WhiteCAP_Plan_01SEPT..

Northern Climate ExChange WhiteCAP Draft Plan
Executive Summary
About This Plan
Climate has been changing in Whitehorse. It is clear from meteorological data going
back to the 1940’s that temperature has been warming, especially in winters. Break up
has also been arriving earlier, freeze up later and growing degree days have been
increasing. The Whitehorse Community Adaptation Project, or WhiteCAP, was funded
by the Northern Strategy Trust to begin the process of ensuring that Whitehorse
residents are prepared for climate change. WhiteCAP consists of two distinct phases:
planning and implementation.
The WhiteCAP plan is intended to assess how climate change may positively or
negatively affect the community over the next forty years, to 2050. The plan uses a
modified form of scenario planning and risk assessment. The first half of the planning
process, which focused on exploring multiple scenarios of how the community may
change by 2050, is presented in the companion document for this plan: Future Histories
of Whitehorse: Scenarios of Change. The WhiteCAP plan reports on the risk
assessment portion of the Whitehorse adaptation planning process. Portions of the plan
will be implemented in the second year of the project.
The scenario planning portion of the
WhtieCAP process is based on an
evaluation of community vulnerability.
To assess vulnerability we developed
four scenarios describing how climate
change may affect the community of
Whitehorse based on an increase in
regional mean annual temperature of
2°C to 4°C and a population growth of
12,000 to 24,000 people by 2050.
Based on these scenarios the
community identified 237 impacts and
proposed 245 adaptations to address
climate change.
Figure 1: Risk Assessment Process
Two levels of risk assessment were
conducted to establish where
community vulnerability was greatest
(Figure 1). The first level of risk
assessment, or tier one, examined the
nine sectors identified in discussions of
vulnerability with the community. Risk
was determined based on the severity of anticipated impacts, the likelihood of the impact
occurring, and the adaptive capacity of the community to respond to that impact. Five
priority sectors were determined to be of risk to the community: natural hazards,
infrastructure, environment, food security, and energy security. The second level of risk
assessment identified high risk consequences of climate change for the community in
each of these sectors. For those impacts that are considered opportunities the
assessment process was the same, however we considered the strength of the
opportunity rather than the severity of the risk.
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