This program is not accepting applications at this time.
Enabling communities to better understand and respond to the impacts of climate change.
Global climate changes will have local impacts and they won’t be easy to overcome. Alberta’s changing climate could mean drought and wildfire, it could mean flooding and ice storms, or anything in between. But whatever comes our way, your community can be prepared.
The Government of Alberta provided $4.5 million for Alberta municipalities and Indigenous communities to assess adaptation measures and to create climate resilience plans. This funding is helping reduce negative impacts and leverage opportunities so Albertans can feel secure in their community’s future.
The Climate Resilience Capacity Building Program was developed and administered by the Municipal Climate Change Action Centre, a partnership of Alberta Municipalities, Rural Municipalities of Alberta, and the Government of Alberta.
How ready is your community?
Use our community climate resilience self-assessment to find out.
Watch: Introduction to the Climate Resilience Capacity Building Program
In this information session, Ronak Patel, Program Lead, Capacity Building, will explain what the program aims to accomplish and how Albertans could participate.
Please join our Community of Practice
While funding for community projects has all been allocated, the Climate Resilience Capacity Building Program also aims to enable community-to-community learning on local climate adaptation practices and to build a network of community practitioners working on climate adaptation.
In support of this, the Action Centre manages a Community of Practice where participants can join a regularly hosted, informal meetings for information sharing on relevant topics and networking between participants. Participants are encouraged to share knowledge, best practices, lessons learned, opportunities, and celebrate success together. The Action Centre will also present on topics relevant to participants.
Next Meeting
Climate Resilience Capacity Building Community of Practice meetings take place quarterly and are published in the Action Centre’s events calendar.
If your community would like to participate, please email contact@mccac.ca for further details.
What builds climate resilience?
Climate change could affect a wide range of domains, including: agriculture, food security, forestry, human health, infrastructure, wildfire risk, water quality and supply. Climate resilience can be enhanced through a range of soft and hard adaptations. Soft adaptations include measures based in municipal policy and practice—changes to land use, stricter building requirements, plans for emergency management and changes to insurance. Hard adaptations include tangible changes to infrastructure—building drainage channels, dams and dykes, elevating or even relocating infrastructure, and shielding buildings against heat.
Before adaptations can be made, it is crucial to do a risk assessment and build an adaptation and resilience plan. This is the first step that the Climate Resilience Capacity Building Program was designed to support.
Plans and assessments are being performed by a qualified, contracted service provider. Costs may also have been funded related to the development of internal capacity, including, but not limited to: knowledge transfer, workshops, training, contractors, and wage subsidies.
The funding application period closed March 10, 2023, and all projects must be completed by March 31, 2024. For full details on the funding streams and what communities had been eligible to apply, please see the program Guidebook.