Document 10616410

Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS)

Strategic Research Plan

Updated January 2012

T ABLE OF C ONTENTS

Mission Statement

Rationale and Background

Theme Oversight and Budgeting

The Strategic Research Plan

Theme 1. The Low Carbon Emissions Economy

Theme 2. Social Mobilization

Theme 3. Sustainable Communities

Theme 4. Resilient Ecosystems

Theme 5. Carbon Management in BC Forests

PICS Research Products

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Appendix 1: PICS Research Theme Subcommittee Membership

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T HE PICS M ISSION

To partner with governments, the private sector, other researchers and civil society, in order to undertake research on, monitor, and assess the potential impacts of climate change and to assess, develop and promote viable mitigation and adaptation options to better inform climate change policies and actions.

B ACKGROUND AND R ATIONALE

Responding to anthropogenic climate change is simultaneously an issue of sociology and human psychology, economics, politics, scientific progress, and the application and development of technology, all set against a backdrop of ecosystems and a natural physical environment that is under unprecedented pressure. How global society will act in the face of this complicated, interdisciplinary challenge remains an open question. But what is clear is this: adaptation concurrent with mitigation is a must, and putting constructive policies in place to meet these dual demands requires research, fresh ideas and solutions from across the spectrum of academic expertise.

While the task is daunting, it is not intractable, an optimistic perspective recognized by the Province of

British Columbia in 2008 when it established the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS). PICS is a consortium, hosted and led by the University of Victoria (UVic), in collaboration with the University of

Northern British Columbia (UNBC), Simon Fraser University (SFU) and the University of British Columbia

(UBC). A $90M endowment contributed by the Province supports the operations, including the extensive research-‐program component of PICS.

The Institute’s five key imperatives, each of which is of an implicitly interdisciplinary nature, are as follows:

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•

• improving understanding of the magnitude and patterns of climate change and its impacts; evaluating the physical, economic and social implications of a changing climate; assessing mitigation and adaptation options and developing policy and business solutions;

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• strengthening educational and capacity-‐building strategies to address climate change; and communicating climate change issues to government, industry and the general public.

During its initial 17 months (April 1, 2008 to August 31, 2009), Institute operations were overseen by

Program and Executive committees that comprised representatives of the four universities as well as the provincial government and the federal civil service (see http://www.pics.uvic.ca/governance.php). The

Institute appointed its first full-‐time Executive Director on September 1, 2009; in addition to administrative responsibilities, the Executive Director chairs the Program Committee, which steers the many emerging and/or maturing programs that PICS has initiated. PICS also benefits from interaction with an External Advisory Board (http://www.pics.uvic.ca/governance.php), the members of which span a broad cross-‐section of the public and private sectors in Canada.

At present, PICS is solely supported by the yield of the endowment, which under the terms of the Letter of Transmittal from the Province also partially supports a collaborating sister organization: the Pacific

Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC), a not-‐for-‐profit corporation hosted by UVic. PCIC is a consortium of scientists and users of climate data who work to develop targeted climate information products that centre on climate variability, climate change and extreme events in British Columbia and Pacific North

PICS Strategic Research Plan 2012 2

America. These results support planning efforts that are focused on adaptation to climate change and variability. PCIC thus provides an important physical-‐science complement to the more policy-‐oriented work of PICS.

In the Spring of 2009 the PICS Program Committee developed an initial research plan built around four broad but key themes of direct importance to the climate-‐change challenge that faces global society:

• the Low-‐Carbon Emissions Economy;

•

Social Mobilization;

•

Sustainable Communities; and

•

Resilient Ecosystems.

A fifth and somewhat more specific theme, Carbon Management in BC Forests , was added later that year. Five expert workshops were held, one for each theme, between October 2009 and May 2010; all were designed to yield the key questions that now guide the general directions that PICS is taking in support of research that falls under the umbrellas of all five themes.

This Plan is based primarily on the outcomes of the five workshops and subsequent suggestions by the

Program Committee. While it has been written for a broad audience that comprises primarily the research and policy communities in British Columbia, it will also be of interest to those segments of the public and private sectors that are focusing on societal or business responses to the climate-‐change challenge.

T HEME O VERSIGHT AND B UDGETING

The thematic research effort is overseen by sub-‐committees, each comprising at a minimum a theme leader typically along with two members of the PC and one member from the provincial Climate Action

Secretariat (CAS). The sub-‐committee memberships are listed in Appendix 1.

Each subcommittee is charged with:

• stimulating and soliciting research on the key topics defined by the expert workshops, with the venues for this work typically (but not exclusively) being the four consortium universities;

• evaluating the strength of submitted research proposals, both solicited (ie, top-‐down) and unsolicited (bottom-‐up);

• making recommendations for funding to the PICS Program Committee, via the Executive

Director.

The budgets for each of the five primary themes are set annually as a component of the PICS budget, and comprise approximately half of the anticipated total expenditures of the Institute each year. The quantum available is contingent on endowment yield, adjustment of research priorities as determined by the PC, and expenditures on ancillary programs. The subcommittees are strongly encouraged to lever the PICS support wherever possible, for example through solicitation of matching funds from other sources.

In addition to the thematic research support, PICS funds through parallel fiscal channels fellowships for nearly 40 graduate students and post-‐doctoral fellows at steady state. Most of these scholars work directly on the questions outlined in this document. In years 1 and 2, PICS also provided fellowships that


enabled a small number of internationally known scholars to visit its consortium universities where they contributed to the Institute’s research and communications missions. Fiscal pressures led to the temporary suspension of that program in 2011/12; it is to be reinstated in fiscal 2012/13.

While this Plan identifies many research opportunities and questions, available resources will not allow all to be tackled at once. Instead, funding priorities will be set by the ability of the PICS community, through calls for proposals, to marry meritorious applications for support to the most compelling issues of the day. PICS will also actively promote interdisciplinary interaction on projects by soliciting the involvement of specific scholars. Finally, and in order to increase overall funding capacity, PICS funds will be used wherever possible to match support from other sources or agencies.

T HE S TRATEGIC R ESEARCH P LAN

In the following pages, the research strategy to be applied to each theme follows a summary of the compelling issues that underlie each of the five thematic areas. While the breadth of the thematic umbrellas is defined by the questions that the expert communities drafted, it is implicitly understood that new questions, unforeseen issues and additional topics of societal interest will arise episodically in coming years. This Plan is therefore neither fully proscriptive nor restrictive: it will evolve. Two constants run through the Plan, however: a focus on ‘solutions’, and an emphasis on relevance to British Columbia.

Both constants demand close, albeit not exclusive, cooperation with the provincial government through the Climate Action Secretariat and appropriate Ministries in order to provide the most policy-‐relevant research information.

Given the interdisciplinary nature of climate-‐change-‐oriented research, linkages between and among the themes are noted wherever possible.

This document is forward-‐looking. Progress and current initiatives are summarized annually in the PICS

Annual Report. The original, detailed workshop reports, from which the research questions in the following pages have been distilled, can be found at http://www.pics.uvic.ca/research.php.

T HEME 1.

T HE L OW C ARBON E MISSIONS E CONOMY

Developing a modern industrial economy that ideally will have a net zero release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere within several decades is a challenge of unparalleled scope.

British Columbia has taken a leadership position in North America with respect to meeting that challenge, having proclaimed North America’s first legislated carbon emissions tax in 2008, and having set ambitious targets for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions of 33% by 2020 and 80% by 2050.

Meeting such targets will be very difficult. What are the best instruments to use? How intensively and how quickly can they be applied? What side-‐effects might they induce? Such questions are embedded in the following seven research issues.

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Improving and sustaining BC’s carbon pricing initiative.

BC’s carbon tax faces challenges in the form of domestic equity and industrial competitiveness concerns, application to large emitters, and harmonization difficulties with future cap and trade

(and perhaps tax) systems the structure of which has been under active discussion in Canada and the US for some time and may see implementation anon. Policy steps that can or should be taken to address these concerns must be based on appropriate quantitative economic analyses coupled


with consideration of political realities and societal acceptance. Moreover, the current legislated schedule will see one final increment of the carbon tax applied on July 1, 2012. How should subsequent carbon tax policy be structured, and how should the revenue stream be allocated?

Links to Social Mobilization.

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Preventing GHG emissions from BC’s natural gas extraction industry.

The expanding natural gas extraction and processing industry in BC is on a path to increase provincial GHG emissions dramatically. Given the economic importance of BC’s natural gas industry, how best can technological advances and policies be implemented to prevent such emissions?

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Ensuring environmentally sound development of renewable electricity generation .

In recent years, BC encouraged small-‐scale renewables developed by independent power producers. Most proposals to date were for run-‐of-‐the-‐river hydropower projects. These have created issues in terms of transmission and river basin planning with respect to environmental and social impacts. This is a multifaceted policy concern that demands the attention of legal scholars, aquatic ecologists, and hydrologists, among others.

Links to Resilient Ecosystems and hydrological modeling at the regional scale (Pacific Climate

Impacts Consortium).

•

Rapidly reducing GHG emissions from BC’s transportation system.

If BC is to achieve its GHG reduction goals, it must accelerate the rate of adoption of zero-‐ and near-‐zero emission vehicle technologies for cars, trucks and other transportation modes. What programs will be most effective in fostering such acceleration? What are best practices elsewhere? To where should investments be targeted?

Links to Sustainable Communities and Social Mobilization.

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Rapidly reducing GHG emissions from BC’s buildings.

Meeting BC’s GHG reduction targets will require increased rates of adoption of zero-‐ and near-‐ zero emission building technologies, and an increased emphasis on retrofitting. What economic, regulatory and social policies will be most effective in meeting such requirements? What should be the relative roles of different levels of government across the Province, particularly in view of the large percentage of renovation and new construction carried out by governments in such sectors as health and education––can they be best-‐practice leaders? Moreover, what external best-‐practices can be applied to BC, given the climatic contrasts that span the provincial landscape?

Links to Sustainable Communities and Social Mobilization.

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Managing BC’s solid wastes from urban, industrial, forestry and agricultural activities to reduce

GHG emissions.

A sustainable economy involves managing more than just energy flows and energy-‐related impacts. It also requires policies that manage solid waste flows and their impacts. What economic


instruments should be used? What incentives are needed to enhance uptake of new approaches?

What side benefits can be achieved in energy recovery through applications of innovative technologies in such areas as incineration, biofermentation and others?

Links to Sustainable Communities, Social Mobilization, Carbon Management in BC’s Forests.

•

Accelerating the energy efficiency trend in BC.

Gains in energy efficiency throughout the BC economy have broad environmental, economic and social benefits. But energy efficiency is difficult to accelerate because of economic rebound effects. What policies work best? How intensively can they be applied? What are the net economic yields?

Links to with Sustainable Communities and Social Mobilization.

•

Developing renewable energy technologies.

Academic and private sector researchers in British Columbia are on the leading edge in developing technologies that generate electricity from wave and tidal power, convert biomass to energy or energy carriers like hydrogen or ethanol, or apply sophisticated ‘smart’ approaches to energy distribution systems. The foundations of these efforts are rooted anywhere between basic “blue-‐ sky” research and direct application of improved ‘next-‐generation’ technologies. PICS will play a role in supporting such efforts.

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Assessing electrical grid integration as an approach to emissions mitigation.

There is little to no east-‐west trade in electrons in Canada, primarily because electricity supply is a provincial responsibility and little extant transmission capacity exists between or among provinces. The latter constrains the ability of hydroelectricity to be used as firming power for intermittent renewables that could provide electricity in lieu of coal and natural gas combustion.

Rectifying this will require integration of the grid, but realizing that prospect demands quantification of available firming power capacity, consideration of capital and operating costs associated with installation of new transmission capacity, and multidisciplinary exploration of economic, social and constitutional influences on east-‐west (and north-‐south) electricity sharing.

Links with Social Mobilization and Resilient Ecosystems.

Key PICS strategies for supporting research under the Low Carbon Emissions Economy theme:

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Support solicited quantitative modeling and analysis of the issues above (and others) as applicable to the British Columbian context, and compare the results to best practices research elsewhere.

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Directly support cross-‐theme collaboration to address the areas of overlap above by hosting small question-‐specific interdisciplinary workshops.

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Rely on PCIC to supply climate change information on future energy-‐related variables; eg, heating and cooling degree-‐days, changing water/power resources, and climate extremes that influence energy production and distribution.

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Encourage energy-‐technology development by supporting basic to applied research by engineers and scientists, particularly through taking advantage of matching-‐funds programs from granting councils, government funding programs, and private-‐sector support. As


budgets permit, proposals will be solicited through annual calls that address the questions or issues above. While PICS will fund meritorious applications via the theme funding pool, wherever feasible fiscal leverage will be sought, for example by offering PICS support in the form of matching grants.

•

Encourage and support cross-‐theme peer-‐reviewed scholarly publications, as well as rapid dissemination of results through PICS White Papers.

T HEME 2.

S OCIAL M OBILIZATION

Changing human behaviour is difficult, nowhere more so than in encouraging reductions in individual and collective carbon footprints. How best can this imperative be achieved in British Columbia and elsewhere? What formal or informal organizational and institutional initiatives work best, and how can their uptake be accelerated? Moreover, what key societal initiatives should be established to increase resilience in the face of climate change and in our capacity to adapt? The Social Mobilization theme will focus on ‘what works’, on the identification, evaluation and development of approaches that are most effective in mobilizing human beings to deal effectively with the climate-‐change challenge.

There is significant complementarity between this theme and Sustainable Communities. Where Social

Mobilization will primarily address aspects of the human psychology of change, Sustainable

Communities will focus more on physical and social implementation of change. Both have the same endpoints in mind: stimulating a focus on sustainability; creating communities or societies that will be resilient when confronted with ongoing climate change and its implications; and stimulating active adoption of economic, social, and technological ‘solutions’. Key issues include the following:

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Resolving social barriers and identifying incentives to clean energy solutions.

What human psychological characteristics and social structures are inhibiting more rapid societal uptake of better practices in our use of energy? What encouragements work?

•

Developing tools for social engagement and application to mobilization.

Many approaches have been tried to promote acceptance of shifts in established practice. Some have been at least partially successful; some have outright failed. Why? New tools designed to engage with the public, particularly on location-‐specific bases, will be and are being developed.

But how can we maximize their value in advance with respect to mobilizing action? What works best elsewhere? How can we best engage beyond the usual suspects? And what will meet the specific (and varied) needs of BC, including for example, the North, where issues and attitudes regarding climate change contrast with those in metropolitan regions in the south? Are there topical areas of public concern that resonate more strongly (e.g. human and ecological health, or impacts of resource extraction)?

•

Monitoring effectiveness of social mobilization processes, tools, and pathways.

Determining ‘what works’ will require careful evaluation of communication and outreach strategies and the impact of applied tools like future-‐scenario visualization techniques. How can or should we best evaluate success in their application? What demographic cohorts are most receptive? Can we quantify ‘what works’?


•

Improving understanding of the use and impact of digital media, and developing/testing new digital approaches to engage the “silent majority” .

The digital world offers opportunities to engage and stimulate that have no historical precedents.

How can we best use social media and the web to deepen engagement with multiple contrasting constituencies? Is gaming of value, and if so, how, to whom and at what levels?

Key PICS strategies for supporting research under the Social Mobilization theme:

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Collaborate with the GRAND (Graphics, Animation and New Media) NCE (Network of

Centres of Excellence) in developing new-‐media applications, including gaming approaches, to climate-‐challenge-‐related engagement.

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Support development of visioning techniques to introduce communities to location-‐based future-‐climate scenarios. Work with PCIC and its collaborators for current climate monitoring that raises awareness of seasonal variability and extreme events.

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Support development and use of evaluation schemes that will directly assess efficacy of engagement approaches across demographic groups and the varied geographic regions of

BC.

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Support the Greenest City Conversations initiative in collaboration with partner organizations including the City of Vancouver, BC Hydro and the GRAND NCE.

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As budgets permit, issue annual calls for proposals that address the broader questions or issues above, the objective being to support highest-‐quality unsolicited (ie, bottom-‐up) research. Wherever feasible and/or possible, fiscal leverage will be sought, for example by offering PICS support in the form of matching grants.

•

Encourage and support cross-‐theme peer-‐reviewed scholarly publications, particularly but not solely with researchers in the Sustainable Communities theme.

T HEME 3.

S USTAINABLE C OMMUNITIES

The phrase ‘sustainable communities’ defies simple definition. At the very least, it simultaneously spans issues of scale, design, social interaction, governance and social equity, of resource allocation and energy use, engineered infrastructure, ownership and land-‐use issues, economic diversity, and cultural creativity. The building of communities that are truly sustainable thus presents a challenge of extraordinary complexity. A modern resilient community that warrants the adjective ‘sustainable’ needs to recognize that:

• sustainability and social equity are inextricably linked.

• rapid advances can be achieved through voluntary adoption of new paradigms (examples exist in cities like Portland, London and San Francisco).

• approaches for bringing about needed scale-‐appropriate behavioural change must be positive and pragmatic.

• people can be “nudged” into making better decisions when available choices make socially desirable behaviour easier.

• the challenge needs to be considered from concurrent multiple viewpoints.

Research issues under this theme will necessarily cover a broad range of topics, many of which will demand input from interdisciplinary teams. Many of the research questions under this theme that touch on human behaviour and societal responses to various drivers will be shared with Social Mobilization.


•

Promoting an energy-‐efficient building stock in BC.

From an energy efficiency perspective, what are the gaps in the regulation of existing buildings and new construction, and how can these best be addressed? What research will best illustrate the business case and portability of progressive energy systems such as North Vancouver's

Lonsdale Energy Corporation or Revelstoke's district energy system? How can retrofitting be made more attractive than new development, and what incentives will best increase the attractiveness while ensuring that long-‐term GHG-‐reduction targets will be met?

•

Relating behaviour change and improvements in the built environment.

How does design and operation of our built environments relate to and encourage behaviour change that promotes sustainable communities? Schools, universities, colleges and hospitals are typically large, credible, well established institutions under high-‐density use. What economic, regulatory, or other policies will lead to their being catalysts of change (“living labs”) in use of energy, for example, in promoting wider uptake of district energy systems? How can we increase the accuracy of predictive modeling of energy systems and emissions, and what impact do these have in predicting behaviour?

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Promoting social innovation.

Recognizing the strong connection between social innovation and paradigm shifts, what works in identifying, supporting, and transferring insights from social entrepreneurs and innovators more broadly into society?


•

Protecting the health of vulnerable populations

Climate change threatens public health, through direct effects like major heatwaves, broader transmission of vector-‐borne diseases, and diminished air quality associated with increased frequency of forest fires. Where are populations in BC most vulnerable, and what can be done to increase their adaptive capacity to such threats? Where and why could water quality be degraded? What approaches work best to encourage public health authorities to prepare for a different climatic and environmental future?

Links to Social Mobilization, Resilient Ecosystems

•

Philosophical issues.

How can we bring the challenge of climate change home and make it a “local” issue, while demonstrating that dealing with it has positive or neutral quality-‐of-‐life outcomes (for example, health co-‐benefits, or economic benefits in the form of carbon offsets rather than carbon taxes)?

The connection between sustainability and social equity needs elaboration by, for example, exploring the links between human rights and fair, sustainable per capita allocations of critical resources.



•

Governance issues.

What are the legislative and procedural challenges to, and opportunities for, encouraging collaboration between and among local governments and regional districts that will lead to accelerated uptake of best practices, such as Carbon Neutral Kootenays and the inter-‐municipal climate action working groups of Campbell River and the Fraser Valley? Where are inconsistencies and contradictions in planning, policy and practice, and how might they be addressed? How might the contradiction between electoral and sustainability time scales be resolved? Even better, can sustainability be divorced from politics altogether? This has happened in other jurisdictions

(Germany, for example). How and why?

•

Legal and fiscal issues.

What legal approaches are most effective in limiting sprawl and promoting green building? What role is there for the BC Government’s Community Charter? What financial tools help people capture economic benefit from their behavioural or monetary investments in sustainability? How might taxation (at all levels of government) more effectively promote development of sustainable communities?

Key PICS strategies for supporting research under the Sustainable Communities theme:

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Partner with the International Centre for Sustainable Cities, CAS, Royal Roads University, the Pembina Institute, UBC, SFU and others in supporting municipal responses to BC climate policies.

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Through sponsorship of focused workshops, actively link municipal sustainability coordinators and planners along with provincial and regional policy designers and academic water and energy use, building and housing design, public health and transportation analysts to bring international best-‐practices and current planning research directly into the sustainable communities discussions in BC.

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Work with PCIC to provide estimates of future climate conditions that would affect communities, urban development, water resources, including natural hazards such as drought, forest fires, and extreme weather events.

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Issue annual calls for proposals that address the questions above, and fund meritorious applications via the Sustainable Communities theme funding pool. Wherever feasible and/or possible, fiscal leverage will be sought, for example by offering PICS support in the form of matching grants.

•

Recognizing the multidisciplinary breadth of this theme, PICS will strongly encourage interaction and exchanges with the other themes through support of discipline-‐crossing, topic-‐specific workshops that will focus on current research and best-‐practice implementation.

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Encourage and support cross-‐theme peer-‐reviewed scholarly publications, particularly with researchers in the Social Mobilization theme.


T HEME 4.

R ESILIENT E COSYSTEMS

British Columbia is already witnessing extraordinary and unprecedented changes in response to relatively recent shifts in climate. The pine bark beetle epidemic that has now destroyed nearly 14 million hectares of lodgepole pine-‐stands in the BC interior (Kurz et al., 2008) 1 and is moving into the northern boreal forest provides but one example, while the loss of 11% of the surface area of our glaciers in a mere 20 years (1985-‐2005) provides another (Bolch et al., 2010) 2 . Mean annual temperatures across the province have risen by over 1°C since 1970, and annual average precipitation has risen by over 2% over the same period. Future climate projections will see a continuation of these trends, albeit with considerable geographic variability. Mean annual temperatures in the Columbia Basin in southeastern BC, for example, are projected to be approximately 3 to 5 °C higher than today by the end of the century, and wetter winters and drier summers will be the norm (PCIC, 2009) 3 . In the face of this unstable climatic future, and with ongoing growth in population and energy demands, ecosystems in British Columbia will be increasingly challenged. How can we make them more resilient to such future impositions? This single question provides a firm foundation for the theme, while disguising the inherent complexity associated with understanding the future of multiple species resident on a changing, remarkably complex landscape that spans 11 full degrees of latitude. Recognizing that variability, the following issues and associated questions will guide the research effort.

•

Understanding adaptive capacity.

How do species move and adapt as climate changes? What differences in behaviour exist among them? How important is genetic plasticity? Does BC’s topography hinder or facilitate adaptation?

•

Understanding rates of change.

Historical data sets, long-‐term observations, and monitoring studies can be used illustrate dynamic changes and past responses to extreme events, and to assess past adaptive capacity within BC. On the basis of such information, how well have species adapted, and how quickly?

What species are best able to move over the landscapes and at what time scales and rates? What do such historical overviews imply for the ability of ecosystem components to persist under climate change? Are there threshold responses and/or boundary conditions in the historical

record?

•

Predicting change and vulnerability.

Which BC ecosystems are most vulnerable to climate change? What non-‐linearities can we expect to see and what thresholds can we expect to reach in future decades? What do datasets from elsewhere yield, particularly in Alberta and the US Pacific northwest?

•

Promoting adaptive management and governance.

How will climate change affect the ground rules for management? What can we learn from other jurisdictions that share at least some ecological similarities with BC (e.g. Washington State, New

Zealand, Alaska)? How can or should management policies accommodate uncertainty?

1

W. A. Kurz et al (2008). Nature 452, doi:10.1038.

2

T. Bolch et al (2010). Remote Sensing of Environment 114, 127–137.

3

PCIC (2009) Hydro-‐climatology and Future Climate Impacts in British Columbia, available at http://www.pacificclimate.org/resources/publications/


•

Ecosystem services, protected areas, and stewardship.

To what extent can (or should) provision of ecosystem services be incorporated into landscape management policies? How does the availability of these services impact health and recreation sectors of the economy? How can their value be best assessed, and how should considerations of such value factor into decisions regarding assignment of protected-‐area status? What areas in BC are most suitable to maintain and support adaptive capacity, and where should intervention and stewardship efforts be focused? What are appropriate scales for protected areas, and what degree of interconnectivity is necessary to ensure resilience? What are the key threats to biodiversity that could be countered by appropriate adaptive management?

Key PICS strategies for supporting research under the Resilient Ecosystems theme:

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Work with PCIC to project both physical and biologically-‐associated components of the future climate system in BC. PCIC is working with Ouranos (Montreal) and the Climate

Modelling Lab at UVic’s School of Earth and Ocean Sciences (SEOS) to produce output using empirical and dynamic downscaling approaches. Such results illustrate potential threats on ecosystems, and provide the basis for building in resiliency.

•

Actively support the “Climate Research Monitoring Program (CRMP)” through which PCIC is compiling archived and new weather data with an eye to developing long-‐term regional climate histories for BC. PCIC intends to host a central data access site for observational climate data collected within BC by provincial and commercial ministries as well as

Environment Canada. The construction of a detailed climatology across the diverse geography in BC will be the foundation for; i) monitoring current climate anomalies; ii) interpreting future climate scenarios from modeling experiments; and iii) assessing policy implications. This program will also support research being undertaken in other themes, including Carbon Management in BC Forests, the Low Carbon Emissions Economy and

Sustainable Communities.

•

Distribute an annual call for proposals that address the questions or issues above, the objective being to support highest-‐quality research that will particularly consider ecosystem adaptation issues in BC. While the call will be supported by the annual funding allocation to the theme, wherever feasible, fiscal leverage will be sought, for example by offering PICS support in the form of matching grants.

•

Recognizing the multidisciplinary nature of this theme, PICS will strongly encourage interaction with other themes, particularly Carbon Management in BC Forests, through support of topic-‐specific workshops that will focus on current research and national and international best-‐practice implementation. Interactions with organizations outside of PICS, e.g. food producers and outdoor recreational users will also be encouraged.

•

Encourage and support cross-‐theme peer-‐reviewed scholarly publications, as well as rapid dissemination of results through PICS White Papers.

T HEME 5.

C ARBON M ANAGEMENT IN BC F ORESTS

Forests play a critical role in the planetary climate cycle by being net sinks for CO

2

and storing massive quantities of carbon in biomass and soils. But they are under threat: by direct human activities

(deforestation); by a changing climate and associated variations in water balances, mean and seasonal temperatures, and fire frequency; and by pests, whose distributions and impacts are in some cases directly tied to climatic shifts. To some extent, the carbon management theme could be considered a


subdivision of Resilient Ecosystems, but given the longstanding cultural and economic importance of forests to BC, the issues now associated with them warrant specific attention by PICS. This theme does complement many aspects of the Resilient Ecosystems research effort, however.

•

Develop improved growth/yield models.

Models used to predict forest growth and yield are well known to have limitations: they cannot project well into the future, and they offer uncertain results. How can they be improved, particularly when climatic baselines and associated forest responses keep changing?

•

Improve understanding of soil carbon.

How will soil carbon content and distribution change across the BC landscape as temperature increases and seasonal water balances vary? How does the soil carbon reservoir change with harvesting activity, and what are the implications of such changes for forest and harvesting-‐ management policy?

•

Sustainable forest management.

How should we adjust our silvicultural practice(s) in BC to accommodate the climate changes that are coming down the pipeline, including likely variations in fire frequency and pest infestations, particularly in northern interior areas are most prone to such influences? How can we make forests more resilient on multi-‐decadal timescales when the climatic baseline keeps shifting?

What role should fertilization have? Can genetic engineering be fruitfully employed? What species should we be planting now in different areas to enhance resilience and adaptive capacity over the six or seven decades to harvest?

•

Assessing the value of conservation and ecological services.

Where, how and what makes sense with respect to conservation? Can we develop accurate techniques, via remote sensing for example, that will yield confident estimates of forest-‐carbon storage per unit area in BC? How will climate change impact conserved forests? What should be the monetized value of ecological and environmental services like water?

•

Developing an appropriate regimen for forest-‐carbon offsets.

A forest-‐carbon offsets program will require property rights issues (e.g. tenure relative to carbon-‐ uptake schemes) to be clarified, a need that must be integrated with First Nations claims. What should be the scale of an offsets program, to what forest areas should it apply, and how should it be implemented? How will offsets be verified, and what is the potential of remote sensing as a

verification tool? How can risk best be quantified and what should be the buffer size? What will be the likely economic implications for participants in offsets programs?

•

Exploring opportunities for storing carbon in wood products.

What are the barriers to bringing about improvement of the use of wood products in society, recognizing their value in storing carbon over various timescales?


•

Using biomass as an energy source.

Should BC intensively cultivate biomass for energy production as in Sweden and Austria? What are the associated ecological and environmental impacts? What approaches should be used to yield appropriate life-‐cycle carbon accounting results, and over what time scales?

Key PICS strategies for supporting research under the Carbon Management in BC Forests theme:

•

Collaborate with PCIC who will create high-‐resolution maps of the province that offer anticipated temperature and precipitation distributions across complex topography, for various time slices in the future. Such maps will assist in silvicultural planning, recognizing the need to plan decades ahead.

•

Through provision of Research Associate and/or Post-‐doctoral Fellowship funding, support collaborative research between the PICS academic community, NR Canada via the Pacific

Forestry Centre, and the BC Ministry of Forests, Mines and Lands. The foci for such inter-‐agency, inter-‐institution collaboration will be the policy-‐related questions in the lists above, including growth/yield and carbon-‐flux modeling.

•

Work with the BC Bioenergy Network and others to assess prospects for forest biomass as an energy source, by applying full life-‐cycle and carbon-‐accounting analysis.

•

Support collaborative research with the remote-‐sensing community (including the private sector), the forest industry, First Nations, the Pacific Carbon Trust and the Climate Action

Secretariat to develop rigorous approaches for estimating rates of carbon sequestration in specific forest zones.

•

Through an annual call for unsolicited proposals, support highest-‐quality research that will directly consider the issues above. While the call will be supported by the annual funding allocation to the theme, wherever feasible fiscal leverage will be sought, for example by offering

PICS support in the form of matching grants.

PICS R ESEARCH P RODUCTS

Timely dissemination of research results produced through PICS-‐supported activities is an important objective of the Institute. While publication in peer-‐reviewed journals is the preferred distribution pathway, other avenues are being exploited, including publication of peer-‐reviewed PICS White Papers, most of which are solicited and follow short timelines from point of commission to publication. Much shorter Briefing Notes, which typically do not contain original research but review work carried out elsewhere, are distributed within a few weeks of submission. All such PICS research products are posted on our website and are freely available to the public. Moreover, PICS will similarly post, wherever copyright allows, pdf files of all journal articles where the research was supported by the Institute, as

well as graduate theses where university policies allow.

C ONCLUSION

This plan is ambitious. It lists an array of questions that is intimidating in number and remarkably broad in disciplinary content. PICS will not be able to support all at once; the scholarly community in BC, while prodigious, does have a finite research capacity, and PICS resources are not infinite. Nevertheless, it is


clear that with the collaborative spirit now evident in the province between and among the universities, the provincial bureaucracy, government research labs both provincial and federal, and the private sector, the stage is set to make great strides in setting sound policies in British Columbia that are informed by insightful research conducted by leading scholars. Collaboration and cooperation are important keywords that PICS will work hard to keep at the forefront in this important undertaking.

Finally, this document is incomplete, and it will always be so. The impacts and policy dimensions of climate-‐change, its economic, social and political implications, are all in a constant state of flux and no research plan can pretend to be up to date. While this plan provides a general road-‐map that will help to guide the next several years of research that the PICS community is taking or intends to undertake, it is only a snapshot in time. Issues and governments change, new challenges arise, policies are created, destroyed or altered, and societies evolve. In that context, PICS must remain nimble and responsive while working to generate well-‐founded, timely, solutions-‐relevant knowledge. In recognition of that

need, this Plan will be updated each fall.

A CKNOWLEDGMENTS

PICS is grateful to the efforts of the theme leaders and research-‐theme subcommittee members who have worked diligently and collaboratively to establish research priorities for the Institute, and who are now in the trenches conducting, promoting, and stewarding the immense research undertaking that this plan has summarized.


A PPENDIX I: PICS R ESEARCH T HEME S UBCOMMITTEE M EMBERSHIP

Theme 1. The Low Carbon Emissions Economy

Hilary Kennedy, BC Climate Action Secretariat (Chair)

Mark Jaccard, Professor, School of Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University

(Research Theme Leader)

Ned Djilali, Canada Research Chair in Energy Systems Design and Computational Modelling, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Victoria

Nancy Olewiler, Professor, Department of Economics and Director, Public Policy Program, Simon Fraser

University

David Wilkinson, Professor and Canada Research Chair, Department of Chemical and Biological

Engineering, University of British Columbia

Steve Helle, Associate Professor, Environmental Science and Environmental Engineering, University of

Northern British Columbia

Nastenka Calle, PICS Campus Coordinator, Simon Fraser University

Theme 2. Social Mobilization

Stephen Sheppard, Professor, Department of Forest Resource Management, University of British

Columbia (Chair and Research Theme Leader)

John Robinson, Director, Sustainable Development Research Initiative, Institute of Resources,

Environment, and Sustainability, University of British Columbia

Colleen Sparks, Director, Carbon Neutral Operations and Climate Outreach, BC Climate Action

Secretariat

Robert Gifford, Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Victoria

Shirlene Cote, Social Mobilization Theme Coordinator, University of British Columbia

Theme 3. Sustainable Communities

Ben Finkelstein, Manager, Green Communities, BC Climate Action Secretariat (Chair)

Mark Roseland, Professor, School of Resource and Environmental Management, and Director, Centre for

Sustainable Community Development, Simon Fraser University (Research Theme Leader)

Emanuel Machado, Sustainability and Special Projects Manager, District of Sechelt

Sean Pander, Sustainability Officer, City of Vancouver

Lawrence Pitt, Associate Director, Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions


Ken Wilkening, Chair, International Studies, University of Northern British Columbia

Theme 4. Resilient Ecosystems

Dan Smith, Professor, Department of Geography, University of Victoria (Research Theme Leader)

Elizabeth Campbell, Research Ecologist, BC Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations

Jenny Fraser, Climate Change Adaptation Advisor, BC Climate Action Secretariat

John Fyfe, Research Scientist, Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, Environment Canada

Eric Higgs, Chair, School of Environmental Studies, University of Victoria

Tory Stevens, Protected Area Ecologist, BC Ministry of Environment

Theme 5. Carbon Management in BC’s Forests

Art Fredeen, Professor, Ecosystem Science and Management, University of Northern British Columbia

(Chair)

Shannon Janzen, Western Forest Products

David Spittlehouse, Forest Climatologist, BC Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations

Tom Pedersen, Executive Director, PICS, University of Victoria

Peter Constabel, Professor and Director, Centre for Forest Biology, University of Victoria

Tim Lesiuk, Climate Action Secretariat, Government of British Columbia

Ben Parfitt, Resource Policy Analyst, Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives


Document 10616410

Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS)

Strategic Research Plan

Updated January 2012

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