Climate Policy in the City of Vancouver

Climate Policy in the City of Vancouver

FEB 11, 2016 Suggestions for the City of Yokohama (横浜市) Climate Policy Team Dan Ward, George P.R. Benson, Karolina Pol

School of Community and Regional Planning, University of British Columbia

The City of Vancouver has a long history of leadership in both sustainability policy broadly, and climate change specifically.

Vancouver has kept crucial agriculture and industrial land protected in an otherwise demanding property market.

Because of Vancouver’s unique location and natural beauty, there has been a long-standing interest in sustainability policy. There was early regional consensus in constraining land-use to protect natural vistas and agricultural land which dates back to the 1970s, when the regional government (the Greater Vancouver Regional District) created a policy of designated town-centres to focus growth and employment in. While this policy has not always been successful as hoped for, combined with the provincial policy of the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR),

With regards to climate change, Vancouver’s Clouds of Change report in 1990 really put the city on the map with regards to tackling green-house gas emissions. This report helped shape sustainability thinking for years to come. The 1990s also saw urban (re)development policy focused on compact, human-scale density. Since 2011, the Greenest City Action Plan, and now efforts through organizations like C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, continue to shape and grow Vancouver’s fight to become more sustainable.

This brief is intended to highlight key sustainability and climate policies relevant to Yokohama. With its attempts to foster a low-carbon society, an innovative ‘green’ economy, and to be adaptive in the face of climate change, these are three Vancouver policies we felt Yokohama might find useful:

URBAN FORESTRY Vancouver’s urban forestry planning began in 2011 as part of its overarching Greenest City Action Plan, with trees understood therein as a crucial part of the city’s adaptation and mitigation plans. The city had lost 4.5% of its tree canopy since 1995 and wanted to reverse this trend. The plan has three prongs: protect, plant, and manage. Protection involves repealing of a previous bylaw which allowed residents to remove one healthy tree per year, as well as working closely with developers to protect mature trees. In terms of planting, the City intends to plant 150,000 trees by 2020, and has already reached the 37,000 mark. To manage these assets, the City wants to integrate a ‘green infrastructure’ approach to the trees, including planning for tree succession, management of soil conditions, and balancing tree health and place in other infrastructure decisions (e.g., stormwater management).

SEA LEVEL RISE ADAPTATION Vancouver was the First Canadian municipality to adopt a climate change adaptation strategy in 2012, which includes a Sea Level Rise Strategy that outlines city-wide responses, location-based responses, site redevelopment opportunities and immediate actions for affected areas. The main city-wide response put forward is an increase in the flood construction level (FCL) from 3.5 to 4.6 metres (0.5 metres higher than the provincial standard). Location based responses include strategic land use, green infrastructure for ecological services and grey infrastructure for direct flood protection. The strategy identifies large site redevelopment as an opportunity to increase the FCL and elevation of road surfaces of entire areas, creating pockets of land that are less vulnerable to flooding. The strategy also calls for emergency plans for anticipated flooding events.

GREEN ENTERPRISE ZONE Vancouver's economic transition from a primarily distribution and administrative centre for natural resource industries, to a knowledge and service-based economy has transformed the built environment. Similar to City of Yokohama, the City of Vancouver has recently reimagined some of it's historical light industrial zones as potential sites for green enterprise.

Vancouver's economic development agency, the Vancouver Economic Commission, has identified the False Creek Flats ("the flats") area as a new "Green Enterprise Zone" that is expected to be an anchor for this sector. Businesses working in areas such as clean energy, "smart" logistics, technology start-ups, and high-tech recycling services have already emerged in the flats and serve as a foundation for the establishment of the "Green Enterprise Zone".