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• Assessment framework reveals progress in climate action planning in BC, Canada. • City differences clear: Victoria and Vancouver ahead of Surrey in sustainable paths. • Partnerships have been critical for supporting engagement in climate action. • Conditioning cities to report climate action progress has set a successful standard. • Feedback through self-assessment needed to identify most effective climate actions. To transition to a more sustainable and low-carbon economy, a series of local governments in British Columbia, Canada, are implementing climate action and innovation. This is largely in response to a need for societal changes in current development paths. However, there has been a lack of studies assessing the effectiveness of these actions and whether these municipalities are on track to meet their targets. This paper tests a newly developed assessment framework to evaluate local government actions and to better understand city-wide community development paths in three major cities in British Columbia—Vancouver, Victoria and Surrey. This assessment reveals notable progress in their transitions to sustainable pathways in areas such as agenda setting and strategy, plan formulation and implementation, and these sometimes result in transformative actions. Nonetheless, a gap between these actions and their performance reveals that local governments from this study are failing to properly address the current climate emergency. In particular, the municipalities lack processes for evaluating their progress in changing their current paths. This reduces their capacity to identify best practices to improve the effectiveness of climate actions and also hinders their ability to act on feedback and make adjustments to meet their stated goals and targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coastal cities around the world have experienced large costs from major flooding events in recent years. Climate change is predicted to bring an increased likelihood of flooding due to sea level rise and more frequent severe storms. In order to plan future development and adaptation, cities must know the magnitude of losses associated with these events, and how they can be reduced. Often losses are calculated from insurance claims or surveying flood victims. However, this largely neglects the loss due to the disruption of economic activity. We use a forward‐looking dynamic computable general equilibrium model to study how a local economy responds to a flood, focusing on the subsequent recovery/reconstruction. Initial damage is modeled as a shock to the capital stock and recovery requires rebuilding that stock. We apply the model to Vancouver, British Columbia by considering a flood scenario causing total capital damage of $14.6 billion spread across five municipalities. GDP loss relative to a no‐flood scenario is relatively long‐lasting. It is 2.0% ($2.2 billion) in the first year after the flood, 1.7% ($1.9 billion) in the second year, and 1.2% ($1.4 billion) in the fifth year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]