Restoring Resilience:
Adapting Richmond Through a Climate Change Charter A CLIMATE CHANGE FUTURE
POST FLOOD (198,000 RESIDENTS)
(400,000 RESIDENTS)
The nested principles of ecological governance for the Climate Change Charter provided a new ethos to local government in British Columbia. They created the boundaries within which the extensive powers given to municipalities could operate: they had to create a plan to ‘close the loop’ between
their production and consumption, they had to promote a sharing economy and local knowledge sharing in their communities, and they had to ensure that they were constantly responding to the changing local landscape brought on by climate change.
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As temperatures continued to rise and resources became scarcer, millions of people sought out the Pacific Northwest’s relatively safe borders. Though few of them had any official status, these were the world’s new climate refugees.
Using federal and provincial aid relief money, Richmond invested in an extensive series of dikes from Steveston to portions of Shellmont Ironwood up north to Bridgeport. These dikes were integrated with parklands, energy and waste infrastructure (much of it paid for through climate bonds) and served as a reminder of the fraught relationship that Richmond – and many communities- has with its natural environment. Using a robust and improved building code and permitting system, Richmond ensured strictly regulated land-use and saw the building of mixed-use developments. Green infrastructure was mandated. Shared work-spaces, gardens, and playareas were sought after, to make the city ever-more livable, even with added population.
Loop
The impacts of climate change, already being felt in 2014, continued and grew in intensity as the 21st Century continued. Climate change spurred increased competition for dwindling resources – in the Sahel and in South Asia, especially, extreme weather changes meant food prices increased by an average of 90%, just as the IPCC had predicted in 2014. Carbon-intensive energy production, still a mainstay for many countries, sputtered on, but at an ever-increasing price. Growing energy demands and efforts to de-carbonise stillongoing, prices continued to rise precipitously. Climate change’s spillover economic impacts, including increased transportation and production costs, forced Canadians to begin meeting many of their needs locally.
2077 SUSTAINABLE POPULATION MAX
2035
With a mandate to expand the sharing economy, Richmond invested heavily in knowledge sharing and trained its own citizens to become entrepreneurs. Using community-bonds and climatechange resources, it invested to train citizens in building blue and green infrastructure, and the city itself became a hub for training other municipalities how to adapt to climate change.
RESTORED MARSH RICE PATTIES AQUACULTURE FARMING PROTECTED FARM AREA
Richmond invested early-on in new agriculture after 2035. Using strains of saltwater resistant rice in the recovered farm-land, as well-as intense use of rooftop and indoor agriculture and aqua-ponics, Richmond was able to meet 90% of its grain needs from converted rice-paddies. Converted roof-tops throughout the city added significant other production, overall meaning that Richmond could produce 45% of its own food needs internally.
unsustainable population
2014
2100