Nature’s role in residential development: Identifying leverage points for climate change planning in Ontario, Canada

Cities are establishing climate change related targets to mitigate the effects of climate change and adapt to its consequences. Natural features, such as trees and wetlands, can help communities reach their mitigation goals by storing carbon while also providing co-benefits that build resilience to climate change impacts. However, nature-based solutions for addressing climate change are not widely recognized in current development practices. To better understand this limitation, we interviewed nine municipal planners and eight private developers across Ontario, Canada, to assess how stakeholders in residential development consider natural features and climate change in their decisions. Our findings demonstrate that natural features, particularly in the natural heritage system, receive substantial attention in residential development decisions, but that climate change is rarely an explicit factor in those decisions. We anticipate that if the climate change benefits of natural features were explicitly quantified, this could impact the decisions of key stakeholders and support the design of alternative development forms. Our findings also suggest that policy changes, green development standards, cross-sector collaboration, and reliable ecosystem services data could all serve as significant leverage points for communities to support the implementation of nature-based solutions for climate change. Future research should investigate the effectiveness of green development standards and how tools that quantify ecosystem services could be incorporated into the development process to identify effective pathways for implementing nature-based solutions. • City planners and developers gauge natural features early in development applications. • Climate change is rarely explicitly factored into decisions on natural features. • Quantifying the benefits of natural features could help positively steer development. • Green development standards could guide the implementation of nature-based solutions.