Selkirk College
IN-2: Innovation 2

The Rural Development Institute (RDI), at Selkirk College, is a regional research centre with a mandate to support decision-making by Columbia Basin-Boundary communities through the provision of information, applied research and outreach and extension support. The RDI partnered with Columbia Basin Trust’s Communities Adapting to Climate Change Initiative on this project, which seeks to measure the Basin’s progress on climate adaptation and climate resilience using indicators. Indicators are helpful for informing residents, organizations, and governments regarding key trends in climate adaptation and resilience, facilitating understanding of complex issues, evaluating the effectiveness of various adaptation measures, and motivating change.

There are several measurable outcome association with the innovation. Technical work is now complete and there are three knowledge products related to the project: Summary Report: Measuring Progress on climate change adaptation in the Columbia Basin Final Report: Indicators of climate adaptation in the Columbia Basin Climate resilience indicator literature review The goals of this project were to develop a suite of regional-level climate change indicators to measure community climate adaptation efforts, assist communities in understanding climate change and adaptation, help decision makers in the Basin make informed decisions and measure the success of adaptation efforts. The resulting State of Climate Adaptation and Resilience in the Basin (SoCARB) indicator suite builds on current State of the Basin indicators that effectively can measure an aspect of climate adaptation. The primary audiences for this work are local governments and engaged community members in the Columbia Basin. As such, local government representatives—both staff and decision makers—were engaged early in the process to ensure that the products developed were useful for them. Secondary audiences include Basin residents, businesses, and community groups, as well as other organizations, governments and researchers in Canada interested in measuring climate adaptation using indicators. Moreover, the conceptual models developed and process utilized to create the SoCARB should be applicable to other communities or agencies in Canada interested in developing their own “State of Climate Adaptation” program.

The following are links to documents developed out of the State of Climate Adaptation and Resilience in the Basin (SoCARB) project. Summary Report Measuring Indicators of Climate Adaptation http://www.cbrdi.ca/wp-content/uploads/ClimateAdaptation_Summary_11-03-15.pdf Indicators of Climate Adaptation http://www.cbrdi.ca/wp-content/uploads/ClimateAdaptation_FinalReport_15-03-15.pdf Climate Resilience Indicator Literature Review http://www.cbrdi.ca/wp-content/uploads/ClimateAdaptation_LitReview_15-03-15.pdf