Hand-in-hand: How UAA and the Municipality of Anchorage are collaborating to create the city’s Climate Action Plan

by cmmyers  |   

UAA students, faculty and community members discuss the Climate Action Plan at a campus event. (Photo courtesy Richard Tilney-Bassett)

It's a busy Wednesday afternoon in local favorite Fire Island Rustic Bakeshop and the lunch rush is in full swing, nothing too out of the ordinary, except that it's mid-April and customers are excitedly chatting about the unusually mild weather Southcentral had been experiencing. It's a conversation locals in the state's largest city seem to have earlier and earlier every year, but with each mild winter, early spring, long summer and extended fall - there's a price. That's why faculty, students and staff at UAA have been working collaboratively with the Municipality of Anchorage (MOA) to create a Climate Action Plan (CAP) so the city and residents of Anchorage will be prepared for the continuing warmer trends.

"Cities around the world are developing climate action plans; over 9,000 [cities] have developed these, and basically the goals of the plans are usually two-fold," said Micah Hahn, an assistant professor of environmental health within UAA's Institute for Circumpolar Health Studies, who has been helming the monumental project for the past year. "The first is decreasing our contribution to climate change by decreasing our greenhouse gas emissions. So developing strategies to decrease emissions from energy use in buildings, cars, and off-gas from the landfill. The second is, no matter how quickly we work to slow climate change, we already know that there are things happening and impacts we're seeing in Anchorage. We need to adapt to these changes in order to protect people and places in Anchorage."

A brief history

It all started a little over a decade ago in 2008 when former UAA political science professor and first lady of Anchorage, Mara Kimmel, and UAA political science professor, Kimberly Pace, traveled with their class to Anchorage's sister city, Tromso, Norway. The purpose of the small cohort's trip was to learn how the circumpolar north city was incorporating policy into local government to combat climate change. Upon return, the two professors assigned their class to draft a CAP, which they then presented to outgoing mayor Mark Begich as a potential guide for the MOA. As hands turned over in city government, the CAP was shelved, but with renewed interest from current mayor Ethan Berkowitz, what started as a class assignment a decade ago has taken new life as he's re-committed to combating climate change in Anchorage, through the MOA's Resilient Anchorage Initiative.

In summer 2017, the MOA secured funding from the Institute of Social and Economic Research, the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, and the Nature Conservancy to hire an intern, UAA political science major Jacob Shercliffe, to conduct an initial baseline greenhouse gas inventory report. In December 2017, UAA and MOA signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU), officially marking the collaboration to develop the city's first CAP.

UAA Associate Professor Shannon Donovan facilitates discussion groups for a climate action plan during a fall semester class.

"So many people were involved in this process - faculty, students - and it really opened up all these doors for research and collaboration moving forward between the MOA and UAA," said Hahn. In August 2018, a small steering committee comprised of university and MOA representatives kicked work on the CAP into high gear to push the project through to completion. "It's crossed so many departments across the university system and will have a real applied impact on the city where we live."

Which brings us to the present day, where the CAP has been drafted and is about to be presented to the Anchorage Assembly for review. Then, according to Hahn, the real work will begin to implement the plan citywide, across all the various departments of the MOA. Hahn says if the assembly approves the CAP, the potential for increased collaboration with UAA and the MOA will happen as more of the plan is implemented.

What is a CAP?

So what exactly is a CAP and why is it so important to modern cities across America and the globe?

"The CAP is a roadmap for mitigating our contributions to climate change and adapting to the impacts that we're seeing in Anchorage," said Hahn. She added that cities from Anchorage to New York and beyond are developing CAPs that are as simple as one-page documents with a few goals lined out, to 500-page books detailing every aspect of a city's people, culture, and life related to climate change. "Anchorage is a great place to live, and the decisions we make today have repercussions for how liveable it is now and in the future, and not that far into the future."

Hahn said that the effects of climate change are already visible in Anchorage, from the change in snowpack during the winter to our currently mild spring and how that impacts everything from the city's drinking water supply fed by Eklutna Glacier, to the 300 miles of trails within the city's limits, to our food supply. Climate change has and will continue to have an impact on all of these aspects of everyday life in Anchorage.

Spring on campus brings out the bicycle commuters who use the Chester Creek Trail as a throughway to reach school, work and various points in town. Anchorage's Climate Action Plan will address everything from the city's infrastructure to the extensive trail system. (Photo by James Evans/ University of Alaska Anchorage)

"It's really practical stuff that we talk about in the plan," said Hahn, continuing that Anchorage's plan has goals for everything from planning evacuation routes if a wildfire should break out on the Hillside to creating more opportunities to use SNAP [food stamps] at farmer's markets. "It's really tangible things that we deal with in our daily lives. I think everyone in Anchorage will find something they care about. Everyone wants to have nutritious food and to be cared for if there's a disaster."

Another important aspect of Anchorage's CAP is to ensure that all of Anchorage's residents have equal opportunities to benefit from climate adaptation efforts and recover from climate-related disasters. Not everybody experiences disasters equally, as the city just found out in the November 2018 earthquake, so she said the plan focuses on making sure that all new programs are developed so that they can accessed by everyone. For example, by making sure all emergency preparedness resources are translated into the many languages spoken in Anchorage.

Lastly, Hahn explained, is that the CAP is not just about climate-related disasters, but also about building a more climate resilient and livable city. For example, developing infrastructure that can withstand the changing freeze and thaw cycles we are experiencing in the winter and creating land-use plans that make it easier to walk or bike to destinations around the city.

Steering the ship

This collaborative project between UAA and the MOA is huge and will be an ongoing partnership between the two organizations if the Anchorage Assembly passes the plan.

Within the larger group working on the CAP was what Hahn called the "CAP ecosystem," the eight person steering committee comprised of faculty and municipality staff that were directing the project's timeline and making sure that everything kept moving forward. The group met every week over the past year and made sure communication between UAA and the MOA remained open and clear. Another key group was the advisory committee who helped review the CAP, made sure it addressed several large themes throughout the CAP, including equity, economic development, job creation and health. Lastly, under the umbrella of the steering and advisory committees were seven working groups that drilled down on the specific details of the CAP, from addressing energy issues and land use for transportation to health and emergency preparedness.

"Each group had about eight to 12 people on it, with a mix of MOA representatives, relevant state organizations, and nonprofits," said Hahn. Each working group was chaired by a professor, mostly from UAA and one representative from Alaska Pacific University, which was made possible by the Faculty Initiative Fund from the UA Office of the President. "We had a series of three workshops in the fall where the groups learned about climate change in Anchorage, brainstormed ideas for the CAP, and the last session was really pulling everything together and selecting the actions for each of their sectors."

It was an expedited process that started in the fall with a draft plan completed in early 2019. There was a review period in late winter and early spring that included a formal 30-day public comment period, where Anchorage residents could weigh in on the CAP and add their suggestions and ideas before the final version of the CAP was whittled down and is now ready to present to the Anchorage Assembly.

Once the plan passes, according to Hahn, the CAP will move to department levels at the MOA. It will be a collaborative effort between the MOA and UAA to continue moving the plan forward.

"It really takes action at all different levels," Hahn said. "It takes municipal level action, it takes organizational level action, but also it takes individual residents' action to really implement all of these things well."

Written by Catalina Myers, UAA Office of University Advancement

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