With area municipalities declaring a climate emergency in the spring of 2019 and commitment to an 80% reduction of greenhouse gases by the year 2050, there was significant buy-in to the idea of prioritizing local climate action within Waterloo Region. Yet beyond the targets, there wasn’t yet clarity on what would be needed for the community to achieve its goals.

With funding from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), ClimateActionWR—a community collaborative made of up Sustainable Waterloo Region, Reep Green Solutions, and members from all eight of the region’s municipalities and townships—went about developing a 30-year strategy and 10-year plan oriented towards the 80 by ‘50 goal.

Unless supported over three phases of work—community engagement and insights development, backcasting, and long-term strategy development.

Through in-depth conversations, activity-based workshops, and online engagement tools, Unless surfaced deep, multi-layered and interdependent insights about the community’s hopes, fears, and sentiments surrounding climate change and climate action.

With these insights in mind, Unless helped to articulate a hopeful vision for the region in 2050—a catalyzing picture of a more sustainable future.

The vision was leveraged throughout the planning process to develop a theory of change, principles for designing a low carbon future, key transformation areas, and a 10-year action plan for the initial leg of the journey.

In June of 2021, councils from each area municipality fully endorsed the strategy and plan—rooting TransformWR as a guide for how the community will transform over the next 30 years.