Region one of few municipalities to post information on climate progress

There is very little information about how successful municipalities are in actually reaching the climate goals they set, a UW study found

A recent study by the University of Waterloo found almost all municipalities in Ontario publish their sustainability and climate change goals, but there is very little information about how successful they are in actually reaching those goals, with less than half formally reporting on their progress.

The study look at looked at 38 Ontario municipalities, whose population makes up 78 per cent of the provincial total.

“Citizens can go online and see the financial performance of a municipality,” said Leah Feor, a PhD candidate in the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development who took part in the research.

“But they would have to dig around to see how the operations and policies of the municipality are contributing to sustainable development and climate action. It’s not always easy to find.”

Waterloo Region was just one of two municipalities in the study, and the only upper-tier one that provided an easily accessible climate change report.

That’s quite different from the private sector, where sustainability reporting is now widespread, Feor said. The study found there was “minimal” climate change reporting: 17 published a climate change plan, but only two of the 38 municipalities published any kind of climate change report.

The report is a key piece of information, both for decision-makers and for the general public, Feor said.

“You create a plan, and you implement it, and the final step is: How did we do in our implementation? Did we achieve our goals? What can we learn from that?

“Without that check-in to see how we’re doing, it’s hard to identify what actions are working, or what actions are costing a lot of money but not actually giving us a lot of results,” she said.