An Ontario town adapts

Laura Stricker in the Sudbury Star (Ontario): Sudbury is a "model" for other cities in how to adapt to, and plan, for climate change, an environmental sciences professor at St. Catharine's Brock University says.

Liette Vasseur, the former associate vice president of research at Laurentian University, is due to receive the A.D. Latornell Conservation Pioneer Award in November for her research on climate change. She's receiving the award in part because of her work on the paper The International Journal of Climate Change: Impacts and Responses, where Greater Sudbury was used as a case study.

... Vasseur, along with Bob Rogers; chair of the Nickel District Conservation Authority, Tim Beadman; chief of emergency services in the City of Greater Sudbury and Janet Gasparini, executive director of the Social Planning Council, participated in a press conference last week to talk about what Sudbury is doing to prepare for climate change.

Beadman discussed what the city is doing to ready its residents for climate change-related incidences, including heavy rainfall, heat waves and forest fires. "Climate change adaptation is about preparing your community for what's going to be transpiring over the next five, 10, 15 years," he said. "(This) means that we need to take a more comprehensive approach to disaster and emergency management.

"(Locally), we're working in collaboration with most of our partners. Council has adopted a comprehensive emergency management approach. It's an integrated approach with their different agencies and requires the support and participation of our community partners, so we've established a hot weather response plan, a flood management plan that we're working on ... our community evacuation plan is almost ready.

"(There's also an) animal care in emergency plan, a pandemic plan, which we've had in place for a number of years." Especially critical, Beadman said, is looking after the more vulnerable population....

The skyline of Sudbury, Ontario, shot by P199, Wikimedia Commons