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Resilience To Climate Change Continues To Improve In Saskatchewan

Taslima Jamal

The Government of Saskatchewan continues to improve its resilience to a changing climate, providing an annual update through the provincial 2022 Resilience Report. Under the Climate Resilience Measurement Framework, the report demonstrates Saskatchewan’s commitment to showing positive improvements while continuing to build resilience to a changing climate.

“The annual release of the 2022 Resilience Report is one of our commitments in Prairie Resilience, Saskatchewan’s climate strategy, illustrating the strong progress of our province in building resilience to a changing climate,” Environment Minister Dana Skoropad said. “This report shows the results of our balanced approach, fostering a strong economy with an emphasis on growing provincial resilience.”

In the fourth-annual report, 18 of the 22 measures were considered in good standing, including all measures related to economic sustainability and human well-being, while four were considered fair. No measures received a status of poor. All new measures in the 2022 Resilience Report are in good standing and on track to achieve their new targets. The Climate Resilience Measurement Framework uses a system-wide approach that monitors natural systems (land, water, and forests), physical infrastructure, economic sustainability, community preparedness and human well-being.

Climate resilience is dynamic, and new challenges arise frequently on the path to resiliency. Four years of data collection have allowed ministries and agencies across government to assess the effectiveness of programs and policies and introduce new measures to reflect this changing context. With eight previous target dates met, this report sets four new targets:

  • Measure 3 – Soil protection compliance rate of commercial forest harvesting in Saskatchewan.
  • Measure 5 – Seedlings distributed from SaskPower’s Shand Greenhouse. Seedlings are distributed to rural landowners to establish shelter belts, to environmental groups to support habitat projects and to community groups to support cultural projects or activities.
  • Measure 16 – Annual sustainable timber harvest utilization for the commercial forest in Saskatchewan.
  • Measure 21 – Saskatchewan’s Healthy Beach Program. This measure helps ensure safe water quality for users of public beaches that may carry some risk for human health due to pollutants and other environmental factors, including climate-related events.

Four other measures have been updated in the report, which also highlights stakeholder and partner initiatives that go beyond the framework to improve resiliency in Saskatchewan.

As pledged in Prairie Resilience, the Government of Saskatchewan will continue to track, report and improve climate resilience measures to help identify further focus and improvement areas and better understand Saskatchewan’s resilience to climate change.

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