and Development within SEDRD and his colleagues, Jason Thistlethwaite and Daniel Henstra (University of Waterloo), recently published their research on the quality of municipal climate change plans in Canada. The article, published in Climatic Changes, discusses the results from their plan quality evaluation of 63 climate change plans across Canada.

This is the first study to critically evaluate the content and quality of Canadian local climate change plans on a national scale using a comprehensive plan quality framework. The researchers developed a coding protocol of 46 indicators based on eight plan quality characteristics: fact base, goals, policies, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, inter-organizational coordination, participation, and plan organization and presentation.

Their analysis revealed three key findings. First, Canadian municipal climate change plans prioritize climate change mitigation over adaptation. Second, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation are relatively weak aspects of municipal climate change plans in Canada. Finally, despite the importance that scholars and practitioners ascribe to stakeholder engagement, Canadian municipalities appear to have given insufficient consideration to this element of the climate change plan-making process.

Media coverage article from The Record entitled "Municipalies must improve climate change adaptation planning".