Infrastructure Stakeholders May Soon Find Themselves Liable For The Effects Of Climate Change

Originally published in ReNew Canada, September/October 2008.

In northern Canada it is well known that melting permafrost is leading roads and air landing strips to buckle. Research and increased knowledge has led to a general acceptance by scientists and environmental monitors that Arctic sea ice is shrinking, subjecting coastal communities to rising sea levels and battering storms, with the prospect of floods and dam overflows.

A parallel development is that concern for climate change's harmful physical effects is increasingly preoccupying governments, which have the power to implement legislation to deal with it, and the courts, which have the power to apply and develop the common law in this context.