A new report finds the federal government isn’t doing enough to act on or disclose detailed information about the growing hazards of a warming climate, including extreme temperatures, flood, fires, landslides and drought.
How do antidepressants affect fish? Can biological remediation improve water health (e.g. intentionally planting cattails in dirty waterways)? How can the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, and artificial intelligence (AI) innovate freshwater research? These are just a few of the questions researchers at International Institute for Sustainable Development’s (IISD) Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) have been tackling over the last few years.
A global movement to permanently separate the oil and gas industry from the public purse appears to be gaining momentum, with an overarching objective of repurposing funds to promote renewable energy.
Fifteen years after first joining a research project studying if fish contaminated by mercury over years could ever recover, Britt Hall is pleased to finally see her work come to completion.
As 2021 comes to a close, we look back on the year that was in stories from across northeast Winnipeg.
Canada must leave 83% of its fossil fuel reserves and 84% of its tar sands/oil sands in the ground if the world is to have even a 50% chance of holding average global warming to 1.5°C, according to a paper published in the prestigious journal Nature.
Mercury contamination in freshwater fish populations falls quickly once new sources of the toxic chemical are cut off, says new research.
New research has found mercury contamination in freshwater fish populations falls quickly once the sources of the toxic chemical are cut off.
Paul Blanchfield, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature, said the finding that lakes can rebound quickly from mercury pollution is 'a very good news story'.
How a whole-of-government approach to climate change can improve Canada's climate performance
Canada's federal government should adopt a whole-of-government approach to climate change. Such an approach can leverage executive leadership to encourage cross-departmental collaboration and integrate climate change into all government policy-making. Canada can learn how to establish an effective whole-of-government approach from the successes and challenges of its peers both at home and abroad. This report examines whole-of-government approaches to climate change from around the world as well as specific lessons learned from three case studies: the United Kingdom, the United States, and British Columbia.
Climate change is a complex, cross-jurisdictional issue that requires societal transformation. To meet this challenge, governments must be able to make climate policies that work across sectors, communities, and regional borders. A whole-of-government approach can help to mainstream climate change into policy-making processes.
Effective climate policies that get Canada where it needs to go will require the active involvement of departments as disparate as Finance, Infrastructure, Transport, Natural Resources, Environment and Climate Change, Agriculture and Agri-Food, Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, Employment and Social Development, and others. This broad reach necessitates a coordinated approach to ensure the coherent implementation of a climate strategy.
Whole-of-government approaches to climate change have become a feature of some national and subnational governments over the last several years, as countries commit to increasingly ambitious measures to curb their greenhouse gas emissions, adapt to climate change, and pursue clean growth strategies. An integrated, coordinated, cross-departmental approach can leverage departmental expertise, reduce policy redundancies, mainstream climate change into all decision making, and create cross-departmental synergies for more effective climate governance.
In this paper, eight countries were surveyed to identify whole-of-government structures and processes dedicated to climate change, and three of these cases (the United Kingdom, British Columbia, and the United States) were analyzed in-depth to determine the benefits and risks of such an approach. Five lessons can be learned for implementing a cohesive and effective whole-of-government approach to climate change: