This text is part of the special Environment section
We can ensure a livable future by acting today, says the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released in April. Cities have the ability to put in place high-impact policies to reduce our emissions and our energy footprint, these experts say.
“Cities are particularly at the fore. They have the opportunity to implement actions quickly, and this speed is crucial,” says Sophie Van Neste, professor-researcher at the National Institute for Scientific Research (INRS) and holder of the Canada Research Chair in Urban Climate Action, which analyzed the latest IPCC reports.
Mitigate demand
“The IPCC report emphasizes the levers cities can use to reduce energy demand,” says Ms.me VanNeste. By acting on our lifestyles (the way we heat our homes or our travel habits, for example), cities allow citizens to modify their individual actions.
“We will never have major collective change if we do not act on the collective determinants — infrastructures, social norms and skills (in car-sharing, for example) — to change the demand for energy,” underlines the researcher.
Alain Webster, professor at the University of Sherbrooke and president of the advisory committee on climate change, which has just published a report on land use planning in Quebec, also states that the ability of municipalities to reduce energy demand is also fundamental.
“We need to think about a more adequate planning of cities that will allow people to tell themselves that they are going to get around on foot, by bike or by public transport because it is the obvious way to go from point A to a point B,” says Webster. This requires planning to develop denser, more pleasant and simpler cities that promote more sober behavior in terms of energy consumption, without it being experienced as a constraint.
An eco-responsible location
For every mile away from the city centre, an office company increases the average distance its employees travel to work by 250 meters, according to a recent study by the Transport Policy Institute of Victoria.
“Cities greatly underestimate the role they can play on the energy footprint through land use planning”, emphasizes Amandine Rambert, project director at Vivre en Ville, which has developed an eco-responsibility index for location of offices. It is not always easy to influence individual residential choices linked to many criteria (favourite, cost, lifestyle, etc.), she observes. But cities have a stronger grip on where businesses, commerce, offices and institutions locate.
“We are working hard to encourage municipalities to tighten the number of places where they allow offices to be located, to avoid them doing so on the outskirts or in places that are not easily accessible or far away for most people,” says argue Amandine Rambert.
A location is all the more eco-responsible if it is at the heart of the pool of employees and close to work opportunities (business, networking, etc.). Like downtown Gatineau, where the 4CPA notary office has chosen to establish itself.
“800 employees who go to the same place every day to work are also 800 people who go out to buy dinner and can find a consultant located next door”, points out the director.
Necessary supports
Sound development choices at the local level must be encouraged by decisions at the government level, notes Alain Webster. “The State must be exemplary in the positioning of infrastructures such as schools, universities or hospitals”, he believes.
Cities have only a limited chance of impact if there are no uniform decisions at the federal and provincial level (such as strict regulations on urban sprawl), observes Pierre-Olivier for his part. Pineau, holder of the Chair in Energy Sector Management at HEC Montréal. “They can act locally on public transit, housing, car-sharing, by parking pricing or by adopting an eco-tax incentive to improve our waste management, an area in which Quebec is lagging behind,” laments- he.
But in the absence of standards and strategies at the higher levels, the professor is sounding the alarm about the risk of asymmetries and unhealthy competition between more or less eco-responsible cities, even if “more muscular actions in certain cities can inspire others”.