The Town of Canmore has signed up to join a global coalition of mayors and city officials pledged to reducing local greenhouse gas emissions and improve resilience to climate change.
The Compact of Mayors is an agreement network to fight climate change in a consistent and complimentary way to those efforts being made nationally and was launched by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and his special envoy for cities and climate change at the 2014 climate summit.
Canmore sustainability coordinator Lori Rissling Wynn said it is an important step for the community to commit to not only reducing greenhouse gas emissions to address climate change, but enhance resilience and track progress towards those goals publicly.
Rissling Wynn said all cities that have signed up for the Compact of Mayors globally would follow the same inventory protocol – measuring greenhouse gas emissions and carbon dioxide.
“Initially, most inventory programs and work done in the community has really been working on mitigation to reduce greenhouse gases,” he said. “The Compact of Mayors carries that forward and adds the adaptation piece, which has not previously been captured.”
Canmore’s Environmental Sustainability Action Plan (ESAP) already sets out to measure the municipality’s energy consumption of natural gas and electricity, but with the Compact of Mayors it is more involved and robust. Rissling Wynn said it requires the municipality to look at emissions from waste and transportation as well.
Measuring G.H.G. outputs assists in showing transparently when they are being reduced, as well as setting targets for reduction – the mitigation side of the agreement. Adaptation is the other aspect and just as important, said Rissling Wynn.
“How do we also in the interim prepare our community for extreme weather events and what can happen in a changing climate,” she asked. “The Compact of Mayors marries mitigation and adaptation together under one umbrella program.”
As a result of the current context Canmore is in provincially, nationally and globally with COP21, Rissling Wynn said signing onto the Compact of Mayors provides direction to revisit the ESAP document, its targets and action plans to see if they should be updated or changed.
