WhiteCAP_Plan_01SEPT..

Northern Climate ExChange WhiteCAP Draft Plan
6.0 Climate Change Adaptation and Whitehorse
The Tier II assessment of climate change risks highlights the broad nature of climate
change vulnerability as perceived by the community of Whitehorse. High priority risks
exist in all of the evaluated sectors (hazards, infrastructure, environment, food security
and energy security) and many of these risks are interconnected. Adapting to climate
change in the Whitehorse region will therefore require the community to address
sweeping concerns of an interdisciplinary nature with varying capacity to do so.
Climate change adaptations for the community of Whitehorse were first suggested by
participants at the community input session in January 2010. The list of adaptations
compiled from our consultation with the community is not necessarily exhaustive and
additional adaptations exist that have not been noted here. As with the identification of
consequences, discussions of adaptations were rooted in local knowledge. All
adaptations suggested by the community are provided in the Future Histories of
Whitehorse. In this section the project team has evaluated those adaptations suggested
by the community to respond to higher priority risks. The evaluation was intended to
ensure that existing capacity in the community was enhanced.
6.1 Community Adaptations to High Risk Consequences of Climate Change
Leveraging adaptive capacity requires that community resources be applied to those
actions that best address identified risks. A summary of the sector risk is provided at the
beginning of each subsection. Only those adaptations that address high risk
consequences were evaluated. Each adaptation was assessed to determine how well it
addresses the impacts (fit), how well it benefits the broader community (win-win) and
whether it builds adaptive capacity.
Fit is a measure of how well an adaptation responds to climate change impacts, both in
number and priority. To evaluate if an adaptation has a good fit, the project team
considered:
• How many impacts does the adaptation improve and what is their priority?
• How well does the adaptation address the range of impacts
• How well does the adaptation integrate with other adaptation strategies?
• Is the cost of the adaptation acceptable?
Win-win actions are those adaptations that provide other benefits to the community in
addition to climate change (Snover et al, 2007). To assess if an adaptation was win-win,
the project team considered:
• Is the adaptation also mitigative?
• How well does the adaptation integrate with other existing planning processes?
• Will the action decrease the risk of losing unique environmental or cultural resources?
• Will the adaptation increase scientific confidence?
The project team also determined the extent to which the adaptation would develop
community adaptive capacity. To ensure that a positive contribution was made to
capacity development, we discussed:
• Is the adaptation equitable?
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