In the last five years, Canadian municipalities have made significant progress in advancing municipal climate ambitions by declaring a climate emergency and developing climate plans. However, municipal staff encounter many challenges in implementing these plans. Clean Air Partnership is advancing efforts to support municipal staff in identifying key drivers of climate action implementation. We conducted a webinar series to understand how different governance structures influence climate ambition, resources, and implementation and what accountability structures propel climate action implementation.
We looked at different governance structures to identify if the location of climate departments in a municipality influences climate action implementation. There is a growing trend of climate departments being relocated to the Chief Administrative Officer’s (CAO) office or within the Planning Department. While we identified some pros and cons of the location of climate teams, ultimately, the factors listed below have a bigger role in climate implementation:
- Climate commitment at the Council level sets a firm direction and expectation for climate action to be embedded across all municipal departments.
- Climate leadership at the City Manager level allows for convening and aligning efforts across municipal staff and mobilizing a broad array of actors within the municipality.
- Climate champions in the finance departments support climate change integration into organizational and financial strategies.
- Internal and external advisory groups provide expertise and enhance the accountability of the council, which directly supports municipal climate implementation.
- Internal divisional senior management can support climate staff in aligning climate goals with the organization’s business strategy.
Five leading practices to enhance municipal climate accountability were identified and showcased through municipal examples. These practices are:
- Strong governance and oversight.
Under the Municipal Act, the City of Toronto enabled a Climate By-Law (every municipality can enable such a by-law) to support the transparency of a carbon accountability framework. It serves as a public commitment to reach net zero by 2040, enforces staff to follow procedures, and sets the stage to apply the carbon accountability framework. Another leading example comes from the City of Calgary, where the Council passed an Accountability Notice of Motion directing the administration to improve transparency and accountability on climate change, including developing a reporting framework and providing ongoing expenditure reports.
2. Detailed action identification, identifying staff leads, and budget allocation.
The Zero Carbon Whitby Costing Study details its methodology, assumptions, departmental and staff responsibilities, and data sources used. It also identifies how funding sources would be utilized to create a Zero Carbon Revolving Reserve Fund to finance the implementation of the plan. The study showed a positive business case over 2022-2050, where there will be 1.66 dollars of return for every dollar spent.
3. Climate-conscious decisions across municipal departments (Climate Lens Application)
The City of Brantford has a two-step climate lens process. The staff added a Climate and Environment Implication Report section to all Committee and Council reports to identify qualitatively how a project affects greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or is affected by climate (extreme events). The City has developed a calculator to provide GHG estimates and inform the council. Another leading example comes from the City of Toronto. Toronto’s Climate Lens supports staff with tools and training but also provides standardized data reporting and frameworks, which can be used to create a carbon budget. The carbon budget is the outcome of the accountability system that tracks key actions and the money required to get the city to Net Zero.
4. Enhanced financial planning by integrating climate change into regular financial budgeting processes
The City of Toronto has a Carbon Budget tool that reports on all activities, how they relate to GHG emissions and their financial decisions. The City determined the total carbon dioxide emissions that can be emitted until 2040, by which it will achieve net-zero emissions. Each proposed project is screened to allocate carbon emissions and operational costs. Its climate mitigation potential is assessed against the municipality’s remaining carbon budget.
5. Monitoring, evaluation & reporting
Sharing and monitoring progress to maintain trust between the municipality and community members is a key factor in accountability. The City of Brampton’s Dashboard illustrates the city’s finances and economy and shares resident stories, open data, and more.
The City of Calgary is developing a Climate and Environment Analytics Platform (to be launched in 2024) that will bring together data from across the municipality to support decision-making in a consistent, coordinated, and integrated way. Externally, it will serve as a dashboard enhancing the transparency of actions taken.
More details on municipal accountability can be found on our Climate Accountability Toolkit: A Roadmap for Municipalities. This webinar recording summarizes everything we learned in the climate governance, accountability and implementation webinar series. Clean Air Partnership will continue advancing efforts to support municipal climate implementation.
By Desi Stefanova, Outreach Manager