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The Saskatchewan government is giving itself a passing grade on its environmental report card.
On Wednesday, the province released its first report in support of “Prairie Resilience,” a climate change strategy that the government launched in December of 2017.
The Sask. Party set out 25 categories to measure in five areas – natural systems, physical infrastructure, economic sustainability, community preparedness and human well-being.
“This is a starting point for us,” Environment Minister Dustin Duncan told reporters while discussing the report. “These 25 measurements are really to outline what we think are areas where government can report back to the public (and) where there might be some of those measurements we may need to tweak.”
According to the report, 15 of the 25 measures were ranked “Good” and were trending in the intended direction, seven were “Fair” and showed areas where improvements can be made, and three didn’t have the necessary historical trends to make an assessment.
“The present report shows that all of the measures under natural systems and economic sustainability are in good standing,” the report read. “The province will continue to track and report on the climate resilience measures to better understand Saskatchewan’s resilience to climate change, and to help identify areas of further focus and improvement.”
Among the 15 categories that showed positive results were decreases in total greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector and from gas produced in associated with oil, and a drop in greenhouse gas emissions per unit of Saskatchewan’s gross domestic product.
The government also saw a desired decrease in municipal and per-capita water use and an increase in communities with wildfire operational pre-plan for northern communities who face that threat.
NDP Leader Ryan Meili wasn’t impressed with the government’s work with emissions, noting that the Sask. Party promised in 2009 to reduce emissions by 20 per cent by 2020. Instead, he noted that emissions have gone up by 10 per cent since 2009.
He pointed out that Saskatchewan is the largest per-capita emitter of greenhouse gases in Canada, which is the ninth-largest emitter in the world. For Meili, more has to be done by the government in the areas of solar and wind power.
“The opportunities in this are great,” Meili said. “The half-measures from the Sask. Party are nowhere near enough.”
Duncan noted that the government is well aware of the province’s emissions – and changes can be made to the plan in the future to address that issue. As he put it, the plan is “a living document” and can be adjusted as more information is gathered.
“Emission reductions are an important part of our plan, but regardless of what we do in Saskatchewan, that’s not going to have a dramatic effect on the overall global picture when it comes to climate change,” Duncan said.
“Our focus on our plan all along has been, ‘How do we ensure that we’re resilient to the ongoing effects of climate change knowing that we’re a part of that? We need to reduce our emissions but we also need to ensure that we’re adapting and are able to be resilient to the effects of climate change.’ ”
The list of measures in the “Fair” category included total energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from government-owned buildings; neither number fell significantly enough for the government’s liking.
The province didn’t have enough information to determine if it was faring well in such areas as floodplain mapping for communities that were deemed at risk and if communities that are reliant on their water supplies are vulnerable to drought.
The government’s plan can be found here.