Municipal Natural Assets Initiative

Ontario Greenbelt is investing $500K and working with MNAI to help Canadian communities prepare for climate change. Read more here https://bit.ly/2JQmlRv

MNAI is partnering with one of the world’s largest re-insurers, Swiss Re, and the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC), on a pilot project to develop insurance products that could provide new incentives for local governments to undertake natural asset management. Once launched, the new insurance products would help Canadian local governments protect some of their natural assets such as forests and wetlands. Called parametric insurance, claim payments are triggered by a pre-define...d event happening, instead of only paying out on actual losses or physical damage incurred after the event. For example, if a storm beyond a certain size occurred, the insurance payout could cover the cost of restoration for natural features such as wetlands, versus only covering damage to buildings and manufactured property. The Canadian project is inspired by the Mexican Reef project, in which Swiss Re partnered with the Nature Conservancy and Mexican governments in 2017 to launch the world’s first nature-based insurance solution to protect Mexico’s Quintana Roo coral reef, the longest barrier reef in the western hemisphere. When a severe storm hit the reef, Swiss Re’s parametric insurance kicked in and disbursed funds that enabled community members to launch restoration actions and minimize coral damage. Read more: https://mnai.ca/insurance-protect-natural-assets/

Municipalities are tasked with implementing much of the sustainable land management but they need to know what works, says Michael Drescher, Associate Professor, School of Planning, University of Waterloo. It would be great if they didn’t have to reinvent the wheel each time a municipality starts on this sustainability journey. That’s where this initiative comes in. The monitoring project, a collaboration between the University of Waterloo and MNAI, identifies technical ...aspects such as ecosystem restoration, ecosystem service valuation, and measurement of key indicators to quantify changes in service provisioning. But it also looks at local governments’ awareness and education about natural assets, skills and capacity, communication, stakeholder engagement, institutional structures and governance, finance, and so on. Read more: https://mnai.ca/refbc-monitoring-update/ Real Estate Foundation of British Columbia

MNAI is seeking expressions of interest from local governments. For most local governments, natural asset management journeys begin with building an inventory of their existing natural assets. MNAI is pursuing several funding opportunities that would allow us to subsidize multiple local governments across Canada to develop their natural asset inventories starting this fall. If your community is interested in developing your natural asset inventory, please fill out the expressions of interest form and send it to us. MNAI will use the information you provide as part of a selection process (subject to funding confirmation). For more information and to apply, click here https://bit.ly/2XBZVY2. Intake will be on a rolling basis.

Join our team! MNAI is seeking an Engineering and Environment Advisor to work in the growing and innovative field of municipal natural asset management. The Engineering and Environment Advisor will work with MNAI’s multi-disciplinary team of experts to provide authoritative, technical advice to help local governments understand, measure, value & manage natural assets’ abilities to provide core infrastructure services. Many of the services local governments provide to their re...sidents and businesses depend on engineered infrastructure assets that need expensive and urgent renewal. Emerging evidence demonstrates that natural assets (sometimes called #greeninfrastructure) can provide the same or even better services than many engineered assets, and often at a fraction of the cost and usually with other benefits such as increased community resilience. MNAI has been pre-approved to host a placement through the federal Science Horizons wage funding program. If you're 30yo or younger, a recent #Engineering grad in the ecology or resource management fields and are passionate about #sustainability, apply now! This is a contract position and hours will vary. Full job description and to apply: https://bit.ly/2C13Kyi. Please share!

In this time of economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, many local government budgets are stretched more than ever, yet they must continue delivering essential services to their citizens. So it’s exciting that the Natural Asset Management Guidelines for Municipal Engineers project has now passed its first milestone. The first of four Masters of Engineering Leadership in Urban Systems students, Parsa Shani, has completed a draft framework of the practice guidelines and h...as presented it to the advisory group members comprising an influential group of experts in key asset management organizations for their feedback. Shani’s work defined the role and scope of municipal engineers within the asset management world. He then interviewed engineers and documented their perspectives of what the barriers and opportunities to adopting natural asset management are and how a practice guideline could help alleviate those barriers. Read more: https://mnai.ca/engineering-guidelines-project-passes-firs/ This Project is made possible with funding from the Real Estate Foundation of British Columbia

The need for sustainable development was what drove me into local politics, said Paul Ryan, who was first elected to the Town of Logy Bay - Middle Cove - Outer Cove a couple of years ago. Referred to locally as LBMCOC, the coastal Newfoundland town is a small rural community north of St. John’s, with the expansive Atlantic Ocean to its east. Several years prior to running for Council, Ryan became concerned with a new development being proposed that would require filling in marshes and building in a sensitive protected river area. Fortunately, that project went nowhere, but Ryan realized the Town could benefit from being more proactive about managing development and becoming elected was a way to move that vision forward. Read more: http://mnai.ca/natural-asset-management-planning-logy-bay-/

MNAI has launched the Managing Natural Assets to Coastal Resilience project. MNAI has already completed stormwater management projects with 11 communities in 3 provinces that developed a framework and modeling approach for incorporating natural capital in their municipal asset management. Now, this inaugural project will expand MNAI’s methodology so coastal communities can better understand, value and manage coastal assets that provide vital services such as wave and wind at...tenuation, soil stabilization and sediment capture, and water flow and flood regulation. The project is starting on a pilot basis with two coastal communities: the Town of Gibsons in B.C., and Pointe-du-Chêne, which is east of Moncton in the Southeast Regional Service Commission region of New Brunswick. Read more: https://mnai.ca/coastal-project-addressing-rising-sea-leve/ Thanks to Environment and Natural Resources in Canada