Building Climate Resilient Rural Communities: About Our Work
Sharing knowledge, highlighting success stories, and providing practical tools to help rural communities take meaningful action.
Learn MoreClimate change presents growing challenges for communities worldwide, with rural areas often facing the greatest risks and the fewest resources for adaptation. However, solutions exist—innovative, practical strategies are already being implemented in different regions, demonstrating what is possible. By sharing these success stories, we can help other communities replicate and adapt proven approaches to strengthen their resilience.
This website serves as a hub for knowledge exchange and innovation in climate change resilience. By providing clear, accessible information on key themes, highlighting real-world case studies, and offering step-by-step implementation frameworks, we aim to empower individuals, organizations, and policymakers, particularly in rural British Columbia, to take meaningful action toward a more resilient future. Our key objectives are:
Engagement
Encouraging dialogue, collaboration, and the sharing of ideas across communities, sectors, and disciplines.
Education
Providing clear, actionable knowledge on climate resilience themes, backed by real-world case studies and research.
Implementation
Offering practical frameworks and resources to help communities put solutions into practice and drive meaningful change.
Climate change is not a distant threat; its effects are already being felt through rising temperatures, extreme weather, and shifts in ecosystems. Rural communities, which often rely on natural resources and have limited infrastructure, are particularly vulnerable. Without proactive adaptation strategies, these areas risk significant social, economic, and environmental impacts.
However, rural communities are also centres of innovation, demonstrating creative and effective responses to climate challenges. Sharing these strategies can accelerate adaptation efforts, ensuring that no community has to start from scratch. By fostering collaboration and knowledge exchange, this platform helps scale solutions that work, making climate resilience more accessible, achievable, and impactful.
The website is structured as a series of thematic topics relevant to climate resilience. This work was initiated through a Co-RIG Phase II grant awarded by the Foundation for Advancing Family Medicine and the Canadian Medical Association. The result of the grant research was the CCEDARR project (Climate Change and Ecosystem Disruption Adaptation and Rural Responses), more information on this qualitative research work can be found here.
We invite you to start with Volume 1, a resource we developed that explores the theoretical framework for building climate resilience, specifically focusing on rural communities in Canada. Next, explore the CCEDARR publications and the V.II topics and case studies: