Policy

The Action for Adaptation project aims to provide local governments and First Nations planners and decision-makers with enhanced mapping (the Biodiversity Atlas), and policy information (this Policy Toolkit) to in order to advance natural climate solutions.

Responding to needs of planners who said that not many policy and regulatory mechanism exist to conserve local ecosystems, we reviewed existing literature to highlight a range of policy options that planners can use to incorporate biodiversity and ecological values into planning and decision-making. The result is this policy toolkit that links the biodiversity atlas to policy. It also provides case studies and policy language used by local governments that demonstrate the use of mapping and policy for nature-based solutions. 

The Policy toolkit has one section for First Nations and one section for local governments (see below). 

The Action for Adaptation team undertook one on one conversations with local government and First Nations representatives about what mapping layers they felt would improve their planning and decision making if they were available at a resolution that was relevant to them. This led to the development of the Biodiversity Atlas with the following key layers:

• Land Cover
• Forest Carbon
• Environmentally Sensitive Areas
• Species at Risk
• Hydrologically Sensitive Areas
• Ecosystem Connectivity (to be developed)

The aim of the Policy Toolkit is to provide examples of the implementation of these new mapping layers.

In order to make the document easier to navigate, we have uploaded key sections on to this website.