CALGARY—Work on Calgary’s plan to adapt to a changing climate is slowing down this summer as the office in charge was included in the recent sweeping city budget cuts.

Last week, Calgary’s city council announced funding for its Climate Resilience Strategy would be cut by $124,000 as part of a series of proposed reductions across city services. This was included in council’s approval of $60 million in budget cuts overall.

Dick Ebersohn, the City of Calgary’s climate change and environment manager, said to account for these cuts, a planned job opening for a position that would have covered a wide array of engineering and climate programming has been cancelled, cutting his department’s assumed staff of eight down by one.

Ebersohn said his team now has to figure out how the climate resilience plan will be affected and what’s still achievable. This will lead to slowdown in the work his team is already doing as they reassess their long-term plan. This includes slowing ongoing research into management of severe weather events and carbon reductions in buildings, among other projects.

“These are challenging times, not just in terms of climate, but also in terms of economic conditions, in terms of social issues that we are facing to support people across the board,” Ebersohn said.

Still, he says his team has tried to incorporate considerations about climate risk into much of the work the city does. “It’s not something that’s moved off the radar,” he said.

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The city’s Climate Resilience Strategy includes actions that would work toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving energy management, and reducing the effects of extreme weather and climate change.

Information about how the city’s budget cuts will affect the strategy overall will be included in an annual report to council this fall.

The city is seeing a total of 233 job losses as a result of last week’s approved budget cuts. This includes 97 jobs lost in community services, 51 in the chief financial office, 43 in transportation, 22 in planning and development, 14 in the deputy city manager’s office, and three losses each in utilities-environ protection and law and legislative services.

The cuts to Calgary’s climate plan came as a disappointment to Aida Nciri, the co-chair of the Calgary Climate Hub. She complimented the city’s plan for being comprehensive in how it adds new efforts to mitigate climate change while strengthening the work of other departments to be more resilient.

“It’s unfortunate that the city doesn’t see the importance of acting on climate, reducing our greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to a changing climate. After the floods, after the smoke, I think it’s time to realize the urgency of the climate crisis and put the means behind this plan,” Nciri said.

But it’s not just the cuts to the climate resilience plan specifically that will slow down Calgary’s progress on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Other city budget cuts will have a similar effect.

Nciri pointed out that the hit public transit is taking — with about 80,000 fewer service hours over the entire system expected, including reduced weekend and night bus service — will lead to more drivers on the road and, therefore, more emissions.

“When you look at our greenhouse emissions, about a third of our emissions come from the transportation sector. So having investments in public transit is a big way for reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” Nciri said.

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Nciri said it’s important to view work to mitigate climate change not as something that’s in its own silo, but instead to view the way it fits into the city’s other work. Nciri said efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change can work in tandem with the goals of other city departments and plans.

But what’s most worrisome to Nciri is the city seemingly making decisions about the climate change plan for short-term goals.

“Economic climate action requires changing practices and it requires investment in the long term. And we are too worried about what will come next,” Nciri said.

“It’s not a short-term issue, it’s more a long-term issue that the city needs to face. And we need to make sure that climate is not seen as an additional burden, but just as something that is already integrated in many of the policies that have already been implemented.”

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