Assessing Climate Change Risk and Resilience in the Yukon
4
PRIORITIES AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Overarching findings
Supporting communities' capacity to
undertake climate change adaptation
initiatives
Continued collaboration and partnerships
across Yukon are vital for building resilience to
climate impacts. Yukon communities
witness climate change impacts and are aware
of the risks, but often lack the resources to
implement solutions. Better coordination,
clarity around government roles and respon-
sibilities, and resources and capacity to inform
adaptation are needed to build resilience.
Adaptation actions should include opportuni-
ties for two-way information sharing, listening
to local knowledge, and capacity building.
In the Yukon, local knowledge is especially
important for adaptation, due to limits in data
quality and availability. Intergovernmental
collaborations, whole-of-government
responses, and partnerships can also help
buffer some of the capacity limitations at the
community level. Supporting communities'
and governments' capacity to meaningfully
consider climate change in regional land-use
plans is vital.
Government collaboration on and ownership
of climate risks is an essential part of
adaptation
While community response and adaptation
planning is an important part of building
resilience to climate change impacts, it is
recommended that governments continue to
take a leadership role in developing and
implementing adaptation strategies. This
includes action by federal, territorial, municipal
and Indigenous governments. Climate change
risks are distributed across government
mandates, so it is important for governments
to implement risk management and risk
reduction strategies using a whole-of-
government approach. Additionally,
governments must continue to take action on
areas such as social supports, housing,
economic development, and food security, and
supporting people who face greater risks.
Training, capacity building, and support for
staff to interpret climate projections and
related information is needed
There are substantive gaps in training and
skills with respect to using climate projections
to inform decision-making- including the
skills needed to understand data availability
and gaps, incorporate climate projections, and
interpret and use regional climate data. Areas
where training is especially needed include
infrastructure development, land-use planning,
emergency preparedness, agriculture, mining
and tourism. Process participants who work
for territorial, First Nations or municipal
governments commented that their
organizations or teams are often aware of
the climate hazards involved, but are unsure
how to interpret climate projections, apply
emerging climate-related codes and standards
(if they are aware of them), or assess the level
of risk.
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