New report highlights impact of climate change on Prairie provinces
Climate change presents a wide range of challenges to life on the Canadian prairies and there is a need for more proactive adaptation and resilience planning.
The impact of climate change on the three prairie provinces are discussed in a new regional perspectives report released by Natural Resources Canada.
The virtual launch of the report took place during a webinar hosted by the Prairies Regional Adaptation Collaborative (PRAC), Dec. 7.
PRAC is a cost share program between Natural Resources Canada and the governments of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Several authors of the report participated in the webinar to discuss key messages from the document.
Lead author Dr. Dave Sauchyn, who is professor of geography and environmental studies at the University of Regina and director of the Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative, said the report’s lead and contributing authors are experts in climate change impact and adaptation in the region.
“The authors read and synthesized the results of about 300 published studies,” he noted. “The instructions we got from the national secretariat were to include information on all the information that's documented somewhere. So this assessment process really is a process of synthesizing what's known and what's documented about climate change impacts and adaptation in our region.”
This publication about these impacts on the prairie provinces is the first release of a chapter of the regional perspectives report by Natural Resources Canada. The other regional reports for British Columbia, Northern Canada, Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada will be released over the spring and summer of 2021.
The prairie provinces report indicates that prairie ecosystems will shift and transform as the climate warms, extreme weather events are getting worse, and the changing climate will have positive and negative benefits for agriculture.
Climate change will have an impact on existing societal inequities. The report emphasizes the need for adaptation planning by all sectors to ensure climate resilient communities and local economies.
The information in the report is presented in the form of several key messages about the impact of climate change on the prairies.
Several characteristics of the prairie provinces will influence the region’s vulnerability to climate change. The prairie provinces have the strongest warming to date across southern Canada, especially in the winter.
“In the winter, much of western Canada is warming at three times the global rate, and that would include the northern parts of the prairie provinces,” Dr. Sauchyn said.
More than 80 per cent of Canada's agricultural land is in the prairie provinces, including most of the irrigated land. The prairie provinces have large seasonal and interannual variations in climate, not only in the Canadian context, but few places in the world has the extent of variation in hydroclimate. This influences the prairie region's water resources, ecosystems, and the resource economy.
There has been a population shift from rural to urban in the prairie provinces, as well as an in-migration from other provinces and from beyond Canada in response to economic opportunities. From 2007 to 2017, the four fastest growing cities in Canada were on the prairies. Most rural communities depend on local runoff and groundwater. Urban communities access water from major rivers, which also support the main industries.
“Most of the population and most of the commercial activity on the prairies is in the southern part of the prairies, which has a limited and variable water supply and is considered a sub-humid climate,” he said.
The frequency and severity of extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and wildfires on the prairies will increase due to climate change.
“There is quite a bit of strong scientific evidence that in a warming climate you could expect extreme weather events to occur with increased severity, and in particular flooding and wildfire,” he said.
Dr. Sauchyn referred to recent research that were done about the flooding in southwestern Alberta in 2013, the wildfire in Fort McMurray in 2016 and even studies of what is called flash droughts or seasonal droughts.
“This research has indicated that these events occurred with somewhat greater severity because they were occurring in a warmer climate,” he said. “So this is probably the most challenging scenario we're facing on the prairies is as these events occur with greater severity and greater cost and how do we deal with it.”
The report lists 20 of the costliest weather events in Canada since 1983, of which 13 occurred on the prairies. Six of the top 10 costliest weather events took place on the prairies since 2010.
Collaboration between all stakeholders is necessary to address the impacts of climate change on water resources on the prairies. Climate change considerations must be incorporated in regional land use policy and planning. Provincial and municipal governments need to be involved in this planning, but also local stakeholders such as watershed stewardship groups and conservation districts.
“In general, any kind of development has to be viewed through a climate change lens,” he said. “It just seems like it's due diligence these days that any kind of proposal be evaluated for the climate risks.”
Contributing author Dr. Elaine Wheaton, who is an adjunct professor at the University of Saskatchewan and an emeritus researcher at the Saskatchewan Research Council, spoke about the positive and negative impacts of climate changes on prairie agriculture.
“When we examined prairie agriculture and climate, we found an interesting combination of benefits, especially for longer growing seasons, but some of the higher temperatures as well,” she said. “On the other hand, if we want to achieve increasing production from these benefits, we will need to really limit the impacts of all the climate extremes, which include water scarcity.”
She added that climate variability and change will have a lot of indirect consequences for agriculture in the prairie provinces. The impacts include a higher risk of pests and vector-borne diseases, as well as an increase in invasive species.
Lead author Dr. Mark Johnston, who is a senior research scientist at the Saskatchewan Research Council, provided details about how prairie ecosystems will shift and transform due to a warming climate.
“Ecosystems are made up of species of plants and animals, and all of those are sensitive to climate and will seek better conditions as the conditions where they're located currently change,” he said. “And so, as a result of that, ecosystems are likely to move around on the landscape over time.”
Large areas of boreal forest might transition to aspen parkland and grassland ecosystems. The warmer climate could result in the disappearance of entire mountain ecosystems.
“Prairies are home to a number of economic sectors that are dependent on ecosystem conditions, agriculture and forestry being the two most important ones,” he mentioned. “And so those economic sectors will need to start developing adaptation plans in order for them to try to reduce their vulnerabilities to these changes and continue to provide the economic values that they do.”
Lead author Dr. Debra Davidson, who is a professor in the University of Alberta’s Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology, spoke about the societal impacts of climate change. She noted that climate change can have a greater effect on particular demographic groups and it can exacerbate existing inequities between groups.
“The impact of climate change may exacerbate existing inequalities, especially those that pertain to indigenous peoples, women, people of low socio-economic status, youth and elderly,” she said. “Public policy and adaptation planning should really consider these unique vulnerabilities and strengths of different social groups, and also the means by which different personal attributes can amplify vulnerability or resilience.”
Climate change is already happening, which means that adaptation planning is required to reduce climate risks.
“Cities are at the forefront of adaptation and resilience planning in the prairie provinces, as is true in many other places around the world,” she said. “Governments and businesses have also begun to assess climate risks and develop adaptation strategies, but a few of these plans and policies overall consider future climate risks, and they leave some firms and governments and sectors unprepared.”
One of the challenges for decisionmakers is that adaptation planning is a significant undertaking, which is often beyond the resources and capacities of many organizations. This is a particular constraint for smaller communities and businesses.
“There is also growing recognition in the research community of the need for adaptation mainstreaming, which involves incorporating climate risks and adaptation needs into all sectors, policies and levels of decision making rather than simply relying solely on a separate dedicated unit or plan,” she said. “The extent to which this may already be happening across the prairie region or within specific sectors is difficult to observe, but it is a feature that researchers are increasingly looking for as a necessary feature of climate adaptation.”
Dr. Davidson noted that climate policy cannot anymore focus only on measures to limit climate change. There now also needs to be a discussion of adaptation measures.
“We no longer have the luxury of choosing the one or the other,” she said. “At this point we have no choice but to adapt to the changes that are already sort of locked into our system and at the same time we very seriously need to take on mitigation and drastic reduction of emissions. And from a policy standpoint, I think there's a growing effort to look for those strategies that have what is called co-benefits so they can serve both mitigative and adaptive functions.”