Climate change, the long-term change in Earth's weather patterns - is one of the most pressing environmental and social issues of our time. A changing climate brings with it extreme heat, drought, flooding, more intense weather and storms, rising sea levels, and a host of other impacts that all contribute to enormous environmental, social and economic challenges.
Climate change is a global issue, but we're also seeing changes locally.
What we're doing to address climate change:
- Mitigation
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Mitigation is about reducing the amount of greenhouse gases that are causing climate change. Reducing greenhouse gases means decreasing the use of fossil fuels and promoting carbon capture (sequestering) through the protection and enhancement of natural areas such as forests.
GRCA has also completed a corporate greenhouse gas inventory to guide corporate decisions in future mitigation efforts.
- Adaptation
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Adaptation is about building resilience so that we can better prepare for the impacts of climate change such as extreme weather, drought and flooding.
Our Climate Change Strategy reviews the potential impacts of a changing climate on watershed function and recommends changes to our programs and services to ensure they remain effective at protecting the watershed in projected future climates.
Other examples of how we are currently adapting to a changing climate are:
Low impact development is one way we're building resilience into the watershed. Low impact development is about adapting the way we build to help water mimic the natural process and go into the ground, not run-off into our waterways or overflow our infrastructure, leading to flooding.
Climate Projections
GRCA worked with the Ontario Climate Consortium (OCC) to conduct a climate change analysis across the Ganaraska Region Conservation Authority watershed, which was an extension of the ‘Guide to Conducting a Climate Change Analysis at the Local Scale: 'Lessons Learned from Durham Region’.