City of Rossland Sustainability Commission Adapting to Climate Change: A Socioeconomic Priority

Accomplishments to date 1) Getting Started:  Local and Assistant Coordinator selected  Workplan developed with socioeconomic focus  Partnership Contract with SFU ACT signed  Steering Committee and Local Resource Team established with 13 members  Steering Committee has approved its TOR and expected project outcomes 2) Learning about Climate Change  Steering Committee has reviewed expected climate change impacts and identified potential priority vulnerabilities to provide research direction

Accomplishments (Continued) 2) Learning about Climate Change (continued)  Preliminary Climate and Socioeconomic Reports produced by SFU ACT  Steering Committee has undertaken initial meeting with TST experts to discuss priority vulnerabilities  Steering Committee has reviewed Preliminary Reports and provided comments  Local observation survey interviews being undertaken with long-term residents 3) Identify Priorities in your Community  Planning for impact mapping session, Ferraro Foods information gathering booth and community priority setting event underway  Considering additional information and modeling needs

Steering Committee/Local Resource Team Steering Committee comprised of 10 members including :  2 City Councillors, 2 Sustainability Commission members, 1 City Staff, 1 Ski Hill representative, 1 Wildfire expert, and 3 Residents Local Resource Team members receive all information and can attend meetings and comment, but are not expected to engage as significantly. The LRT has three members including a Teck representative, a Trails representative and a Tourism Rossland representative. The role of the Steering Committee is to guide the project.

Research Separated coordinator and research function - presents some challenges Tension between focusing on global level information and regional and local level information We started wanting to know everything - but the research is only going to tell us so much Success is perhaps more a matter of internalizing three to five key research findings (i.e. more intense weather events, earlier spring freshet) such that they are automatically considered in all future City decision-making

General Reflections It is a challenging process that takes some time to wrap one’s head around - A full- time coordinator is needed One of the key benefits is community dialogue and learning - don’t shortchange that in the rush to a plan