We imagine a resilient Nova Scotia that uses its resources in a sustainable way, reduces the impacts of human activity on the environment, and is ready to adapt to a changing climate.
Nova Scotia is vulnerable to climate change across sectors. Climate change, including causes and impacts, poses serious and far-reaching challenges that face Canada and beyond. Nova Scotia is working to reduce greenhouse gas emission in line with federal and international targets. To achieve these goals, the action plan will need to include prediction and modelling, mitigation strategies, response, and adaptation planning. Nova Scotia’s research ecosystem can play a critical role in helping to achieve these targets. If you have any questions regarding the climate change adaptation & resilience missions, please contact us.
Mission in Action
Dr. Stefanie Colombo
Dr. Colombo, an Assistant Professor at Dalhousie University’s Agricultural Campus, is working to address a major challenge in the aquaculture industry: making sure the fish yield a healthy nutritional source for humans while ensuring minimal negative impacts on the environment.
“We’re trying to produce food, but also, from a natural ecosystem perspective, if we know that wild salmon are faced with a nutritional deficit of Omega threes, coupled with an increase in temperature from global warming, we want to know what that means for their survival as well.”
How can research help?
Greenhouse gas targets are an important measure, but equally so is understanding the related contributors to and impacts of climate change such as ocean acidification, erosion and sea level rise, deforestation, habitat and biodiversity loss, and air pollution and human health. These associated issues connect closely to climate change and pose urgent risks to Nova Scotia’s natural environment and the industries and people who make use of it. This mission area requires the broad participation from discovery sciences, applied sciences, social sciences, and humanities research components; the growth of ecotourism and ecological arts and media also provide opportunities for arts and culture to contribute to its success.
Possible Research Areas
- Energy capture, storage and alternatives
- Oceans, earth sciences, environmental sciences, meteorology and climatology
- Clean tech, green tech and alternatives
- Modelling and prediction
- Planning, disaster response, zoning
- Climate and environmental public policy
- Transportation, infrastructure design and community adaptation
- Fundamental research that helps us understand the changes and impacts.
Working Together
Research projects in this mission area demonstrate ways in which our research ecosystem can play a critical role in helping to achieve climate change targets and adapt to our changing environment. Each mission will include opportunities identified by the researchers and their post-secondary institutions, such as Canada Foundation for Innovation match funding, as well as capacity-building initiatives such as student grants or partnership funding. These opportunities, as well as traditional funding calls, will be reviewed with the mission-oriented lens by Research Nova Scotia. Moving forward, we encourage post-secondary institutions and their researchers to shape their applications early in the process to align with one or more of our total 16 missions.