Report

Mainstreaming Climate Change Integrated Landscape Assessment, Decision-Support Process & Tool Kit: Lessons from Southeastern Ontario

By Livia Bizikova, Ruth Waldick, John Bolte, Dan MacDonald, Anna Zaytseva, Kathy Lindsay, Dennis White, Pierre Yves Gasser, Scott Mitchell, Kellie Vache, Sampsa Hamalainen on July 21, 2015

This briefing document summarizes approaches used and lessons learned with a focus on identifying socioeconomic pathways for a region that formally considers the role and future of regional agriculture (including management plans and actions) by 2035.

It also considers regional adaptation and management options, including strategies to mainstream climate change planning into regional decision-making processes. The scenarios and the identified adaptation needs indicated that adapting to climate change is a multiscale and multisectoral challenge requiring coordination between agricultural policy and other sectoral approaches. These sectors include municipal, provincial and federal agencies that should be considering measures ranging from support to ecological goods and services, different types of insurance mechanisms, addressing infrastructure challenges and ensuring that agriculture also provides societal and natural benefits. This approach has implications for monitoring to ensure that mainstreaming efforts (as well as the actual change in agriculture at the landscape level) are tracked and recorded.

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