Whitehorse Climate Change Adaptation Plan - Yukon College

Table 7. Identified opportunities by sector.
CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION AND WHITEHORSE
Whitehorse Climate Change Adaptation Plan
Sector Opportunity
Infrastructure Increased need for Whitehorse to serve as a hub - infrastructure expansion.
Longer growing season, likely an opportunity for agriculture.
Food Security Whitehorse emerges as a hub, supplying food to outlying communities
through local agriculture.
Energy Security Gas pipeline mega-project may bring energy opportunity.
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.
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
in 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: Scenarios of Change (NCE, 2010). In the following
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.
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. The
attributes of fit, win-win and adaptive capacity development allowed for the integration of the
special considerations (identified in section Special Considerations of the Whitehorse Adaptation
Plan) associated with the community vision directly into the planning process.
Based on this assessment, priority adaptations emerged for all sectors. The number of
adaptations designated with a high priority correlated to the risk associated with the sector. As
illustrated in Figure 8, the bulk of priority of adaptations were associated with decreasing the
susceptibility of the community of Whitehorse to landscape hazards and ensuring infrastructure
remains viable. The detailed evaluation of adaptations is documented in Appendix F. Twentytwo
adaptations were designated as having a high priority to respond to climate change risks.
An additional six opportunities were identified to support emerging opportunities. Both sets of
adaptations are listed by sector in Table 8.
25