While the District of Sechelt (DOS) does not yet have a specific climate action plan, it’s likely not far off.
Community planner Marina Stjepovic told the committee of the whole Jan. 22, the district had some level of climate action targets in its previous official community plan, including setting greenhouse gas reduction targets, which is a provincial requirement. She notes, with the ongoing revision of the official community plan, there is an opportunity to revisit those targets.
Coun. Dianne McLaughlin asked how the district was doing when it comes to hitting those targets.
Stjepovic explained Sechelt hasn’t had very specific targets due to the way they were laid out.
“It is a difficult thing to do. I understand that many municipalities, even around the world, set targets and we don't quite meet them, other than a few real leaders out there that are bringing them down tremendously,” said Stjepovic. “So, it takes a certain amount of resourcing and monitoring and reporting, measuring, all those things.”
As detailed in the report to the committee, in 2008 the district signed the BC Climate Action Charter, voluntarily committing to becoming carbon neutral in its corporate operations, measuring and reporting the community’s greenhouse gas emissions, and creating more energy-efficient communities.
In subsequent years, the district created the Carbon Neutral Plan, Corporate Sustainability Plan and, more recently, the Integrated Community Sustainability Plan in 2019. The report notes that while each of these plans had/has strong links to climate actions, the district does not have a specific climate action plan.
Sechelt also continues to actively participate and collaborate with the Sunshine Coast Regional District on climate action and regional climate initiatives and reports, including the 2021 Climate Science Report, 2022 Energy & GHG Emissions Inventory (with 2007 baseline levels, Sechelt’s community emissions were determined to be up by 7.1 per cent over this period), 2022 Climate Change Vulnerability and Risk Assessment Report and the 2024 launch of the regional Coastal Flood Mapping Project, designed to address challenges and risks for vulnerable areas and how the community can become more resilient to sea level rise and coastal flooding.
The report recommends that when funding opportunities become available, the district may wish to consider developing a Sechelt-specific climate action plan with a goal to elevate the urgency on climate action and focus decision-making, work plans and service delivery.
The typical elements of a climate action plan include targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, actions to meet those targets, monitoring progress, engaging with and involving the community, stakeholders, other governments and within the district, preparing the community to increase resiliency and adapt to extreme events.
This approach takes into consideration Sechelt’s existing plans and climate action initiatives and should produce a standalone climate action plan as a separate document from which council can make decisions on priorities, policy and funding.
McLaughlin asked Stjepovic how that might happen within the official community plan.
“Staff is thinking that the best place to start is to look at our existing plans, outstanding actions that have already been endorsed previously by council, creating a list of those, creating a sense of what budget that would take with timelines, and then bringing that back to council to decide whether it should be wrapped up as a plan or if we continue in a somewhat more ad hoc way of achieving the actions,” said Stjepovic.
Coun. Donna Bell asked if there is any sort of a sense of urgency when it comes to climate action in terms of Sechelt.
Stjepovic confirmed there is a sense of urgency, which is laid out in the first paragraph of the report.
“The science is showing that we're not doing so well on global warming and it really takes action at every level, doing what we can,” said Stjepovic. “So, I think that Sechelt could be doing more on this. I think that is something that we would bring forward if council was interested in a more specific climate action plan. Otherwise, we would continue to achieve the actions that are in our other plans. But we also need to know where is the priority on some of those exactly.”
Bell told staff she recognizes the amount of work involved in getting a climate action plan in place. She added, since the district is in the middle of budget talks for 2025, now would be a good time to officially add a climate action plan to the budget.
“So, are we at a point where we need to look at the budget again? I mean, not completely, but are we needing to? Do we have something in the budget that we might be able to allow some time for this, because we really haven't addressed this in the budget,” said Bell.
McLaughlin suggested staff resources could be pulled from another department to work on the plan.
“So, perhaps we can look at the load of work for planning and focus maybe on multi-family development applications as a priority and some of the sustainability planning and reduce our emphasis on doing single-family homes, because we have a lot of single-family homes here,” said McLaughlin.
Staff agreed to come back to council with a plan moving forward on climate action.
