Integrated Climate Action for British Columbia Communities Initiative (ICABCCI)

The goal: To collaboratively advance and test the low carbon resilience (LCR) approach in planning and decision-making.

LCR is a step change in climate action that coordinates and mainstreams adaptation, mitigation, and co-benefits in municipal planning and decision-making processes. This approach brings into focus the multiple considerations and trade-offs of policies, investments, projects and decisions made today while acknowledging their legacies for tomorrow.

Our collaborations with 13 local governments helped connect integrated climate action with a variety of community planning and decision processes and social, economic, and ecosystem goals. This has, in turn, identified entry points and opportunities for local governments to embed the LCR approach, for instance in corporate strategy, such as procurement, in asset management and project prioritization, and in community planning, such as land use, transportation, emergency management planning, urban forest strategies, biodiversity planning, ecosystem restoration, and social resilience planning.

A key outcome of this work is the LCR Planning Handbook and the online LCR Planning Tool. These outline an integrated climate action planning process that is systemic and cross-cutting and that identifies synergistic opportunities between risk and emissions, while advancing climate action co-benefits. This prevents contradictory responses, streamlines capacity and resources, and moves climate out of the sidelines, instead embedding it as a crucial part of decision-making across the local government organization.

View ICABCCI publications and resources on our reports page using the ICABCCI tag. 

This project was supported by the Real Estate Foundation of BC.