Saskatchewan’s Environment Minister Dustin Duncan has announced a new Climate Resilience Measurement Framework to help measure resilience to climate change within the province.
The framework is a cornerstone commitment in Prairie Resilience, the Saskatchewan government’s climate change strategy. The action plan includes 25 measures to monitor and enhance the province’s resilience to climate change.
“Our government has made significant progress in the development of Prairie Resilience since it was announced nearly one year ago,” Duncan said. “This new resilience framework covers a broad and balanced set of measures that will help to ensure we are working to protect Saskatchewan people and communities from a changing climate. This is an important part of our comprehensive plan that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and achieve better results than a singular carbon tax policy.”
Examples of specific measures in the framework are:
- Percentage of agricultural land area with a nutrient stewardship plan, which matches the right source and rate of fertilizer to the right time and place of application;
- greenhouse gas emissions from government-owned buildings;
- Provincial forest harvest designs;
- Floodplain mapping for at-risk communities; and
- Wildfire fuel management work on Crown land.
The Measurement Framework addresses water security as a human well-being issue and outlines these measures:
- Number of communities reliant on water supplies vulnerable to drought; and
- Average municipal water consumption per capita and total municipal water consumption.
For each, the province has set a resilience target of: decrease.
The Climate Resilience Measurement Framework and other components of the province’s climate change strategy are available at www.saskatchewan.ca/climate-change.