Your chance to weigh in on New Brunswick’s next climate plan closes tonight at midnight.
New Brunswick’s climate change plan is just over five years old, passed in December 2016 under Brian Gallant’s Liberal government. It’s now due for a required five-year review, and in January the Higgs government opened up a month-long consultation period for New Brunswickers to give their input. That period closes tonight at midnight.
There’s not much to indicate that this consultation is a particularly important process for the province. There’s no roadshow of virtual or in-person community consultations, no discussion papers published. A standing legislative committee has heard from experts and officials, including the town of Sackville’s CAO Jamie Burke, but in terms general public input, there’s simply a link to an online form, and an email address to send further input. It’s not exactly an inspiring public consultation process.
But despite the low profile, Sabine Dietz says that public consultation is important. Dietz is director of CLIMAtlantic, a new Sackville-based clearing house for information and analysis about climate change in Atlantic Canada. She’s also a Sackville town councillor who ran on a platform calling for robust response to the climate crisis at all levels.
“It does matter,” says Dietz of the public input process. “It’s like you write a letter, and people and politicians know that there’s 10, 100 more people that think the same way.”
Dietz also shared some of her personal requests for the province’s next five year climate plan, including the removal of roadblocks for small scale solar and wind development, and further investment into energy efficient renovations, especially for low income people. Dietz says the latter is a win-win-win scenario.
“You’ve got reducing greenhouse gas emissions, because you’re not using so much electricity, or whatever you use for heating your home,” says Dietz. “Then you’re reducing expenses for the home owner. So for low income families or individuals, that’s a big win over the years. And then on top of that, there’s so many job opportunities in energy efficiency upgrades, that it would generate jobs.”
Dietz says that in general, the province needs to be more open, transparent, and realistic about the new and increased risks that come with climate change. “Flood risk, especially,” says Dietz, “but other risks as well, associated with heat, associated with food security.”
Corrine Cash is a professor of planning and community climate adaptation in the Geography and Environment Department at Mount Allison University. Cash is hoping that the province will create a strategy to help New Brunswick’s industries make the change to a low carbon economy. Resource industries aren’t going away, says Cash. “Everything that we need to do in order to transition to the low carbon economy requires resources,” says Cash. “And so we want to make sure that the resources that are being used are as clean and compatible with climate goals as possible.”
Cash says it’s important for people understand, “the complexity of shifting to a prosperous Canada that is low carbon. It’s not a this-or-that, black-or-white problem that we’re facing,” says Cash. She’s hoping people “challenge themselves to think broadly and have an open mind on how solutions can be found.”
Adam Cheeseman is director of conservation with Nature NB, a not for profit group dedicated to celebrating, conserving and protecting New Brunswick’s natural heritage. Cheeseman works out of Nature NB’s Sackville office. Back in January, he made an appearance at the New Brunswick legislature’s standing committee on climate change, as part of the government’s review.
Nature NB is focussed on the use of nature-based solutions to climate change adaptation. “That involves working with nature to help prepare and adapt,” says Cheeseman. ”Natural areas like forests, coastal wetlands, beaches, and dunes, they all help to buffer against the impacts of climate change, like holding on to floodwater and reducing erosion and those sorts of things.”
Cheeseman says he’s looking for the province to identify highest risk areas, and then cross-reference that with the nature-based solutions that can be implemented in those spots. The idea is to both protect against climate change and reap some of the co-benefits of nature based solutions, such as “increase in wildlife habitat, increased opportunities for recreation, like what we see with the Lorne Street naturalized stormwater pond and those sorts of things.”
When it comes to addressing issues with freshwater flooding across the province, Cheeseman advocates a watershed perspective. We need to think about “how water flows across the landscape,” says Cheeseman, and pay attention to forest management and wetland care and restoration in that landscape. “The more that we can store, hold on to, and slow down in the upper reaches of those watersheds, the better that communities like ours are going to be that are in those low lying areas.”
Comments on the provincial climate change act are being accepted until Thursday at midnight. You can find the survey questions here, or email your thoughts directly to climatechangeNBchangementsclimatiques@gnb.ca