Recommendations
Below is a compiled list of recommendations. Click each recommendation to be taken back to the section of the book which it appears
Chapter 1: Assessing the Impact of Climate Change
- Recognize that climate change is an established scientific phenomenon.
- Climate change policy should have a greater focus on vulnerable populations, including rural communities, which are at an increased risk to climate change-related threats.
- Encourage and support education at all levels about the realities and potential impacts of climate change and ecosystem disruptions, particularly within local contexts.
- Approaches to climate change policy should be well-informed and solution-based to produce more positive attitudes towards climate action and provide a hopeful path forward.
Chapter 2: Climate Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies
- Mitigation and adaptation strategies should include knowledge translation mechanisms to assure that all stakeholders are equipped with knowledge and tools necessary to adapt to climate change.
- Encourage rural municipal governments to fulfill the BC Climate Action Charter objectives and to adopt Planh recommendations.
- Rural communities should perform an impact assessment of local healthcare activities on their natural environment when planning climate mitigation and adaptation strategies.
- Rural physicians should be encouraged to build public awareness of climate change and support mitigation and adaptation efforts, particularly in reference to environmental health concerns.
- Vulnerability factors should be identified at a local level for effective climate change mitigation and adaptation planning as risks vary between regions.
- There should be a focus on sustainable and equitable economic recovery rather than rebuilding the pre-COVID system.
Chapter 3: Healthy Rural Communities Responding to Climate Change and Ecosystem Disruption
- Rural community adaptation to the challenges of climate change and ecosystem disruption should be built on a strong local foundation addressing climate hazards, resources, and opportunities for a strategic response.
- Evidence-based information should be used to support emergency response planning.
- Local healthcare, human and infrastructure resources should be inventoried and considered in emergency response planning.
- Local healthcare should be built on generalist practice with strategic enhanced skills and supported by existing resources and infrastructure.
- Physicians should enhance their environmental literacy so that they can support community resilience to climate change and ecosystem disruption.
- Community health service needs should be quantified based on catchment population characteristics and risk profile in order to meet those needs in an appropriate and sustainable manner.
- Virtual care should be supported by communications infrastructure and networking.
Chapter 4: Data Transparency to Support Rural Community Sustainability
- Rural health services should be systematically organized to respond to the needs of the population and support rural health service planners.
- Local health services leaders should be encouraged to engage in quality improvement activities and monitor the impact through local data.
- Rural populations should be linked to the service reach by creating hospital population catchments.
- In order to understand transport patterns, the relationship between local health services and supportive regional health services should be tracked with respect to local patients.
- Catchment data should be enhanced to include environmental assets and liabilities related to the local population and landscape.
- Rural population health data should be used to monitor and evaluate the impact of transformation and rural resilience to climate change and ecosystem disruption.
Chapter 5: Reconnecting with Nature
- Indigenous teachings, such as Two-Eyed Seeing, should be acknowledged and learned from to better understand how our natural environment influences our wellbeing.
- Further research into the health benefits of spending time in and connecting with our natural environment should be supported.
- Exposure to nature from a young age to teach its value and importance should be promoted, particularly in childhood education.
- All communities and schools should organize initiatives to promote connecting with and preserving nature, such as establishing community gardens.
- Physicians should consider adopting nature prescription programs for patients as part of their process of care.
- At least 2 hours per week should be spent outside, interacting with nature and our natural environment, to benefit physical and mental health.
- We should honour, respect, and invoke the terms of reconciliation put forward by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in their Calls to Action report and beyond.
- Ecosystem-based conservation planning should be promoted to maintain and restore natural ecological integrity.
Chapter 6: Behavioural Determinants of Climate Action and Collective Change
- Identification of and efforts to address the causes of the “Green Gap” – the space between intention and action – are required with regard to adopting sustainable, adaptive, and resilience-oriented practices in the face of climate change.
- The collectivist nature of rural communities should be drawn upon to promote the adoption of pro-environmental behaviour and climate adaptation strategies which are key to enhancing transformational resilience at the community level.
- Research should take an integrated approach, using systems-based thinking, to establish a clear understanding of causes of barriers to the adoption of pro-environmental behaviour.
- Educational resources should be developed that focus on encouraging and supporting social change to promote the adoption of pro-environmental behaviours.
Chapter 7: Transformative Resilience
- Transformation of our current systems should be guided by values of sustainability, collective action, long-term thinking and bottom-up approaches.
- Recognize that transitioning from the current dominant system to an emerging system will involve innovation and openness to change.
- Consider and address the needs of the Earth’s complex ecological and natural systems in transformative processes.
- Promote education and relationship building to strengthen the resilience of rural communities.
- Transformation should accommodate the needs of vulnerable populations.
- Recognize constructive disruption as a necessary part of the processes of transformation and change.
Chapter 8: Sustainability
- Recognize that the fundamental principle of sustainability must underpin our economic and social activities.
- Respect the land as if it is borrowed from our children and children’s children. Return it to them better than we found it.
- Give precedence to practices of sustainable growth versus profit maximization in research and program evaluation.
- Disincentivize exploitation of the environment through legislation and taxation.
- Consider and address the needs of vulnerable communities when building sustainable systems.
- Prioritize the collective good of local populations in decisions of land and resource use.
Chapter 9: Youth
- Encourage and champion young people as leaders in the fights against climate change.
- Develop more support systems for youth struggling with climate change-related mental health issues, such as eco-anxiety, and make these resources widely accessible.
- Make strategic investments to strengthen the involvement of children and youth in responding to climate change and ecosystem disruption through research, education and leadership opportunities.
- Ensure access to comprehensive climate change and ecosystem disruption curriculum, with a focus on positive solutions for the future, for children and youth.
- Facilitate youth involvement in our political and democratic systems at every level to support climate change mitigation and adaptation.
- Expose children and youth to nature through social and educational programs to foster respect for and understanding of the natural world.