Putting a price on nature can help municipalities adapt to climate change

On a sunny day in early October, Ryan Belanger, his wife, a couple of their kids and their dog were out enjoying White Tower Park, just a few blocks from where they live in Gibsons, B.C. 

"It doesn't matter the weather, really. This is where we come for our nature walks," he said. 

Sandy Brown was also out that day. She walks her dog in the park every day, and values the daily dose of the outdoors. 

"It is such an asset to get out here in and among the trees and the bushes — you can barely hear the town," Brown said. 

People in Gibsons make good use of the forest, and in recent years, the town started rethinking how it treats this kind of asset, in the hopes of improving the community's climate adaptation.

White Tower Park is not only a lovely place for a stroll, but through its ponds and culverts, it can soak up water, helping protect the town from flooding.

In 2012, Gibsons changed the definition of infrastructure to include "natural assets." By putting a value on things like wetlands, forests and coastlines, a municipality like Gibsons can make a financial case to invest in, protect and restore these ecosystems while also benefitting from the services they provide. 

The town valued the water management services White Tower Park could provide at $3.2 million — which was about the same cost as engineering an equivalent system.

"It's not about putting a dollar figure on the environment," said Emanuel Machado, the town's chief administrative officer. "But the reality is that decisions are made with data, particularly with financial data, and if you want to provide … a business case in this for a natural alternative, then you have to understand the value of that service."

As communities across Canada face increasingly frequent and severe impacts of climate change, some are turning to nature as a way to help adapt. Gibsons has inspired other municipalities, including a Canada-wide Municipal Natural Asset Initiative, to look to local ecosystems as part of the solution.

Nestled at the base of Mount Elphinstone on the Sunshine Coast, Gibsons is home to fewer than 5,000 people. A 40-minute ferry ride from West Vancouver, the community is perhaps most recognizable to Canadians from the TV series The Beachcombers. 

Around 2009, the town started taking stock of the natural features in and around the community. To do so, it re-examined the very definition of infrastructure. 

A typical definition of infrastructure, said Machado, is an "engineered and manufactured asset that provides a service," such as water treatment services, the electrical grid or roads. 

The town wanted to take this a step further. In 2014, Gibsons officially passed a municipal natural asset policy that it says was the first of its kind in North America. It expanded the definition of municipal infrastructure.