The Government of Canada's Environmental Damages Fund, administered by Environment and Climate Change Canada, is allocating $15.8 million to six University of Waterloo research projects to identify solutions to environmental challenges. One project is led by Dr. Nandita Basu.
Funded through the Climate Action and Awareness Fund (CAAF), the research supports building sustainable net-zero emissions in Canada by 2050.
"Scientific research underpins everything we do to fight climate change. This funding provides critical support, allowing government and academia to collaborate to explore practical and achievable climate change solutions. By leveraging our unique expertise, we can foster collaboration across disciplines, sectors, communities, and research bodies," said the Honourable Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Environment and Climate Change.
Nandita Basu, a professor jointly appointed to the Faculties of Science and Engineering, is internationally renowned in the fields of water sustainability and ecohydrology. Her new project aims at designing climate and water smart agricultural solutions in complex working landscapes.
The proposed project, called Solutionscapes, takes a synergistic approach, bringing together multiple bioenergy (manure to biogas) and nature-based approaches (e.g., cover crops, wetland restoration) in agricultural landscapes and quantifying not just outcomes for carbon, but also effects on water quality, food-provisioning, and a range of other ecosystem services.
As part of this analysis, the team will prioritize the creation of “solutionscape” portfolios, which include multiple, spatially targeted solution strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sequester carbon while enhancing ecosystem service outcomes.
In its quest to achieve net-zero emissions, Canada is investing in agricultural climate solutions at an unprecedented level. While the development of such solutions is not new, they have mostly focused on a single problem of interest, at a single scale, without adequate consideration of social and environmental tradeoffs, said Basu.
The SOLUTIONSCAPES project will enable us to develop pan-Canadian, spatially explicit solution portfolios that will move Canada towards a net-zero green house gas future while also prioritizing water quality and other ecosystem service outcomes.
Basu is the principal investigator of SOLUTIONSCAPES and Drs. Juan Moreno Cruz, Tonya DelSontro, Dustin Garrick, Bryan Tolson, and Rebecca Saari are co-investigators. Basu was recently name a canada Research Chair in Global Water Sustainability and Ecohydrology.
"It's critical for us to be working toward net-zero," said Dr. Charmaine Dean, vice president, Research and International at the University of Waterloo. "Using established and emerging strengths in fundamental and applied research, Waterloo is pushing boundaries to accelerate the transition to a climate-resilient, low-carbon sustainable society, and advancing the sustainable use and management of space, land, water, and energy on a global scale."
The research stemming from Waterloo's projects will advance and extend existing collaborations among stakeholders, including municipal and community organizations, academic and federal science partners, researchers and trainees, to support climate change innovation and knowledge transfer.
The other projects funded by CAAF are:
- Can-Peat: Canada's peatlands as nature-based solutions to climate change: Maria Strack, Geography and Environmental Management
- Measuring and Monitoring City and Municipal Level GHG Emissions Mitigation Effectiveness: Amelia Clarke, School of Environment, Enterprise and Development
- Mitigation of methane emission hot-spots from municipal landfills: Laura Hug, Biology
- Residential Development Impact Scorecard for the Environment (RISE): Michael Drescher, School of Planning
- Robust Decision Making Using Dynamic Adaptive Policy Pathways For Direct Air Capture Deployment in Canada: Eric Croiset, Chemical Engineering and Vanessa Schweizer, Knowledge Integration
Nationally, the CAAF funding was part of Minister Guilbeault's $58 million announcement for research projects that will advance science and technology to combat climate change. Discovering solutions to environmental challenges impacting our world is a key priority at Waterloo. The recent launch of the Sustainable Futures initiative aims to make the University of Waterloo a global leader in sustainability research, education, and innovation to benefit the environment, economy, and society.