Meet the B.C. residents training to make their neighbourhoods more resilient to climate change

One of the newest residents in the Vancouver neighbourhood of Kensington-Cedar Cottage is also one of the most enthusiastic about bringing the community together and making it more resilient to climate change.

Rosalva Treviño, 36, emigrated from northern Mexico just over a year ago and recently became a permanent resident.

Since arriving, she's looked for ways to connect with her new community and is now a participant in a first-of-its-kind UBC course teaching people how to engage their neighbours through climate-related projects like tree planting, public gardens and biodiversity studies.

"I think at the end of the day, there is this environmental [worry] that you have," said Treviño. "Whenever you see the news of what our climate has been bearing all around the world … I think that the sense of action is very important, and it can bring communities together."

This week, UBC's forestry department launched the first iteration of a new eight-week online certification course to train people like Treviño to engage their neighbours on adaptation to climate change.

The course, called Climate Action and Community Engagement (CACE), was born from the demand for another UBC forestry initiative called Cool 'Hood Champs, which has UBC experts teach local residents how to assess their neighbourhoods for things like shade from trees and heat and flooding threats from impervious surfaces such as pavement.

CACE seeks to train community organizers in many more neighbourhoods across Canada and empower them to teach these skills and develop community projects to help protect them from increased temperatures and flooding.

"Our program aims to bridge that gap between what happens on the top-down level and what happens at the bottom-up level," said Cheryl Ng, a program designer and co-ordinator.

Stephen Sheppard, a UBC forestry professor emeritus who also helped design the course, says it's designed to address a gap in the response to climate change, much of which is happening within levels of government or industry, leaving individual citizens unsure and often anxious about their role.

"This gives them something positive they can put their backs into with their friends and neighbours, and it results in things that you can see, and to us, that's one of the big goals.

"Let's see what climate action on the ground looks like so other people will copy it, be inspired by it because we haven't seen it, and we really need that micro-level."

It's what drew Jonathan Argue in Victoria's James Bay neighbourhood to sign up for the program, which has around a dozen participants from across Canada.

He says he wants to use it as a way to get to know his neighbours better, so they can collectively be ready for climate emergencies, such as last summer's heat dome and last fall's catastrophic flooding.

"Living in a community where I feel that everybody's kind of looking out for one another is the place where I want to be," he said.

The 56-year-old information technology consultant, who is also involved with improv theatre, said he already sees potential projects to build on the number of trees in James Bay to provide cooling benefits. He is also interested in expanding the amount of food he and his neighbours can grow for their own food security.

"It's important to acknowledge that it's not just about the individual; it's about collectively building that community resilience," he said.

UBC's CACE course costs $2,400 and was developed with some of the $5 million the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Training provided last fall for micro-credential certification projects.

Sheppard said the school hopes to offer it three times a year.