PICS is hosted and led by the University of Victoria in collaboration with
the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University and the University of Northern British Columbia.

Research

The Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS) seeks to support transformative change in response to the many challenges raised by climate change. Following a program development workshop in April 2009, the PICS Program Committee identified four key interdisciplinary themes to guide the Institute’s research strategy. The fifth theme was added later in response to a specific research request from the Province of British Columbia.

    Leaders have been identified for each theme and initial workshops to define research priorities in each area were held between October 2009 and May 2010 (see below). The PICS Strategic Research Plan is based on questions arising from these workshops.

The following projects received funding after an initial call for proposals under the first four themes issued in late 2010/11: Funded Research Projects

Five additional projects were later funded under the fifth theme of Carbon Management in BC Forests.

The themes will also be used to frame calls for fellowship applications. Future graduate and post-doctoral fellowships will be awarded based on the contribution that fellowship recipients can make toward specific research priorities.

In keeping with the Institute’s mandate, PICS-supported research will address both adaptation to and mitigation of climate change, and should be BC-relevant but not necessarily BC-centric. PICS encourages interdisciplinarity in its research programs, recognizing that climate-change issues are invariably multidimensional. The solutions-oriented policies to which PICS will contribute will be most robust when the full interdisciplinary scope of specific research issues is taken into account.

PICS is also undertaking vigorous outreach through strategic communications and educational initiatives including sponsoring of public lectures, delivery of short courses to specific constituencies, and contributions to media that focus on key research findings. In addition, the Institute commissions white papers exploring topical policy-related issues that span the full adaptation/mitigation spectrum. These white papers also define key gaps in existing knowledge that need to be studied through further directed research.