Climate Risks: Engaging Vulnerable Populations (CREVP)

Through Climate Risks: Engaging Vulnerable Populations (CREVP), Evergreen will undertake an engagement process with some of Vancouver’s most marginalized populations, with an aim to understand and reduce their vulnerability to climate change impacts. Research and consultations from January through May of 2018 will investigate vulnerable populations’ current experiences of climate change, concerns over future risks, and priorities for addressing climate change impacts. CREVP aims to reduce the vulnerability of Vancouver’s senior citizens as well as low-income and homeless populations, including residents of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES), to local climate change impacts. These populations are particularly vulnerable to impacts like flooding and extreme heat, both of which are projected to increase significantly due to climate change, from now through to 2100. This phased process will include:1. Research on existing best practices and tactics, and the development of a stakeholder engagement plan in partnership with local social service groups.2. Implementing the engagement process across two streams, seniors and residents of the DTES, both of which will include:a. Interviews with staff of social service organizations to gather information on their client base.b. A series of dialogues and workshops with vulnerable populations to: a) share information about current climate projects; b) gather input on their lived experiences, and; c) work with them to determine the tools, programs, and community adaptation strategies that would be most helpful.3. A roundtable review of findings with social service partners, and a final report outlining priorities to be incorporated into the broader update to the City’s Climate Change Adaptation Strategy in 2018.The original 2012 Climate Adaptation Strategy notes local government’s ‘special responsibility to those members of society who are more vulnerable to impacts from climate change’. Addressing the long-term needs of these vulnerable populations is critical to the well-being of the community. The priorities developed through this process will also inform the larger strategy update, benefiting other vulnerable communities more broadly. Priorities from CREVP will contribute to social and economic objectives encompassed in other City plans such as Healthy Cities and the Resilient Cities plan by prioritizing triple-bottom line solutions that account for the intersecting challenges faced by vulnerable populations.