Transcoastal Adaptations were recipients of funding from the province announced by Agriculture Minister Greg Morrow on Tuesday.

The $4.4 million was given to six projects in the agriculture sector to respond to climate change. The funding from the province of Nova Scotia supports the centre's current wetland restoration project—Making Room for Wetlands: Coastal Carbon Edition. 

Transcoastal Adaptations is a climate action centre at Saint Mary’s University; the centre undertakes projects related to climate change adaptation. Transcoastal Adaptation and its partners are receiving $1.9 million of the funding. 

“We’re working with Saint Mary's and the Department of Agriculture to try to address some of the challenges and issues that the province is experiencing with respect to climate change and its impacts on our dyke land systems and our coastal communities in the Bay of Fundy,” Tony Bowron, co-founder of Transcoastal Adaptations, says.

The dyke land system helps protect agricultural lands, communities and public infrastructure throughout the province, the centre’s website explains. 

“What can we do to these dyke land systems to not just meet the current climate needs, but also into the future and what makes the most engineering, economic and ecological sense for the systems,” Bowron says.

Climate change causing water levels to rise and causing more severe and frequent storms is the reason the Making Room for Wetlands project exists, Bowron says. 

The funding is part of the province’s Environmental Goals and Climate Change Reduction Act and will also go to Perennia Food and Agriculture, Horticulture Nova Scotia, Agri-Commodity Management Association, Christmas Tree Council of Nova Scotia and NSCAD University’s Flaxmobile project.

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