Youth Submission to ClimateReady
January 10, 2020
Dear ClimateReady: Preparing Together Team,
CC: Premier John Horgan, Minister George Heyman; Andrew Weaver; Mark Zacharias; Jeremy Hewitt We are writing to you as concerned youth from across British Columbia to provide input on the BC Government’s Climate Readiness Plan, ClimateReady, public input process. We are grateful for the opportunity to provide our ideas and insights into one of the most important plans that our province will make this half of the century.
Unequivocally, this is a plan for our future.
We want to make sure that we — and by we, we mean all of the young people across British Columbia, not only those of us privileged enough to have time to write and add ideas to this process — are protected, our values are upheld, and that we can guarantee a better future for those who come after us.
We think it is important that you remember where we have come from in this process before we provide direct feedback into the specifics of policies, investments, and programs that the province will undertake to protect us from the climate crisis.
Millennials were born roughly between the years of 1982 and 1995, while Gen Z began between the years of 1995 and 2000. In climatological terms, this means that our two generations, the youngest, and the largest demographic group in human history, are also the generation of human-caused climate change.
Our entire lives have been shaped by both the stories, and the real impacts of climate change.
Many of us do not remember a time before climate change was an issue to be discussed, and all of us have been shaped by events — like the fires of Fort McMurray and the interior of British Columbia, the flooding of Hurricane Sandy, the droughts that have helped drive the Syrian Civil War — that signify the omnipresence of climate crisis as an issue in our lives. The climate crisis is no longer forthcoming; we are already living within it.
All of us now, too, have had decades to consider the world that we will build if we meaningfully address climate change, too. A world with millions fewer deaths due to air pollution, a world with clean, drinkable water for all; a world with thriving natural landscapes and thriving biodiversity; a world with safe streets,
healthy buildings, and, as seems to be the singular concern of many before us, a world with good jobs and just economies for everyone.
As the sense of urgency around the need to address the climate crisis grows for us, so too does our resolve to adapt and protect ourselves at the same time as we achieve justice and equity for all.
With that context set, we would like to offer the following principles and ideas for the Climate Readiness Plan should adhere to and address in its final form:
1. Recognise, Respect, Uphold, and Amplify Indigenous Sovereignty — All actions to protect British Columbians from the impacts of climate change must continuously affirm Indigenous sovereignty and traditional rights, including those enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), and generate new ways for settlers and Indigenous peoples to work together.
• Specific suggestions include:
• Working with the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), the Union of BC Indian Chiefs (UBCIC), individual nations, and urban Indigenous peoples, to prioritize and ensure proper alignment with, and fulsome implementation of the 94 Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls within the Climate Readiness Plan;
• Working with the Assembly of First Nations to create alignment with and support for plans, policies, and other actions created as part of their nationally-declared climate emergency. 2. Centering Most Vulnerable Populations — All solutions must centre and work to dismantle historic and current barriers facing the most vulnerable communities, especially Indigenous peoples, people of colour, women, gender and sexual minorities, low income people, those with disabilities, youth and children, and all other equity-seeking groups.
• Specific suggestions include:
• Creating a provincial Climate and Equity Working Group, constituted of representatives from vulnerable communities, similar to what the City of Vancouver has created as part of its Climate Emergency declaration, to ensure that historically marginalized voices and perspectives are able to directly guide and shape provincial policy-making around adaptation and resilience;
• Recognising the intergenerational consequences of climate change on the youngest people in the province, who will live with the largest and most impactful aspects of the climate crisis, and creating meaningful avenues for them to be represented in future provincial task forces, working groups, steering committees, and other bodies, working on the climate crisis;
• Recognising and taking action on the mental health impacts of climate change, as identified by the Lancet Canada, and others, which will have a disproportionate impact on historically marginalized communities, as well as young people throughout the province.
• Elevating and amplifying scientific knowledge of climate change in all levels of education, drawing on the recent curriculum alterations in Italy, to ensure that all young British Columbians have meaningful, scientifically-accurate information to stay informed and help them drive their own actions.
3. The Adaptation-Mitigation Nexus — All solutions should seek to achieve ongoing and long-term reductions in emissions at the same time as they generate greater protections for British Columbians from the worst impacts of climate change.
• Specific suggestions include:
• Reviewing infrastructure spending, including through the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, to ensure that future investments, including armouring of existing infrastructure, like highways, do not further exacerbate existing vulnerabilities, or lead to the long-term generation of further emissions;
• Committing all new large-scale energy projects to be built with long-term geophysical climate risks and concerns in mind (e.g., flooding, forest fires, land erosion, etc);
• Working with the Government of Canada and other relevant parties to provide up-to-date maps of floods and other geophysical risks to ensure safe, sustainable land-use planning for future urban development;
• Working with the Energy Step Code Council, BC Housing, the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium, the SFU Adaptation to Climate Change Team, and others, to ensure that future high-performance building regulations adequately address the potential pathways for our warming climate and that there is both available data for modellers, and sufficient regulatory and design guidance for proper implementation;
• Expanding rebates and tax incentives, as well as creating streamlined regulatory processes, for both rural and urban decentralized renewable energy to achieve mitigation goals, increase adaptive resiliency and provide more regional generation.
• Recognize the interconnectedness of the climate and biodiversity crises, and address this by pursuing climate adaptation and mitigation action that takes biodiversity into account; this is especially relevant for BC’s forests, which can be either net sources or sinks of carbon depending on how they are managed or protected, and how disturbance is managed. 4. A Just Transition — As part of the ongoing work with CleanBC, the province must recognise that there are both physical and transition risks associated with climate change, and that many communities will be hard-hit not only by economic transitions associated with decarbonization, but also the negative physical and socio-economic impacts of the climate crisis.
• Specific suggestions include:
• Finalizing and fully implementing the CleanBC Labour Readiness Plan, in partnership with industry and labour groups, nonprofits, local governments, First Nations, and other actors; and ensuring, wherever possible, that those displaced from historically high-emitting industries have opportunities to transition to jobs that build local and provincial resilience with substantial assistance available for retraining, upskilling, and overall industry transformation;
• Preparing plans and providing resources for rural and isolated areas within the province to ensure a transition of their industries in the event that climate change impacts, including floods, forest fires, and other bio-geophysical impacts, make previous livelihoods untenable.
• Preparing provincial industries, particularly our raw materials and natural resource sectors, agriculture, tourism, and other service industries, that are most likely to be negatively impacted by climate change, both locally, and within their supply chains.
5. A Global Response — All solutions must address BC's dual role as both a wealthy community with relatively high per-capita emissions and also a recognized global leader on climate action. BC must continue to share climate expertise and skills with allied jurisdictions , and simultaneously prioritize providing support to vulnerable communities around the world to adjust to and address the impacts of climate change.
• Specific suggestions include:
• Working with other North American jurisdictions, including Quebec, California, New York, Washington, and Oregon, in committing sub-national climate finance (in conjunction with the Government of Canada) to Canada’s most vulnerable partners abroad;
• Working with the Canadian Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, the Canadian and other Provincial financial regulators to ensure that the Task Force on Climaterelated Financial Disclosures (TCFD) is fulsomely implemented in financial institutions across the country, including a thorough overview of the climate risk exposure of BCi and other provincial investment bodies;
• Working with the Government of Canada, including the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change and the Ministry of Finance, to strategically deploy climate finance mechanisms and investments in aligned ways to ensure full coverage of issue-areas and communities, as well as to avoid duplication and unnecessary overlap;
• Advocating to the Government of Canada to bring new, dedicated financing and other resources to help address Loss and Damages throughout the developing world;
• Working with the Government of Canada, and create an inter-Ministerial task force or working group at the Provincial level, to develop strategies and generate resources to support those displaced, both in Canada and around the world, from the negative physical and socio-economic impacts of the climate crisis and ensure both their continuing safety, and the opportunities to relocate with safety and dignity to new homes. We sincerely appreciate your intake of this letter and are available for further comment or consultation for any of our ideas or remarks herein.
Signed,
Alice Henry, Founder, Stoke Socials Vancouver (Age 27)
Anitra Paris, Operations & Policy Manager, Clean Energy BC (Age 26)
George P.R. Benson, Co-Founder, Climate Migrants and Refugees Project (Age 28)
Jerome R Manuel, Global Shapers Vancouver (Age 28)
Liam Orme, Director, UBC Climate Hub (Age 24)
Anna Zhuo, Co-Founder, Climate Migrants and Refugees Project (Age 27)
Marina Melanidis, Co-Founder & Co-Director, Climate Guides (Age 24)
Arushi Rania, Principle, Arushi Raina Advisory (Age 28)
Colton Kasteel, Research & Projects Lead, SauderS3i (Age 23)
Morag Keegan-Henry, Director of Organizing, Force of Nature (Age 29)
Daylen Sawchuk, Club Executive, Gleneagle Green Team (Age 17)
Veronika Bylicki, Co-Founder & Executive Director, CityHive (Age 25)