Resilient St. John's Climate Plan

The City of St. John’s proactively manages its many trees, shrubs, and other vegetation in accordance with the direction provided by the City of St. John’s Urban Forest Master Plan. The plan was enacted in 2006, following consultation with various stakeholders and members of the public, and completion of an inventory of trees situated on, or over-hanging, City property. The plan includes baseline data, management goals, and numerous recommendations to achieve success. 

 The City of St. John's is committed to cultivating an urban forest that is diverse, attractive, and sustainable, and enhancing and building upon the City’s existing network or parks, green spaces, trails, and tree-lined streets. Further, the City recognizes that these goals can only be realized through implementation of long-term planning documents such as the Urban Forest Management Master Plan or the Parks and Open Space Master Plan. Documents such as these are used to guide the development of policy and inform decision making to ensure staff are working efficiently and effectively toward achieving the goals contained within these plans.  

City staff work throughout the year to promote trees. Planting programs such as the Residential Re-Leaf Program, educate residents about the multitude of benefits that urban trees provide and encourage planting on private property.  City staff are also engaged in various other tree planting initiatives.  For example, this year, the City of St. John’s has partnered with the Federal and Provincial governments to complete a project that will see hundreds of trees planted across the city as part of a parkland naturalization program. 

Staff also engage private landowners through the City’s building and development review processes. In this context, staff are responsible for implementing the City’s Landscape Development Policy and Street Tree Planting Standards. Through this work, staff ensure that where feasible, existing natural resources and parklands are protected and retained, and that space is provided to support the successful planting of trees, establishment of landscapes, and development of new park amenities.  

 The City of St. John’s recognizes the importance of urban trees and greenspaces and does work to promote, protect and enhance this vital resource.  The benefits that our urban forest provides, and the opportunities to improve its ecosystem services (e.g., greenhouse gas capture) will be taken into account throughout the development of strategies in the Resilient St. John’s Climate Community Plan.

In our Community’s inventory of energy use and greenhouse gas emission we identified that approximately 3% of the greenhouse gas emission (GHGs) in our community come from our solid waste and wastewater (this would include organic waste). This is specifically the emissions from the community of St. John’s. The planning process will look at this GHGs contribution and discuss with stakeholders, provincial government, and the public to identify implementable strategies that support the reduction of waste’s contribution to the emissions of our community. Composting and its contribution to decreasing greenhouse gas emission from waste is certainly something that will be discussed with the stakeholder team and the public. Thank you for your idea and perspective on how the existing program could be improved and the benefits of a green-bin program.

Using trees and vegetation (natural infrastructure) for capture of greenhouse gases are certainly actions that will be discussed through this process to a Net-Zero St. John’s strategy. It is important to note that if the goal is for capturing and storing greenhouse gases to fight climate change, the density of the plant’s trunk (biomass) and the lifespan of the trees is very important. Because of those considerations, trees planted to fight climate change usually are planted in places where the City can make sure that the trees won’t be disturbed or cut for 10-30 years depending on the type of plants (near trails, parks, community spaces, etc). However, the beautification of our City in the example you give, is also an important consideration to keep in mind in these discussions and vegetation can play a role in reducing water run off. Thank you very much for bringing attention to this item and for your comments.

Thanks for your question. 

• The vision of the Bike St John’s Master Plan is for more people to cycle in the city. The plan proposes a mix of on-street and off-street bike routes as part of an integrated mobility network, supported by policies and programs. If the city achieves its vision it means we’ll see a shift in how people choose to move in the city. All motor-vehicle trips that are replaced by sustainable modes (bike, walk, transit) help with climate change.
• Kelly’s Brook Shared-Use Path is the first project from the Bike Master Plan. The shared-use path will be designed for use by people of all ages and abilities. Public engagement for this project will be starting soon - please follow the project page to stay involved. Public input will inform design elements such as lighting, surface material choice, path alignment, trailhead and rest area design, wayfinding, and other decisions that may emerge during the design process. Environmental impacts of trail upgrades will be evaluated and avoided or mitigated. Street crossings will be upgraded to be safer and more comfortable. 

Thank you very much for the comments. Using natural infrastructure for various purposes, including trees for capture of greenhouse gases is certainly an action that will be discussed as part of the types of actions that can lead to a Net-Zero St. John’s.

Efficiencies in the delivery of services (like garbage collection) in a way that it conserves energy is an important aspect of the City’s commitment to reducing its own emissions. We will share the thoughts provided in this section with the St. John’s Sustainability team for them to be discussed as the planning process continues. Thank you for your ideas.

The goal of the Hazard tool is to capture the hazards and impacts from climate change that the Community needs to adapt to. The mitigation of greenhouse gases began with an inventory of greenhouse gas emissions in our operations, as well as the community as a whole. The full report is available here: http://stjohns.ca/publications/energy-and-greenhouse-gas-inventory. The best data available to date was used, and the estimates were verified by a third party (the Federation of Canadian Municipalities) to ensure it is consistent with how other municipalities across Canada quantify their contributions to climate change. Some limitations exist, but improvements are expected as new data is available over time. Please consider engaging in our November 19^th session to provide thoughts and ideas on mitigation, as well as risks and opportunities.

Thank you for your question. There is definitely work on this file, and a way to go to achieve a more pedestrian and bicycle friendly city. Various conversations about these effects have been had in the context of various initiatives and work is ongoing to improve this. For example, the adverse effects, and the will to improve, was reflected in the development of the St. John’s Bike Master Plan, Kelly’s Brook Shared Used Path, the Downtown Pedestrian Mall, in snow clearing priority considerations, and other initiatives aimed to support shifts of modes of transportation. The Resilient St. John’s Plan could support these efforts and the decisions by incorporating the benefits of various strategies towards shifting modes of transportation as a way to mitigate climate change. The planning process will allow us to incorporate existing plans and new ideas, while using the energy and economic model of St. John’s to provide a clearer picture of the economic opportunity, the costs, potential savings to the residents, while keeping other adverse effects in mind (e.g., social, economic and environmental).

As part of the St. John’s Climate Resilience Plan we are working with the public through public engagement and workshops with the Multi-Stakeholder Sustainability Team (MSST) to come up with implementable projects and policy ideas. The MSST is important as it includes various stakeholders involved in policies like what you mention. To inform the timing, impact and economics of these actions, a comprehensive environmental and economic study is going to be used to identify what the environmental and economic impacts of various project and policy ideas could be in our City. This will help us set a path that addresses the energy transition and adaptation to climate change while maintaining the economics of our community in mind.

The St. John’s Climate Resilience Plan is the plan that will address climate adaptation (reducing risk to climate change) and mitigation (reducing our greenhouse gas emissions) directly. To help inform this process the City reviewed the available projections for our City. However, the City is not just starting now. The City has been taking several steps to adapt to climate change in various ways. For example, the City worked with the provincial government to adapt to worsening storms by adopting updated floodplains that incorporate climate change projections into our river’s floodplains, the City has been studying and protecting wetlands, the City is developing a comprehensive stormwater management policy that includes climate change, and has been including climate change projections in our ongoing hazard assessments which support the City’s emergency response plan. Through the Resilient St. John’s Climate Plan we will work with the community and stakeholders to further identify vulnerabilities, risks, and ways that our community as a whole can work together to adapt to these changes. We encourage you to use our Hazard Map to show where some of these hazards have manifested in our community.