Science Response 2013/016
Risk-based assessment of climate change impacts and risks on the biological systems and infrastructure within Fisheries and Oceans Canada's mandate - Pacific Large Aquatic Basin
Context
In keeping with the Federal Adaptation Policy Framework, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) received funding for the Aquatic Climate Change Adaptation Services Program (ACCASP; 2011-2016) in order to implement a science-based climate change program focused on adaptation and delivery of Fisheries and Oceans’ mandated areas of responsibility. The Program will undertake risk assessments, foster the development of applied science-based tools and research projects to increase our understanding of the impacts of climate change, and enable adaptation in support of DFO’s strategic outcomes.
One of the primary objectives of the Program is to assess the risks that climate change poses to the delivery of DFO’s mandate within four defined Large Aquatic Basins (LABs), namely the Arctic, Pacific, Freshwater and Atlantic. The assessment of regional risks will help front-line managers respond to climate change.
As a first step towards this objective, a Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat (CSAS) Science Special Response Process (SSRP), which consisted of one face-to-face meeting in each of the LABs, was conducted to assess the risk to biological systems and infrastructure that fall under the purview of DFO. Each assessment was based on interim summary documents that describe climatic ‘Trends and Projections’ (TP) and ‘Impacts, Opportunities and Vulnerabilities’ (IVO) evaluations based on two separate temporal scales (10 & 50 years). The detailed TP and IVO reports, which are extensive detailed assessments of the climatic changes and impacts at the basin or sub basin level in each LAB will be published in the 2013-2014 fiscal year (to be published). The basis of this work followed two internal DFO national climate change risk assessment reports (Interis 2005, 2012) which provided preliminary assessments of the impacts of climate change on DFO’s strategic outcomes; these assessments served as the departure point for the four LAB assessments.
Following these CSAS meetings, the results of the SSRP for each LAB, along with the results of concurrent socio-economic and policy analyses, will be collectively used to inform four additional LAB-based Integrated Risk Management workshops. The objective of these integrated workshops will be to take the evidentiary base provided by science, socio-economics, and policy and incorporate DFO program area (e.g. fisheries management, oceans management, etc.) considerations to determine the most acute basin-level climate risks for the Department. The results will help DFO decision-makers adapt decisions to reflect climate change considerations so that Canadians may continue to derive socio-economic benefits from our oceans and inland waters. This information will also be instrumental in informing priorities for ACCASP’s competitive funding envelopes, which are aimed at understanding climate change impacts and developing applied adaptation tools, for the 2013-14 funding year and beyond.
The SSRP was used due to the short timeframe within which this advice was required. The urgency for this advice stems from the need to identify and apply linkages between the science, socio-economic and policy background documents for the Integrated Risk Assessment workshops, which are scheduled for early winter/spring 2013.
Participants were provided with background documents which summarized the scientific information available on TP and the IVO for the Pacific LAB. However, these advisory meetings were held specifically to peer review the resulting Risk Summary Sheets for each DFO Departmental risk. A separate review process for the background documents will occur once they are finalized (to be published) Footnote 1,Footnote 2.
This Science Response Report (SRR) details the results from the National SSRP meeting of November 28-29, 2012 on the Risk-based assessment of climate change impacts and risks on biological systems and infrastructure within Fisheries and Oceans Canada's mandate - Pacific Large Aquatic Basin, Nanaimo, British Columbia. The SRR resulting from this Pacific LAB and the other three SSRP LAB advisory meetings will be posted as they become available on the DFO Science Advisory Schedule.
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