Environmental Framework

The City of Medicine Hat (CMH) is developing a cohesive Environmental Framework that successfully captures, reflects, and builds on the City’s current foundational environmental guidelines and objectives, while providing strategic direction for integrated resource management and climate risk mitigation. 

The Medicine Hat Environmental Framework is a planning document that builds upon the following objectives provided by the City Council Strategic Plan and the MyMH Municipal Development Plan:

Demonstrate the City’s leadership and commitment to our community and environment.
Develop actions and strategies that are clear, compelling, relevant, implementable, and leading for inclusion in redevelopment plans and city policies.
Conduct efficient and effective consultation and engagement with key stakeholders and the public for clarification of environmental objectives. Involving stakeholders throughout the process is critical to developing a framework that is supported and implementable.
Support the exploration of funding sources for green incentive opportunities.
Deliver a flexible and adaptive 25-year long-range plan with emphasis on a series of short-term 5-10 year action plans.

The City has engaged the consulting company WSP to support CMH in the development and implementation of our community-wide Environmental Framework.

Project lifecycle

The CMH Environmental Framework includes consultation and engagement strategically integrated throughout the process and will be developed over an 18-month period under six different key stages. See where we are in the process at the lifecycle on the right.

MCCAC - Climate Resiliency Capacity Building Program

The Environmental Framework project includes a climate risk and vulnerability assessment to understand how climate change is impacting the city of Medicine Hat. As a result of this assessment, recommendations for climate change adaptation measures will be included throughout the Environmental Framework to respond to climate risks and help create a climate-ready Medicine Hat. With the integrated climate resilience scope in the project, the CMH Environmental Framework project has been approved for the Climate Resiliency Capacity Building Program grant offered through the Municipal Climate Change Action Center.

Climate Resilience Capacity Building Program | MCCAC

The Medicine Hat Environmental Framework is a planning document that builds upon the following objectives provided by the City Council Strategic Plan and the MyMH Municipal Development Plan:

Demonstrate the City’s leadership and commitment to our community and environment.
Develop actions and strategies that are clear, compelling, relevant, implementable, and leading for inclusion in redevelopment plans and city policies.
Conduct efficient and effective consultation and engagement with key stakeholders and the public for clarification of environmental objectives. Involving stakeholders throughout the process is critical to developing a framework that is supported and implementable.
Support the exploration of funding sources for green incentive opportunities.
Deliver a flexible and adaptive 25-year long-range plan with emphasis on a series of short-term 5-10 year action plans.

The City has engaged the consulting company WSP to support CMH in the development and implementation of our community-wide Environmental Framework.

Project lifecycle

MCCAC - Climate Resiliency Capacity Building Program

Climate Resilience Capacity Building Program | MCCAC

Stage 2 - Materiality Assessment

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In February 2023, as part of the Stage 2 Materiality Assessment, a facilitated half-day in-person workshop with stakeholders from the CMH organization was held to solicit feedback on their understanding of the preliminary environmental sub-topics through two lenses: (1) impacts to the CMH as an organization; (2) perceived significance to internal stakeholders. As an outcome of the working session, an online survey was shared with CMH internal stakeholders to collect feedback on the preliminary list of environmental subtopics.
In March 2023, as part of the climate resilience assessment, a facilitated virtual stakeholder engagement session was held to assess the risk associated with each climate trend. The purpose of this workshop was: (1) to review and validate sensitivity and adaptive capacity scores, and (2) evaluate consequence of climate impact to assess the risk of climate change to the community. Additionally, the workshop was intended to build organizational capacity around integrating climate resilience into future planning for Medicine Hat. A pre-workshop survey was used to gather information from the participants ahead of the session in order to reserve time for conversations around the assessment inputs and outputs.  
The Stage 2 Materiality Assessment Report is currently being finalized with key findings and the project team is preparing for the Stage 3 engagement sessions.
Stage 2 - Baseline Review

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In December 2022, the following two key reports as part of Stage 2 which informs the materiality assessment engagement sessions:
Baseline Review and Analysis Report was created to conduct a comprehensive current state assessment of various environmental topics. WSP conducted a three-pronged Baseline Review and Analysis, consisting of a review of the following:
- City of Medicine Hat’s existing environmental-related policies, programs, and initiatives;
- Relevant federal and provincial polices and legislation; and
- Best practices and environmental frameworks and/or master planning development for peer municipalities.
Informed by WSP Stage 2 Analysis, seven preliminary environmental topic areas were identified to help streamline the research and capture relevant targets and metrics that are likely to be of interest to the City of Medicine Hat. The topic areas are:  
- Water;   
- Energy and Air;  
- Climate Resilience,   
- Ecosystems and Agriculture;  
- Solid Waste;   
- Community and Land Development; and  
- Green Economy. 
The environmental topic area names and groupings identified at this stage are considered preliminary and are not confirmed to be captured in the final Environmental Framework. The intention was to provide an initial structure through which to evaluate initiatives and targets. The topic areas are expected to evolve over the course of the development of the Environmental Framework. 
Climate Resilience Assessment Report has been completed to provide an overview of future climate projections, trends and hazards for City of Medicine Hat in the mid- and late-century time period. The report includes detailed climate projections against the environmental focus topics identified from the Baseline Review and Analysis Report.