Climate Change, Biodiversity, and Sustainability

Dr. Robert Newell received Canada Foundation for Innovation funding for equipment to support his CRC research program in the area of sustainable and resilient community land use planning.

Achieving sustainability and resilience in community land use planning requires a holistic approach to recognize how different plans and strategies can be linked to overarching goals for human and environmental well-being. Among the most critical of these goals are climate action and biodiversity conservation, and it is imperative that these considerations are integrated with other planning priorities. The Transdisciplinary Research on Integrated Approaches to Sustainability (TRIAS) lab conducts community-engaged research to develop tools for supporting integrated community planning in ways that identify how different local plans and strategies may align or conflict with local climate action and biodiversity conservation objectives (www.triaslab.ca). Such tools include interactive scenario visualizations, a systems mapping and modelling decision-support application, a tool for integrating equity considerations into planning, and an analytical model for transit networks using a climate justice lens. TRIAS explores a variety of different local challenges, including food systems resilience, food justice, public transportation, and energy use in social housing. The common approach to this iterative research is to explore these ranging issues involves (1) collaborating with stakeholders to identify issues and strategies for addressing said issues, (2) using systems thinking to reveal the co-benefits and trade-offs of the strategies, and (3) engaging stakeholders in the implications of the analytical outcomes.