Climate Change, Biodiversity, and Sustainability

Rob Newell was awarded funds from the Canada Research Chair to study the integration of critical climate and biodiversity imperatives into sustainability planning and policy.

The research program explores the intersectionality, challenges, and opportunities around integrating climate action and biodiversity conservation with broader local and regional development priorities and objectives. The research uses a community-based participatory approach, working with regional and local governments, stakeholders, and communities in Canada to co-create integrated planning tools and to produce knowledge on how climate action and biodiversity conservation align or conflict with other planning priorities and sustainability objectives.
The research involves regional case studies from different provinces across Canada that consist of diversity of urban, peri-urban, rural, and First Nations communities. The first research phase uses comparative case study methodology and semi-structured interviews to investigate relationships among climate action, biodiversity conservation, and local objectives and challenges for planning and policy areas such as transportation, buildings and energy, economic development, food security, water, and green space. The second phase focuses on systems and scenario modelling, and explores relationships, co-benefits, and trade-offs among climate action, biodiversity conservation, and other local and regional objectives. The third phase engages community members in the outcomes of the first two phases using communication tools, namely interactive model explorers and visualizations, which subsequently are explored with community members through focus groups and open house events.
This research program contributes to the state of knowledge on how to effectively engage in integrated sustainability planning and policy in ways that align with critical climate and biodiversity imperatives. It produces theoretical and practical insights on the development of a climate-biodiversity planning framework and its application in different local and regional contexts. It also produces knowledge on how to create tools (e.g., models and visualizations) that can effectively communicate complex information about the co-benefits and trade-offs associated with local and regional strategies, plans, and policies. The research uses a community-based approach, thusly producing valuable research findings on how to effectively employ such approaches and also stimulate future integrated planning studies that are inclusive of community members in their design and execution.