News

A new policy brief from the Waterloo Climate Institute and the Christmas Tree Lab, led by Prof. Kelsey Leonard, highlights the need for climate resilience measures for Ontario’s Christmas tree industry.  To ensure the industry’s long-term sustainability, the brief proposes five key action areas for all levels of government: upholding cultural heritage, aligning crop insurance policies to tree farming, addressing climate-driven pests and diseases, integrating Christmas tree farms into climate policy, and promoting post-holiday tree recycling. 

Contrary to popular belief, new research finds that the use of artificial intelligence has a minimal effect on global greenhouse gas emissions and may actually benefit the environment and the economy. For their study, researchers from the University of Waterloo – Waterloo Climate Institute member Prof. Juan Moreno-Cruz – and the Georgia Institute of Technology combined data on the U.S. economy with estimates of AI use across industries to determine the environmental fallout if AI use continues its current trajectory.

Can a small island truly achieve sustainability? This is the provocative question that Dr. Simron Singh, professor in the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development, explores in his new documentary “Metabolism of Islands”. 

A new technical brief from the Waterloo Climate Institute is urging policymakers to consider the full cycle of material use and associated services delivered by critical infrastructure —the “stock-flow-service” nexus—to ensure long-term sustainability and resilience for Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

Flooding is already Canada’s most costly natural hazard, and the threat is only growing. Climate change, aging infrastructure and unrestrained development in flood-prone areas have left millions of Canadians vulnerable. 

Nancy Tapias Torrado, the newest member of the Waterloo Climate Institute, is part of a team of researchers that contributed to the “Advisory Opinion on Climate Emergency and Human Rights” of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights – a landmark decision on the obligations of States in the face of the climate emergency.

A new technical brief from the Waterloo Climate Institute is helping Canadian municipalities tackle extreme heat by showing how natural infrastructure can protect public health, reduce climate risks, and boost economic productivity.

As wildfires grow more frequent and severe across Canada, University of Waterloo researchers and students are stepping up with innovative, data-driven solutions.  

N-ZAP has released a new Climate Budgeting Guide designed to support Canadian municipalities and local governments in incorporating climate commitments into decision-making and budget allocation. The new guide makes it easier to use climate budgeting to put climate plans into action.

Waterloo Climate Institute partners with the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction for the Americas and the Caribbean to lead international disaster risk workshop. Supply systems are fundamental to the business ecosystem. To strengthen the resilience of these supply systems in regions facing growing climate risks, there is a need to better understand how they work, identify the vulnerabilities, and recognize shared opportunities for risk reduction.