Building resilience through community-driven solutions and Indigenous leadership
Over the last 100 years, natural ecosystems in BC’s Central Interior have been degraded by resource extraction, reducing biodiversity and the region’s natural resiliency to the effects of climate change. Despite cumulative industrial disturbances, the region still contains important natural areas that are critical to rural, remote, and Indigenous communities for sustenance, culture, and economic well-being. Our regional Climate Resilience Network aims to support local communities in reclaiming their role in land and water stewardship, supporting the protection of the best habitats, and simultaneously mitigating and adapting to climate change.
Start Date | 2025
Projected Length of Project | 3 Years
Project Leads
Michelle Connolly, Director
Rebecca Rogerson, Community Program Manager
Caylin Sun, Program Manager
Community Partners
Dakelh communities, but also others whose territories overlap with the Central Interior region.
Goals
- To bring communities together that share a common urgency around changing land management practices to protect biodiversity and become more resilient to climate change.
- To connect communities with shared challenges but unique goals, creating a powerful model for change that can grow across the region and inspire similar initiatives across Canada.
Project Objectives
- To provide regional analyses that support land and water stewardship, and climate adaptation planning;
- To support community visioning and land planning through meeting facilitation, information synthesis, and funding assistance;
- To develop economic pathways that support climate and biodiversity-friendly land management practices throughout the region;
- To develop protection strategies for remaining natural ecosystems that are vital to healthy ecosystem function and critical to communities;
- To empower communities to reclaim their role in land and water stewardship while addressing biodiversity loss, climate adaptation and mitigation.
Project Summary
The Climate Resilience Network builds on Ecotrust Canada’s 25+ years of partnering with Indigenous communities to deploy natural climate solutions. Our work with the British Columbia Assembly of First Nations to create carbontoolkit.org has provided free capacity-building resources for First Nations interested in carbon offsets. Our proposed focus on the Interior BC is catalyzed by emerging relationships with several First Nations in the region, including technical support for Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs) like the Raush IPCA and the Wilp Gwininitxw Protected Area.
Through this network, rural, remote, and Indigenous communities in BC’s Central Interior are demonstrating that their homelands can be resilient to climate change when they have the tools, capacity, and authority to manage their own conservation, cultural, and socio-economic goals.
Addressing Systemic Challenges
The Climate Resilience Network aims to address four interconnected challenges that directly impact forest-dependent First Nations communities:
- Industrial Impacts: Roads and cutblocks threaten traditional food sources and ways of life, which is exacerbated by the effects of a changing climate.
- Jurisdictional Challenges: With around 90% of land in BC classified as “Crown land” and governed by Crown law and policy, a colonial governance system that undermines Indigenous laws and management of Indigenous lands.
- Land Tenure Issues: Communities wishing to steward natural ecosystems or keep industrial extraction out of an area must navigate complex bureaucratic processes with Crown authorities and competing tenure holders.
- Economic Insecurity: communities often find themselves locked into extraction pathways that will eventually exhaust resources without alternative economic avenues to support local livelihoods.
Stewardship funding: Securing long-term, sustainable funding to create and support Indigenous-protected and conserved areas is often difficult.
Audiences
This project is for the following people across the Central Interior of BC:
- Indigenous leadership and community members,
- First Nations land managers, stewardship authorities
- Economic development entities
Project’s Funding Allocations
Ecotrust Canada is responsible for the grant agreements and is expected to support participating communities with regional analyses, protection strategies, climate adaptation planning, and community visioning and land planning. The current funding supports team growth to develop economic opportunities that support climate-friendly land management practices throughout the region.
Project’s Collective Leadership
With a focus on Indigenous leadership and community-driven solutions, the Climate Resilience Network is working with four communities in BC’s Central Interior, each with their own specific goals and deliverables:
Project’s Exit Strategy and Sustainability Plan
The Climate Resilience Network is designed to be self-sustaining through the capacity building of local communities. As communities develop their own land use plans, protection strategies, and economic opportunities, they will become less dependent on external support. The network will continue to grow and evolve as more communities join and share their knowledge and experiences, creating a resilient network of communities that can support each other in addressing climate change impacts.
For more information
Michelle Connolly, Director | michelle@ecotrust.ca