PUBLICATIONS
SPP Research Paper

VOLUME 15:27 | SEPTEMBER 2022

CANADIAN NORTHERN CORRIDOR SPECIAL SERIES

FOSTERING RESILIENCE AND 
ADAPTING TO CLIMATE CHANGE 
IN THE CANADIAN NORTH — 
IMPLICATIONS FOR INFRASTRUCTURE 
IN THE PROPOSED CANADIAN 
NORTHERN CORRIDOR 

S. JEFF BIRCHALL, SARAH KEHLER AND NICOLE BONNETT

http://dx.doi.org/DOI-10.11575/sppp.v15i1.74463



ii

FOREWORD
THE CANADIAN NORTHERN CORRIDOR RESEARCH PROGRAM PAPER SERIES

This paper is part of a special series in The School of Public Policy Publications, 
investigating a concept that would connect the nation’s southern infrastructure to a 
new series of corridors across middle and northern Canada. This paper is an output 
of the Canadian Northern Corridor Research Program.

The Canadian Northern Corridor Research Program at The School of Public Policy, 
University of Calgary, is the leading platform for information and analysis on the 
feasibility, desirability, and acceptability of a connected series of infrastructure 
corridors throughout Canada. Endorsed by the Senate of Canada, this work 
responds to the Council of the Federation’s July 2019 call for informed discussion 
of pan-Canadian economic corridors as a key input to strengthening growth across 
Canada and “a strong, sustainable and environmentally responsible economy.” 
This Research Program will benefit all Canadians, providing recommendations 
to advance the infrastructure planning and development process in Canada.

All publications can be found at https://www.canadiancorridor.ca/the-research-
program/research-publications/. 

Dr. Jennifer Winter 
Program Director, Canadian Northern Corridor Research Program

https://www.canadiancorridor.ca/the-research-program/research-publications/
https://www.canadiancorridor.ca/the-research-program/research-publications/


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FOSTERING RESILIENCE AND 
ADAPTING TO CLIMATE CHANGE 
IN THE  CANADIAN NORTH — 
IMPLICATIONS FOR INFRASTRUCTURE 
IN THE PROPOSED CANADIAN 
NORTHERN CORRIDOR 

S. Jeff Birchall, Sarah Kehler and Nicole Bonnett

KEY MESSAGES 
The key findings and recommendations of this review are: 

• Resilience of northern infrastructure is dependent on adaptation being done 
in an equitable way. This means balancing environmental risk reduction through 
infrastructure measures and vulnerability reduction through socioeconomic 
stressor support.

• Northern Canada is warming at double the global rate, which is already 
causing significant challenges for northern infrastructure. The feasibility of 
expanding northern infrastructure is drastically reduced without capitalizing 
on the ability of adaptation and resilience planning to mitigate increased risks due 
to climate change. 

• Northern Canadian communities are considerably vulnerable to climate 
change. Physical vulnerability due to remoteness, amplified warming and 
ecological fragility is compounded by systemic socioeconomic stressors, 
economic vulnerability and overwhelming adaptation and maintenance costs.

• Climate change adaptation is projected to be exceedingly costly and 
increasingly necessary. There is an urgent need to prepare communities for 
the worst, without putting them at an economic disadvantage or hindering their 
ability to function and thrive.

• Misconceptions about the opportunities climate change will bring to northern 
Canada hinder effective adaptation.  Underestimating the severity and 
complexity of climate change and its effects can have unintended consequences, 
and therefore, the potential to drastically reduce the feasibility of expanding 
northern infrastructure.



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• Hard infrastructure adaptation measures are capital intensive, costly to 
maintain and carry a high risk of failure. The costs and effectiveness of 
adaptation measures have limits in the face of unrestricted climate change 
and are constrained by sociopolitical factors that define a community’s capacity 
to adapt. 

• Effective adaptation is integral to the sustainability of any proposed northern 
expansion. Smart adaptation measures focused on reducing vulnerability through 
a place-based approach can be identified through public consultation and 
fostered through the respectful integration of non-Western knowledge systems. 
Intergovernmental co-operation is critical to facilitate implementation of low-risk, 
high-benefit policy. 

SUMMARY
The Canadian Northern Corridor (CNC) has been proposed to overcome gaps in the 
northern transportation system that limit social and economic development in the 
Canadian North (Fellows et al. 2020). Intended to be a multimodal transportation right-
of-way through Canada’s North, the CNC seeks to capitalize on shifting global markets 
and increased access to northern resources (Pearce et al. 2020; Fellows et al. 2020). 
However, transportation infrastructure has remained constrained across northern 
Canada. Significant challenges exist for northern infrastructure due to isolation, 
restricted access and extraordinary environmental conditions — all of which climate 
change is projected to radically intensify (Palko and Lemmen 2017; Pearce et al. 2020). 

Climate change drastically reduces the feasibility of expanding northern infrastructure. 
Significant increases in environmental risk threaten existing infrastructure and magnify 
maintenance costs. Adaptation in remote northern locations can be exceedingly 
difficult and costly (Palko and Lemmen 2017). Additional Arctic warming is guaranteed 
to have systemic effects and pose significant challenges for northern infrastructure: 
temperature and precipitation will continue to increase; permafrost thaw will be 
amplified through changes in seasonal snow cover and land ice; ice loss of mountain 
and polar glaciers is virtually certain; coastal impacts such as erosion and storm surges 
will be magnified by increasing sea level and extreme volatility; and Arctic sea ice 
extent will decline to the point of likely being practically ice free in September before 
2050 (IPCC 2021). Determining how to facilitate long-term, effective climate change 
adaptation is critical to overcome these challenges.

Adaptation planning seeks to anticipate and mitigate the risks that result from climate 
change. This is done through two methods: hard and soft adaptation. Hard adaptations 
provide a physical barrier to the source of risk, such as a sea wall. In contrast, soft 
adaptations reduce risk by adjusting human behaviour through a variety of methods, 
including regulating development out of high-risk areas through land use bylaws or 
development permits, and fostering environmental stewardship to bolster ecosystem 
services, such as wetland preservation to reduce flooding (Bonnett and Birchall 



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2020). However, common misunderstandings about which adaptation initiatives are 
effective often disable adaptation planning (Kehler and Birchall 2021). This often 
results in maladaptation — when adaptation measures result in unintended negative 
consequences that further increase risks. Hard infrastructure adaptations intended 
to reduce physical risk, despite typically being used as the foundation of adaptation 
planning, magnify the risk of maladaptation when used alone (Bonnett and Birchall 
2020). Due to the capital-intensive nature of hard measures, both upfront and in long-
term maintenance, and their predisposition to environmental degradation, the need 
to go beyond hard measures to address vulnerability is well understood (Bonnett and 
Birchall 2020; Kehler and Birchall 2021; Naylor et al. 2020). 

Adapting infrastructure to climate change in the Canadian North presents a 
formidable challenge. Limits and constraints to effective adaptation, such as lagging 
implementation, isolation, low population and limited tax base to fund local-level 
adaptation and infrastructure maintenance, result in significant challenges and limited 
capacity to overcome them (Bonnett and Birchall 2020; Birchall and Bonnett 2020; 
Birchall et al. 2021; Ford et al. 2015). 

While climate change is perceived to have the potential to increase access to the 
North — allowing trade, tourism and transport of much-needed goods and services to 
northern communities — in reality, existing and new construction will be progressively 
vulnerable to unprecedented climatic effects and the resulting infrastructure 
maintenance will grow increasingly costly. This increase in vulnerability and costs 
is likely to restrict the anticipated socioeconomic boons of expanded connectivity 
and resource development, potentially straining already vulnerable communities 
and Indigenous Peoples. Considerable uncertainty requires a planning approach to 
infrastructure adaptation that focuses on mitigating risks of climate change while also 
bolstering community resilience. Infrastructure expansion such as the CNC necessitates 
adaptation planning that includes fostering economic diversity and infrastructure 
resilience. Increased disaster risk due to climate change could push communities 
already overwhelmed by maintenance and adaptation to being unable to cope, 
resulting in vulnerabilities across northern Canada.

Balancing hard adaptations with other forms of policy, such as soft adaptations 
intended to increase adaptive capacity and adaptation readiness, is critical to avoid 
maladaptation of infrastructure. Regardless of cost or feasibility, for infrastructure 
adaptation to be effective it must coincide with a reduction of socioeconomic stressors, 
and all decision making must be done through a localized, participatory and equitable 
process (IPCC 2014). Addressing adaptation and resilience for northern infrastructure 
requires exploring what is necessary to foster resilience, examining what avenues for 
adaptation are most effective and then maximizing the benefits of limited funding 
allocated toward these strategies.

Effective adaptation strategies focus on the reduction of vulnerability through place- 
and context-specific approaches, using low-risk, high-benefit policy measures that are 
supported through significant intergovernmental co-operation, public engagement and 



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integration of non-Western knowledge systems. By further understanding the pathways 
to achieve resilience, and through a holistic approach to adaptation, it is possible to 
balance the increased environmental risks of climate change with socioeconomic 
impacts, and to do so in a way that is economically sustainable long into the future. 

1. INTRODUCTION
Canada is rich in natural resources; much of its history has been shaped by resource 
extraction and export, with many permanent settlements forming around dense 
resource stockpiles (Van Assche et al. 2016). However, transportation infrastructure 
across the Canadian North remains limited due to extraordinary environmental 
conditions and remote geography (Pearce et al. 2020), rendering considerable 
resource wealth inaccessible and limiting social and economic development in the 
Canadian North (Fellows et al. 2020). 

The expansion of northern infrastructure has been proposed in response to these 
challenges. The Canadian Northern Corridor (CNC) — a proposed multimodal 
transportation right-of-way through Canada’s North — aims to capitalize on shifting 
global markets and increased access to resources in the North due to accelerated polar 
warming, while seeking to include northern Canada in the south’s prosperity (Pearce et 
al. 2020; Fellows et al. 2020).

However, as the Canadian North  
warms due to climate change 
(Environment and Climate 
Change Canada 2019), 
transportation infrastructure 
faces significant challenges 
(Palko and Lemmen 2017). In 
particular, thawing permafrost, 
flooding and wildfires threaten 
the stability and efficiency of 
northern transportation systems, 
rendering it critical to build 
infrastructure with these risks in 
mind (Palko and Lemmen 2017). 
As climate change impacts are 
worsening, there is growing 
urgency to assess the 
magnitude of risk to infrastructure in the Canadian North and identify adaptation 
strategies to increase the resilience of northern infrastructure. Climate change impacts 
are the result of changing environmental processes interacting with human systems — 
manifesting through vulnerability due to lack of preparedness and exposure to 
increasing risk. Across the globe, as climate change effects threaten communities, there 
is a significant need to address the following question: How can communities, and the 

Figure 1: A possible route of the Canadian Northern Corridor 
proposed by the University of Calgary School of Public Policy 
(Pearce et al. 2020; Sulzenko and Fellows 2016).



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infrastructure that supports them, withstand the dramatic changes that are occurring in 
the warming climate? To answer this question, the field of urban and regional planning 
has undertaken an approach that bolsters community adaptation and resilience in the 
face of increasing environmental variability and extremes.  

Adaptation to climate change is defined as the adjustment of human systems in order 
to moderate or avoid harm or exploit beneficial opportunities posed by climate change, 
while resilience to climate change refers to the capacity of these systems to cope with 
and adjust to hazardous events or stressors that result from a warming world (IPCC 
2014). Climate change poses numerous challenges for the CNC, many of which would 
require extensive adaptation and have significant implications, both positive and 
negative, for the resilience of northern communities. 

An urban and regional planning approach to infrastructure adaptation reveals several 
crucial considerations for the planning of northern transportation infrastructure. 
Climate change is a momentous threat to the livelihoods and critical infrastructure 
of isolated and vulnerable northern communities. Resilience is inherently complex, 
and vulnerability to climate change even more so. While adaptation seeks to reduce 
vulnerability and mitigate exposure to risk, to do so effectively goes beyond hard 
infrastructure measures alone and requires balancing the many interconnections 
between communities and the environment around them. In the Canadian North, this 
balance is substantially more precarious. To successfully adapt requires consciously 
balancing unique northern environmental considerations, such as increasing disaster 
risk and ecosystem fragility with ever-increasing adaptation costs and the needs of 
isolated vulnerable communities. Poor planning of adaptation initiatives could lead to 
unintended consequences that further degrade the resilience of northern communities. 
The complexity of climate change vulnerability and the uncertainty of its effects leave 
a significant margin for error. Maladaptation refers to adaptation strategies that fail 
in the face of this complexity, resulting in wasting limited funds while worsening the 
situation and further perpetuating vulnerability. Consequently, the CNC’s impacts on 
the resilience and capacity for northern communities to adapt to climate change will 
need to be carefully considered when determining project feasibility. 

1.1 PURPOSE AND METHODS

This paper is part of the Canadian Northern Corridor Research Program, which 
seeks to develop the information base, analysis and evaluation necessary to assess 
the feasibility and desirability of establishing permissible corridors across northern 
Canada. The purpose of this paper is to explore the implications of the proposed CNC 
on the resilience of northern infrastructure vulnerable to climate change. It has been 
conducted through a review of relevant literature and, most importantly, takes an urban 
and regional planning approach to climate adaptation and resilience. 

In general, a planning approach is interdisciplinary, works within many spatial scales 
from urban to rural to regional, and is primarily concerned with optimizing how the 
varying elements within a given space — such as the local culture, economy and 



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transportation infrastructure — all work together. As a result, this approach offers a 
broader perspective of resilience that enables adaptation methods which recognize and 
leverage the value that each unique local context brings to the larger regional system. 
This approach is critical to understanding the complexity of the project itself and the 
implications it would have for the Canadian North. Increasingly, northern communities 
are relying on transportation infrastructure for delivery of basic necessities, yet there 
remain significant gaps throughout the northern transportation system (Palko and 
Lemmen 2017). A planning approach allows for analysis of the potential implications 
of expanding infrastructure on the resilience of northern communities and provides 
critical considerations for infrastructure adaptation to climate change. Consequently, 
this paper uses an urban and regional planning approach to review existing literature 
and explore the following questions: 

1. What are current challenges and opportunities for northern Canadian 
infrastructure caused by climate change?

2. What are some of the strategies currently pursued to adapt to the impact of 
climate change on infrastructure?

3. Considering the impact of climate change on infrastructure, how can the Canadian 
Northern Corridor support the development of resilient infrastructure in the 
Canadian North?

First, this paper will summarize urban and regional planning, followed by an 
introduction of what it means to plan for climate change. Once this general 
understanding is reached, the implications of climate change in the Canadian North 
are reviewed, leading to an examination of the challenges facing northern adaptation 
planning. Following this context is a section devoted to exploring obstacles and 
unintended consequences in adaptation, supplemented by several case studies, which 
is intended to facilitate an understanding of the complexity of climate change in the 
Canadian North. Last, further considerations are recommended for the adaptation of 
northern infrastructure and the CNC, focusing on a holistic and dynamic approach that 
reinforces resilience. These strategies include hard and soft infrastructure adaptation 
measures to mitigate environmental risk, in addition to vulnerability reduction measures 
by addressing socioeconomic stressors and increasing the adaptive capacity of 
northern communities. 



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2. URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING
Urban and regional planners provide strategic recommendations to policy-makers to 
guide the effective use of land, resources, facilities and services within communities 
and across regions. As members of an accredited technical profession governed by a 
strict code of ethics, Canadian planners are first and foremost responsible to the public 
interest (Canadian Institute of Planners 2016). This responsibility demands planners 
act in good faith to secure the physical safety, economic efficiency and social well-
being of the communities they serve. With awareness of each community’s unique 
needs, planners are positioned to ensure impacts on social stressors are considered 
when implementing technical recommendations. In many ways, planning functions 
as a liaison between technical experts, community members and elected officials.

2.1 COMMUNITY PLANNING AND THE DESIGN OF LAND USE

Planning is largely a discipline of dynamic balance; planners must work to first 
determine the current needs of their local community, then forecast future needs 
and attempt to meet them, all while simultaneously considering the far-reaching 
implications of decisions. To do so successfully, planning relies heavily on participatory 
processes to determine the public interest, technical assessments to determine 
feasibility and makes recommendations to decision-makers such as elected officials/
city council. Through these processes, planning makes both local- and regional-scale 
recommendations through master plans and long-term strategic policies covering land 
use such as infrastructure placement and design. This has broad implications for the 
network of transportation connections within and between cities.  

While planning is a technical accredited profession, planners are often interdisciplinary; 
rather than specializing in any one area, they are trained to grasp and analyze the 
intricacies of how all the parts of a city or region work together, then communicate 
the importance of these interconnections with other technical disciplines. On the 
local scale, planning makes recommendations about municipal infrastructure through 
community plans such as area redevelopment plans, municipal development plans 
and transportation master plans. These plans are built off the foundation of public 
participation. Through meaningful consultation with all community members affected 
by a decision, planners work to uphold democratic principles by facilitating an ongoing 
and inclusive dialogue throughout the decision-making process. Different levels of 
plans guide development and land use design; for example, master plans cover growth 
and redevelopment across an entire municipality, while area redevelopment plans 
consider redevelopment at a smaller, local community level. The recommendations 
set out in these official plans are then implemented through legislation such as bylaws 
and zoning codes that define, for example, use type, density, design or setbacks. 
However, planning is more than just zoning — planners are involved in the efficient and 
sustainable transportation of goods and services, the distribution of basic necessities 
such as housing and economic growth, and the development and maintenance of 
public infrastructure.



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Finance is a key aspect of planning, particularly for infrastructure. Large infrastructure 
projects, like the CNC, usually derive their capital budget from a variety of high-
level sources such as the federal government. Once completed, responsibility for 
the projects’ maintenance costs shifts to lower levels of government. Municipal-
level planning and maintenance of public infrastructure, such as transportation 
infrastructure, is funded primarily through property taxes; once a municipality has 
determined its yearly budget, this cost is distributed across all city properties as a 
percentage of property value dependent on use type. When property tax alone is 
inadequate for operation, these excess costs, if the maintenance is deemed critical, 
are funded through federal or provincial contributions. In contrast, on a regional level, 
provinces and territories receive revenue to fund infrastructure from a variety of 
sources, including income taxes, investments, non-renewable resource revenue and 
transfers from the federal government. As a result, a municipality has less diversity in 
sources of income compared to higher levels of government. Because the capacity 
for a municipality to pay for infrastructure maintenance is largely dependent on its 
property values, infrastructure development and maintenance are vulnerable to local 
economic fluctuations. So, while revenue for regional maintenance is obtained from a 
variety of sources and therefore less vulnerable, the municipal connections in between 
are vulnerable, despite being a vital part of the regional infrastructure system. This 
is critical when considering the cost of maintaining vital transportation connections 
between and within cities — infrastructure connections which define how basic 
necessities are distributed and facilitate economic growth. 

While the intricacies of planning remain outside of the scope of this paper, this basic 
overview will facilitate the understanding of subsequent concepts.

2.2 PLANNING FOR CLIMATE CHANGE

Anthropogenic climate change is unequivocal (IPCC 2021). The consequent severe 
environmental changes continue to pose significant risks to vulnerable communities 
across the globe (Naylor et al. 2020; Pandey et al. 2017; Siders 2019). Consequently, 
adaptation and resilience planning continue to gain momentum among planners and 
policy-makers (Birchall and Bonnett 2021; Ford and King 2013; Siders 2019; Williams 
et al. 2020). Despite this increase in planning for climate change, the relationships 
between vulnerable communities and the infrastructure that supports them remain 
staggeringly complex (Eriksen et al. 2020; Meerow and Newell 2016; Naylor et al. 
2020). It is well understood that adaptation to climate change is likely to be one of the 
costliest endeavours facing communities in the next century, rendering it essential to 
determine what adaptation strategies will remain effective and financially viable in the 
long term (IPCC 2014; OECD 2015; Suter et al. 2019).  

Planning for climate change strives to reduce the current and future vulnerabilities that 
arise from a warming world. These efforts rely heavily on two concepts: adaptation 
and resilience. Adaptation and resilience do not exist separate from one another, but 
rather are complex and interconnected. On one hand, adaptation seeks to adjust 
human systems to climate change, while on the other, resilience facilitates flexibility 



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within these systems (IPCC 2014). Understanding the history and current planning 
theory behind these two concepts is critical to truly grasp the ways in which effective 
adaptation of infrastructure in the Canadian North can be achieved. Both concepts 
will be introduced individually here, while subsequent sections will explore how 
they interrelate. 

2.2.1 ADAPTATION 

Climate change is no longer avoidable. Unless drastic actions are taken, limiting 
warming to the 1.5°C agreed upon in the Paris Agreement is extremely unlikely (IPCC 
2021). The need for adaptation planning is thus increasingly critical (Birchall and 
Bonnett 2021; Ford and King 2013; Williams et al. 2020). Climate change is likely to be 
one of the greatest economic disasters humanity will face (Andrew 2008; OECD 2015; 
Singh and Birchall 2019). While the upfront costs of addressing climate change are 
substantial, the long-term consequences loom much larger (Kehler and Birchall 2021; 
OECD 2015).

Planners, when considering the future of communities, need to anticipate local risks 
that may occur due to climate change and plan for them accordingly. This adjustment 
can consist of hard adaptations such as seawalls that provide a physical barrier, or soft 
adaptations such as altered land use or wetland preservation (Bonnett and Birchall 
2020). Both hard and soft adaptations are critical to a community’s overall resilience 
and come with benefits and drawbacks. The goal of any adaptation is to reduce risk by 
limiting exposure and vulnerability to climate extremes. 

Despite the threat of climate change, adaptation planning remains in its infancy, with 
its effectiveness often disabled by common misunderstandings. Adaptation policy, 
across all levels of government, frequently focuses solely on hard measures which rely 
on engineering to modify infrastructure to mitigate disaster risk, or on the economic 
opportunities that a warmer climate will bring (Birchall and Bonnett 2020). Hard 
infrastructure adaptations, which are heavily relied on to reduce vulnerabilities, come 
with considerable drawbacks and carry a high risk of maladaptation: these measures 
are capital intensive, costly to maintain and often further degrade the northern 
environment (Bonnett and Birchall 2020). This high cost poses a considerable fiscal 
challenge and increasingly, the costs of adaptation and maintenance are downloaded 
from national governments to regional and local governments with limited financial 
capacity to adapt (Down and Birchall 2019; Singh and Birchall 2019). Because hard 
infrastructure adaptations provide a visible sense of security and are relatively quick to 
install, they give the illusion of protection. Yet, the potential for maladaptation is high; 
hard measures tend to be too costly in the long term and lack the flexibility necessary 
to provide adequate protection as climate change worsens (Bonnett and Birchall 
2020). Consequently, the need to go beyond hard measures alone is well understood 
(Bonnett and Birchall 2020, Kehler and Birchall 2021; Naylor et al. 2020). 



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Given the risk of maladaptation due to an over-reliance on hard measures, soft 
adaptations intended to increase adaptive capacity and adaptation readiness are 
equally as critical. The adaptive capacity, or the potential of systems to adapt, defines 
the efficacy of any adaptation initiative — something which planners, through a holistic 
approach, can play a key role in strengthening (Birchall and Bonnett 2021; Dale et al. 
2020; Ford and King 2013; Runhaar et al. 2018; Siders 2019; Williams et al. 2020). 

Adaptive capacity is scale-dependent and goes beyond hard adaptation measures 
to consider the available economic resources, technology, information and skills, 
infrastructure and social institutions (Adger and Vincent 2005; Fitton et al. 2021; Ford 
and King 2013). Furthermore, adaptive capacity is a function of social structures such 
as the values and ethics of the local community and culture (Adger and Barnett 2009). 
Increasingly, the value of non-Western knowledge systems in adaptation is being 
recognized. Indigenous perspectives offer greater understanding of climatic changes 
and impacts, and increased flexibility and innovation in adaptation initiatives (Lede 
et al. 2021; Pearce et al. 2015; Tran et al 2021). It is therefore critical to understand the 
local context and integrate place-based knowledge into adaptation planning (Ramsey 
et al. 2019; Williams et al. 2020).

The significance of localized adaptation approaches becomes particularly relevant as 
adaptive readiness — the willingness for governments to implement adaptation — is 
often constrained by governance processes and lack of implementation in decision-
making (Ford and King 2013; Ojwang et al. 2017). The interconnections between 
adaptive capacity and readiness further demonstrate the challenge faced when 
planning for climate change in northern communities: “Short-term economic and 
political priorities become meaningless when long-term climate impacts dismantle 
infrastructure systems” (Birchall, MacDonald and Slater 2021, 8). On one hand, climate 
policy often comes from higher levels of governance, yet remains ineffective at a local 
level; on the other, local governments are often best suited to address adaptation, 
yet face significant challenges in prioritizing adaptation while facing more immediate 
economic or political concerns (Birchall, MacDonald and Slater 2021). Collaboration 
and communication between levels of government on adaptation planning is critical 
in facing these challenges, facilitating proactive adaptation and helping to balance 
immediate interests with increasing risks due to climate change.

Considering the novel and unpredictable nature of climate change, the ability to plan 
for beneficial outcomes and possible risks has been drastically misunderstood (Dawson 
et al. 2018; Field 2018). As costs of adaptation mount and beneficial opportunities 
provided by climate change have proven extremely rare, both public and private 
organizations remain confounded as to who is responsible for this incredible expense 
(OECD 2015). Anticipatory planning that prioritizes incremental infrastructure upgrades 
can greatly facilitate cost-effective adaptation of infrastructure, while planning policy 
intended to increase adaptive capacity can ensure communities have the resources 
necessary to adapt. 



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Regardless of significant challenges, urban and regional planning allows for greater 
understanding of how to achieve adaptation through a wider lens that considers 
the unique context of each community, whether that be by mitigating disaster risk 
through incremental adaptation, or by increasing adaptive capacity through economic 
diversification and addressing socioeconomic inequities.

2.2.2 RESILIENT COMMUNITIES 

Despite ongoing debate among academics about its true meaning, resilience continues 
to be adopted as a goal within adaptation plans (Davoudi et al. 2013; Meerow and 
Newell 2016). Consequently, for policy-makers and planners alike, resilience remains a 
necessary term for policy. Yet, what is resilience? The IPCC (2014) defines resilience as 
the capacity of social, economic and environmental systems to cope with a hazardous 
event, trend or disturbance, responding or reorganizing in ways that maintain their 
essential function, identity and structure, while also maintaining their capacity for 
adaptation, learning and transformation. Our understanding of resilience has changed 
substantially over time, particularly as climate change has forced researchers to revisit 
the concept and reframe it in a constantly changing world. As the effects of climate 
change become more severe, the importance of resilience to strategic planning is also 
becoming more apparent.  

In essence, resilience is simply the propensity of a system to be flexible in the face 
of adversity and began as a concept used predominantly within engineering and 
ecology. Static engineering resilience refers to a system’s ability to bounce back to its 
previous state, while dynamic ecological resilience focuses on a system maintaining 
key functions when perturbed (Holling 1996). These perspectives of resilience 
have had significant impact on how infrastructure resilience is thought of today. 
Soft adaptation initiatives address the physical impacts of disaster and facilitate 
effective recovery through design and land use decisions founded on the following 
key concepts: diversity, modularity, redundancy and connectivity (Allan and Bryant 
2011). Infrastructure resilience requires a diversity of infrastructure that functions as a 
network with high modularity across all scales — this facilitates reorganization in the 
event of a failure in one aspect of the system (Allan and Bryant 2014; French et al. 
2019). Resilient networks require alternative connections should one fail, which is only 
possible in a system deliberately planned to have high connectivity with adequate 
redundancy built in (French et al. 2019).

These earlier perspectives of resilience, however, rely on the notion of the system 
returning to a stable equilibrium — an equilibrium which cannot be defined for 
complex human systems within an unpredictably changing climate (Davoudi et al. 
2013). To overcome this discrepancy, a new conceptual framework was developed 
called evolutionary resilience, which defines a community’s capacity for resilience as a 
function of both socioeconomic stressors and environmental risk (Davoudi et al. 2013; 
IPCC 2014).  This perspective of resilience acknowledges the complexity of adaptation 
and vulnerability to climate change, while underscoring the importance of strategic 



12

planning for resilience (Davoudi et al. 2013). Planning is uniquely situated to increase 
communities’ evolutionary resilience; its participatory methods and place-based 
theories offer a perspective of communities and their environment as a unique and 
interconnected socio-ecological system, enabling an approach to adaptation planning 
that considers both physical and social sources of vulnerability. 

Tyler and Moench (2012) offer a framework through which urban planning can 
foster evolutionary resilience. By moving beyond a focus on only climate impacts, 
this framework seeks to integrate ecological, infrastructure, social and institutional 
factors to create a holistic perspective of resilience (Tyler and Moench 2012). Through 
this approach, planners can foster resilience by leveraging the benefits of shared 
learning and planning processes to build adaptive capacity, co-create knowledge and 
effectively prepare for climate change (Kehler and Birchall 2021; Tyler and Moench 
2012). While resilience concepts such as connectivity or diversity are imperative to 
infrastructure resilience, the perspective of evolutionary resilience is critical in order 
to avoid maladaptation of critical infrastructure — infrastructure systems do not exist 
in isolation from the people and communities that use them (Tyler and Moench 2012). 
Adaptation plans focused solely on infrastructure resilience carry a high risk of failure 
as the dangers associated with only addressing hard measures are momentous (Birchall 
and Bonnett 2021; Osborne 2013; Siders 2019; Stoett and Omrow 2020). 

Focusing on resilience holistically ensures that adaptation is effective and that 
limited funds are not needlessly exhausted; to do so effectively requires deliberate 
consultation with communities and deliberate fostering of resilience through policy 
measures (Kehler and Birchall 2021). While it is largely the participatory planning 
processes that facilitate effective adaptation, when it comes to resilience the steps are 
less intuitive. In fact, a lack of resilience greatly hinders the planning process, and as 
successful adaptation measures rely on increased co-operation between governments 
and communities vulnerable to climate change, it becomes clear that adaptation 
planning can only occur effectively in a resilient community (IPCC 2014; Johnson et 
al. 2015; Kehler and Birchall 2021). This further highlights the need to address both 
aspects of resilience — socioeconomic and environmental risk — through policy.

Planning is uniquely situated to grasp the complexities of resilience, from both a 
general and an evolutionary perspective. By focusing on the complex relationships 
between infrastructure and communities, it is possible to effectively plan for 
climate change.



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3. CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE CANADIAN NORTH
The CNC project has significant unknowns. While each unknown continues to be 
analyzed by researchers through the Canadian Northern Corridor Research Program, 
the implications of climate change for such an extensive infrastructure project could 
render the project unattainable. In the face of such a complex issue as climate change, 
adaptation of infrastructure is simultaneously essential, uncertain and exceedingly 
costly (Suter et al. 2019; Val et al. 2019). Understanding the impact of adaptation 
on this project requires the following: first, a general grasp of climate change in the 
Canadian North and its consequences for the CNC, and second, an understanding of 
adaptation of critical northern infrastructure. 

3.1 CLIMATE CHANGE IMPLICATIONS FOR NORTHERN CANADA

Climate change is projected to bring significant changes across the globe. Northern 
Canada is warming at more than double the global rate — a trend that is expected to 
increase significantly in the next several decades (Environment and Climate Change 
Canada 2019; IPCC 2021). While climatic effects across the Arctic have been studied 
time and again (Wan et al. 2019), the seriousness of such change has been highlighted 
most recently by the IPCC (2021). As northern Canada spans several biomes, a 
multitude of climate effects are expected to occur (Pearce et al. 2020), making it 
critical that adaptation measures reflect the diversity of Canada’s northern landscapes. 
While the CNC research program has published the physical science implications of 
climate change for the northern corridor (Pearce et al. 2020), the relationship between 
the severity and unpredictability of these effects and adaptation considerations cannot 
be overstated. Therefore, the results are summarized below. 

Pearce et al. (2020) found that climate change is already impacting northern 
infrastructure and that these impacts can be expected to intensify, putting both 
existing infrastructure and new projects at significant risk of damage. Since roughly 
1950 the annual average temperature across northern Canada increased approximately 
2.3°C, coinciding with a 20 per cent increase in precipitation (Pearce et al. 2020). 
Warmer temperatures continue to threaten northern systems through a multitude 
of interconnected pathways. As temperature and precipitation increase, the risks of 
disasters such as flooding and fires do, too (Pearce et al. 2020). Shifting precipitation 
patterns often result in heavy rainfall over short periods of time, causing overland 
flooding. Simultaneously, increases in temperatures result in more days with ideal 
conditions for high-intensity fires (Kirchmeier-Young et al. 2017).   

In northern Canada, permafrost further compounds the impacts of increases in 
temperature and precipitation. Losses in snow cover and land ice due to warmer 
temperatures expedite melting in what was once permanently frozen ground, while 
increased frequency and severity of fires further warms the active layer, decreasing the 
bearing capacity of permafrost throughout the year (Pearce et al. 2020). Coastlines 
historically protected by sea ice and permafrost are now facing significant erosion due 
to sea level rise, increased wave intensity and extreme water levels and temperatures 
(Pearce et al. 2020). 



14

Construction and maintenance of northern transportation infrastructure are likely to be 
dramatically affected: construction of new projects will require integration of climate 
change projections for both overall feasibility and civil engineering adaptations, while 
maintenance will need to be significantly more robust, responsive and well funded 
to prevent adverse impacts to or hindering of northern transportation (Pearce et al. 
2020). The infrastructure adaptations necessary for “dynamic and increasingly extreme 
conditions” would carry increased costs, while, due to the unpredictable nature of 
warming effects, effects of intensifying risks would magnify beyond the corridor itself 
and into communities (Pearce et al. 2020). 

3.2 PLANNING FOR CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE NORTH

While dramatic climate change effects are virtually certain to occur somewhere across 
the Arctic regions, the exact location or severity is difficult to identify (IPCC 2021; 
Suter et al. 2019). This uncertainty, paired with the complexity of the global climate 
system, underscores the urgency to prepare communities for the worst, without 
putting them at an economic disadvantage or hindering their ability to function and 
thrive. Despite this urgency, adaptation of northern communities presents a significant 
planning challenge. The capacity of adaptation to mitigate risk to the complex web 
of northern infrastructure is limited by remoteness and amplified climate change 
effects. Simultaneously, sociopolitical factors hinder adaptation initiatives — mindset 
barriers, lack of contextual understanding and lagging implementation, combined with 
exorbitant construction and maintenance costs perpetuate ineffective planning.

Acute climate impacts have already pushed some northern communities to begin 
deliberately planning for climate change. In Yukon, for example, Dawson City, Mayo 
and Whitehorse partnered with the Northern Climate Exchange (Yukon University, 
then Yukon College) to develop climate change adaptation plans (Hennessey et al. 
2011, 2012; Hennessey and Streicker 2011). These plans intended to assess impacts 
and vulnerability, recommend adaptation actions and increase resilience in the long 
term. However, since being published in 2011, a lack of accountability and cohesiveness 
necessary to facilitate action have hindered the plans’ implementation. 

While adaptation planning in general frequently faces significant barriers, adaptation in 
the Canadian North remains constrained by exceptional circumstances. With amplified 
warming effects across the North, adaptation of the CNC is integral to the sustainability 
of the project; however, the cost and effectiveness of adaptation measures have limits 
in the face of unrestricted climate change and are constrained by sociopolitical factors 
that define a community’s capacity to adapt (Adger and Barnett 2009; IPCC 2015). 



15

3.2.1 LIMITS AND CONSTRAINTS FOR ADAPTATION IN THE CANADIAN NORTH

Adaptation measures in the Canadian North face significant limits and constraints. 
Lagging implementation, isolation and low population, and limited tax base to fund 
local-level adaptation, coupled with amplified warming, result in significant challenges 
and limited capacity to overcome them (Birchall and Bonnett 2021, 2020). To overcome 
these constraints requires planning that deliberately employs strategies to increase 
adaptive capacity and reduce the risk of maladaptation. However, substantial resources 
are required to facilitate adaptation. Isolation and remoteness of northern communities 
can result in restricted financial capacity and inadequate technical knowledge required to 
undertake anticipatory adaptation (Birchall and Bonnett 2020; Singh and Birchall 2019). 

Adaptation needs and costs, particularly in remote northern locations, can be 
significant (Field 2018; Palko and Lemmen 2017; Suter et al. 2019). Local governments 
are responsible for local-level adaptation, yet their ability to do so is often constrained 
by a lack of financial support due to their limited tax base and inadequate levels of 
external support, resources or expertise (Birchall and Bonnett 2020; McNamara et 
al. 2017). How is it then that local governments are expected to adapt to climate 
change without adequate resources? Despite the critical need for external support, 
mindset barriers, conflict and lack of willingness to enact adaptation within multi-level 
governments all hinder critical northern adaptation planning (Birchall and Bonnett 
2020; Ford and King 2013). Without multi-level governmental co-operation, top-down 
decision-making can render adaptation ineffective — political and economic priorities 
are misplaced due to misunderstandings about vulnerability and risk, consequently 
overshadowing the severity and urgency of climate change (Eriksen et al. 2021; Kehler 
and Birchall 2021; Mayer et al. 2017). For policy-makers who are undereducated about 
the reality of climate change, its complex nature leads to considerable misconceptions 
about the opportunities that a warmer climate will bring to the North (Dawson et al. 
2018; Birchall and Bonnett 2020; Palko and Lemmen 2017). As a result, adaptation 
planning for northern communities is rife with maladaptation: scarcity of resources, 
over-reliance on hard measures and poor land use decisions result in decreased 
resilience, and as the climate changes communities are overwhelmed by reactionary 
measures, causing lagging adaptation implementation and further hindering their 
ability to anticipate and plan (Birchall and Bonnett 2020). 

While the severity of climate change across northern communities continues to 
increase unabated and local governments are already overwhelmed, implementation 
of anticipatory adaptation is still possible. An effective adaptation plan is preceded 
by a deliberate effort to overcome constraining factors by building adaptive capacity 
and reducing vulnerability (IPCC 2014).  Particularly within the northern context of the 
CNC — where accelerated climate change and dramatic vulnerability of infrastructure 
are compounded by limited adaptive capacity — addressing these barriers is urgent 
(Ford et al. 2015; MacDonald and Birchall 2019). For example, despite facing significant 
environmental risks, Lede et al. (2021) found that individuals living in northern 
communities felt that social stressors, such as housing shortages, food insecurity 
and overcrowding, far over-shadowed the physical impacts of climate change in their 



16

daily lives. Such significant social stressors substantially limit resilience and adaptive 
capacity, yet are feasible to address (Kehler and Birchall 2021). Adaptation planning 
can foster resilience by improving maladapted infrastructure and addressing the lack of 
resources that limit adaptive capacity (Ford and King 2013; Ramsey et al. 2019; Williams 
et al. 2020). 

Because local governments are best suited to provide context-based adaptation, yet 
do not have the necessary financial resources to achieve it, multi-level government 
collaboration and resource sharing are essential (Birchall, MacDonald and Slater 
2021). Furthermore, when facing scarce or limited resources, resources available for 
adaptation should be used strategically to foster resilience through policy that meets 
socioeconomic needs and generates additional benefits through increased adaptive 
capacity (Birchall, MacDonald and Slater 2021; IPCC 2014). Strategic planning holds 
significant potential to foster resilience to climate change provided incremental 
adaptive measures are mainstreamed and agreed upon through a bottom-up 
participatory process (Kehler and Birchall 2021; MacDonald and Birchall 2019). To 
do so requires resources to be allocated equitably through multi-level government 
collaboration with local governments being given autonomy for effective place-based 
adaptation planning (Birchall, MacDonald and Slater 2021). The importance of this 
approach cannot be overstated: decisions about adaptation priorities must be made 
by those who experience impacts first-hand, fostering resilience through place-based 
planning, culturally appropriate methods and shared knowledge (Tran et al. 2021). 

Resilience is a key aspect of northern infrastructure adaptation in the face of climate 
change; however, significant barriers persist. Infrastructure expansion has a high 
potential for maladaptation: Canada’s massive scale and varying socioeconomic and 
environmental constraints increase the difficulty of identifying adaptation actions to 
foster resilience. Consequently, the effect of new infrastructure such as the CNC on 
wider resilience depends on the approach to adaptation and its risk of maladaptation. 
Poorly planned, such projects have the potential to increase the severity of 
socioeconomic stressors within northern communities and worsen the environmental 
risk. To address adaptation and resilience across the entire CNC project would require 
significant research into each local context, deliberate consideration of existing 
adaptation plans, a more robust economic analysis from a climate change perspective 
and intentional dialogue with affected communities to determine feasibility.



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4. BALANCING THE CNC: OBSTACLES AND UNINTENDED 
CONSEQUENCES IN NORTHERN INFRASTRUCTURE 
Despite the best intentions, planning decisions are often rife with unintended 
consequences (Adger and Vincent 2005; Axon and Morrissey 2020; Ramsey et al. 
2019; Sandercock 1998). Given the complex relationships between socioeconomic 
factors and climate change vulnerabilities (Kehler and Birchall 2021; Naylor et al. 2020), 
adaptation of the CNC will need to consider the effects of expanded transportation 
networks on individual communities. 

Planning, through its interdisciplinary and holistic perspective, offers unique insights 
into how the increasing need for adaptation will be challenged by the exceptional 
obstacles northern communities already face. The following exploration of case studies 
intends to exemplify some of the barriers to adaptation northern Canadian communities 
face, as well as unintended maladaptation resulting from planning decisions.

4.1 RESOURCE-BASED TOWNS

Canadian towns, particularly in northern Canada with its abundance of natural resources, 
tend to be reliant on one or two resources at a time (Van Assche et al. 2016). The CNC, 
which aims to expand the transportation network in order to facilitate the movement 
of natural resources and increase Canada’s ability to compete in the international 
market (Fellows et al. 2020), is likely to encourage significant economic growth in 
natural resource extraction in communities along the corridor. While at first glance this 
seems beneficial, the reality is that in order to adapt to climate change, the resilience 
of the communities affected is critical, and unfortunately, relying heavily on one or two 
resources increases vulnerability to any change. Communities in any location will feel 
the effects of economic fluctuations; however, for resource-based towns the effects 
of boom-and-bust cycles can be dramatic, even potentially resulting in communities 
being abandoned (Van Assche et al. 2016). Economic diversification is a key aspect of 
effective adaptation; by relying on a variety of local economic activities, communities 
can facilitate resilience. There is robust evidence and high agreement that by supporting 
economic diversification, protecting vulnerable groups and providing financial support, 
governments can co-ordinate effective adaptation to climate change and mitigate the 
momentous financial burden of acting on adaptation too late (IPCC 2014). 

Without conscious economic diversification, any affected community along the 
corridor would be at significant risk; however, this vulnerability intensifies as either 
(or both) the global market for emissions-producing resources decreases in response 
to the Paris Agreement or as the effects of climate change become increasingly 
severe. The long-term sustainability of the CNC project and the communities along it 
is dependent on economic diversification as an adaptation to climate change. For the 
CNC to be a low-risk endeavour, it should include local support for diversifying the 
economies of affected communities. 



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Case Study: Dawson City

Dawson City is arguably one of Canada’s most iconic northern communities. To this day, the 
Klondike Gold Rush is a favourite legend among Canadians, despite the rush itself only lasting 
three years in the late 1800s (Clark 2011). However, is not commonly understood that the rush to 
resource extraction itself was a response to a financial recession in the United States, a global 
gold shortage and significant unemployment (Berton 2001; Morse 2003) — setting the stage 
for a long history of economic vulnerability for Dawson City and demonstrating the risks of 
northern development. As a result of boom-and-bust cycles, Dawson’s population, and therefore 
the necessary infrastructure, fluctuated immensely. At the height of the rush, it is likely the 
town boasted nearly 100,000 people; however, once much of the gold had been extracted the 
population fell to 5,000 (Coates 1991). This had significant effects on community infrastructure. 
By 1914, abandoned homes, collapsing businesses and overgrown city lots were common 
(Morrison and Coates 1989). By 1952, the town was still struggling and attempted to branch out 
into tourism with the creation of the Klondike Tourist Bureau, which was largely unsuccessful 
at the time (Commonwealth Historic Resource Management Limited 2008). The expansion of 
Dawson’s economy beyond gold really intensified as a response to flooding in 1979 (Benkert et al. 
2015). Floodwaters reached nearly two metres deep and put much of the town’s unique heritage 
infrastructure at significant risk, and in response, investment into heritage preservation soared 
and tourism quickly became the primary industry (Government of Yukon 2018). This transition 
diversified the local economy into a mix of gold mining, tourism, arts and culture, fostering 
resilience to fluctuations in the global economy. Dawson City in many ways is a northern resilience 
success story. Unfortunately, not all communities are able to weather economic vulnerability 
and expand their economies successfully. Despite Dawson’s economic diversification and the 
subsequent increase in resilience, climate change, coupled with a lack of multi-level governmental 
co-operation, threatens this achievement.

Climate change is already affecting Dawson in many ways: river flows are increasingly variable, 
forest fires are increasing in frequency and, most notably, permafrost slumping rates are 
increasing, causing major issues for infrastructure (Benkert et al. 2015). As most of the townsite 
sits on a discontinuous permafrost zone, increased surface temperatures due to climate change 
lead to variation in snow cover depth, active-layer hydrology variations and infrastructure effects, 
posing upkeep challenges for building owners and the municipal government (Benkert et al. 
2015). Heritage buildings, vital to Dawson’s tourism industry, are particularly vulnerable to climate 
change effects. These historic sites have posed significant challenges for the municipality, as their 
upkeep is essential to the town’s long-term economic sustainability (Parks Canada 2021). In the 
1950s, Parks Canada began acquiring heritage properties and artifacts; the federal government 
now owns and operates many historic properties in the Dawson City area (Parks Canada 2018). 
Unfortunately, a significant portion of Dawson’s historic downtown remains undeveloped and 
in disrepair due to disagreements between the federal government and the municipality about 
how to best adapt the city’s historic buildings to the challenges posed by the changing northern 
climate, particularly permafrost thaw (City of Dawson 2018). 

This case study illustrates the extreme challenges faced by northern communities and the need 
for a localized, holistic approach. While Dawson’s diversified economy increases its adaptive 
capacity in the face of climate change, the city’s resilience remains limited by inaction resulting 
from a lack of multi-level governmental co-operation. 



19

4.2 RESILIENCE AND INCREASING DISASTER RISK

The consequences of unmitigated climate change are guaranteed to be severe (IPCC 
2021). All communities and the natural systems on which they rely will have significant 
impacts as the frequency, intensity and duration of weather extremes intensify due 
to climate change (Environment and Climate Change Canada 2019). Canadians are 
already feeling the impacts of climate change; Canada is warming at double the global 
rate and its northern regions are warming at triple the global rate (Canada 2021). 
Canada is already seeing extreme effects: drought, flooding, cold extremes, heat waves 
and wildfires have become commonplace (Environment and Climate Change Canada 
2019). Such events are costly, disrupt transportation, hinder economic growth and put 
communities at risk. 

Northern communities, such as those that the CNC would impact, are in a difficult 
place. On one hand, such communities are resource-based, and the CNC would likely 
increase access to transportation and facilitate expansion and diversification of these 
industries; on the other hand, climate change will significantly increase disaster risk 
and result in increased adaptation costs. The potential economic prosperity granted by 
the CNC would be vulnerable to disasters, requiring significant consideration of how, 
or if, transportation infrastructure can be planned in a way that facilitates resilience as 
disaster risk increases.

Expanded transportation connections can have significant implications for disaster 
risk resilience. Increased disaster risk for northern Canadian communities due 
to climate change is nearly guaranteed and has the potential to render any hard 
adaptation measures ineffective. By encouraging development in a high-risk area 
without adequate modularity and redundancy of infrastructure, resilience of the 
local community is substantially hindered. However, if land use and transportation 
connections are considered from a holistic perspective of resilience, it may be possible 
to reduce maladaptation and complacency, ensuring that risk is lessened in the event of 
a disaster.  



20

Case Study: Fort McMurray

Fort McMurray, a northern Alberta community, sits in the centre of the Athabasca oilsands. As the 
epicentre of oil and gas development in Canada, the local economy relies heavily on extraction and 
production of petroleum (Van Assche et al. 2016). Despite volatile global oil prices, Fort McMurray’s 
population has remained quite stable and has consistently been growing since 2000 (Statistics 
Canada 2016). Despite this relative stability, in recent years Fort McMurray has experienced several 
natural disasters, the most notable being the 2016 wildfire which burned almost 600,000 ha, 
displaced over 80,000 people (Government of Alberta 2016) and caused $3.5 billion in losses 
(IBC 2016). 

While there can be no direct correlation between climate change and the Fort McMurray fire, 
research has shown that climate change increases the likelihood of such events, and that in the 
future, as warming becomes more severe, this trend will continue. This increase in risk is due to 
longer fire seasons, increased fuel availability and more days with conditions suitable for spreading 
high-intensity fires (Kirchmeier-Young et al. 2017). While the Fort McMurray fire demonstrates the 
impacts of increasing disaster risk, what is most notable is the way the case highlights the extreme 
value of resilience in transportation infrastructure. The community is connected north and south 
by a single highway; from an emergency management perspective, this lack of redundancy and 
connectivity significantly reduces the community’s resilience to a disaster. This was unfortunately 
demonstrated during the 2016 fire. On May 3, 2016, the wildfire cut off evacuees’ route south, 
costing two people their lives (Public Safety Canada 2021). 

This highlights the importance of considering emergency management while planning infrastructure 
expansion. Resilient community planning must account for increased disaster risk due to climate 
change. For Fort McMurray, the CNC could potentially facilitate more efficient east and west 
connections across Canada, likely increasing connectivity and positively impacting the community’s 
resilience. However, increasing road connections alone do not guarantee the avoidance of 
complacency and maladaptation. To reduce this risk further, other soft adaptations for emergency 
management such as early warnings or evacuation schemes would need to go hand in hand with 
transportation infrastructure expansion.

4.3 MALADAPTATION AND MAINTENANCE COSTS

As climate change worsens and adaptation costs continue to increase, many 
infrastructure-related projects become unsustainable from a fiscal perspective. Climate 
change continues to threaten federal efforts to expand transportation infrastructure 
in the Canadian North, resulting in significant maladaptation — such as infrastructure 
failure due to melting permafrost and erosion, or food insecurity due to decreased 
operating windows and load capacities of winter roads — leading to significant 
vulnerabilities in the northern transportation system (Palko and Lemmen 2017). This is 
a particularly challenging issue for northern communities as infrastructure maintenance 
and, increasingly, incremental adaptation costs are being downloaded onto lower 
levels of government which lack the funds to pay for them. For northern communities, 
remote geographic locations and limited access restrict connectivity to southern 
Canada (Palko and Lemmen 2017), and this isolated nature perpetuates infrastructure 
vulnerability to climate change (Ford et al. 2015). While increasing connectivity is 
critical to resilience in the North, the momentous cost of maladapted infrastructure and 
subsequent disaster-related failures demand to be considered. The lack of multi-level 
governmental collaboration combined with misunderstandings about the opportunities 
and harsh realities of climate change in the Canadian North could lead to rampant 



21

maladaptation along the proposed CNC. Due to permafrost thaw, sea level rise, 
wildfires and fragile ecosystems, climate change in the Arctic is complex and uncertain 
(Environment and Climate Change Canada 2019).

The costs and risks associated with conglomerating infrastructure on frozen ground in 
a location that is warming at three times the global rate could be massive. Permafrost 
thaw will necessitate increased maintenance and monitoring for all-weather roads 
that carry significant heavy traffic, while increasingly frequent forest fires will further 
destabilize permafrost (Palko and Lemmen 2017). Permafrost is inherently unstable and 
extremely sensitive to disruption. As warming increases the depth of the active layer 
that thaws during the summer, infrastructure constructed directly on the ground is 
more likely to thaw the permafrost beneath it. Additionally, in relation to transportation 
infrastructure, thawing is exacerbated by removal of continuous low vegetation and 
large construction vehicles can rupture protective vegetation, potentially causing 
water-filled linear depressions that further accelerate melting and can last for decades 
(Skinner et al. 1999). 

While the CNC’s potential route across Canada makes sense for moving goods to and 
from ports, much of the corridor’s southern portion sits on sporadic permafrost — 
ground that is both challenging and extremely costly to build upon (Palko and Lemmen 
2017). The impacts of climate change on the life-cycle replacement costs of Arctic 
infrastructure will be substantial: by 2059, due to environmental stressors, these costs 
are projected to increase by over 40 per cent for transportation infrastructure (Suter 
et al. 2019). The costs are already mounting; for example, in 2018, Russia spent six 
per cent of its total government budget on the infrastructure impacts of permafrost 
thaw alone (Suter et al. 2019). Regions of northern Canada are projected to require at 
least an additional one per cent of annual gross regional product to support existing 
infrastructure on permafrost due to the loss of load-bearing capacity and thaw 
subsidence (Suter et al. 2019). These compounding maintenance costs would fall to 
local governments, which are often poorly positioned to fund this responsibility due to 
isolation and economic vulnerability.

Northern communities are already overwhelmed by infrastructure maintenance 
because of climate change, and increased disaster risks could further undermine their 
efforts (Birchall and Bonnett 2020). While bottlenecks in the Trans-Canada corridor 
have been cited as a motivator for the CNC, northern infrastructure faces amplified 
risks for bottlenecks as a result of infrastructure failure and inefficiencies due to 
climate change (Fellows et al. 2020; Pearce et al. 2020). A single hazardous event 
can have significant cascading effects for vulnerable communities on isolated fringes 
of expanded transportation infrastructure. Consequently, it is likely that any minor 
disaster could disrupt transportation with significant effects; for example, without 
alternate routes in place, fires and floods along critical infrastructure on destabilized 
permafrost can be catastrophic. Without adequate planning for economic diversity 
and infrastructure resilience through redundancy and connectivity, increased disaster 
risk due to climate change could push communities from being overwhelmed by 
maintenance and adaptation to being unable to cope, resulting in vulnerabilities all 
along the CNC. From a planning perspective it would be strongly recommended to 



22

create contingencies for the considerable maintenance costs and risks of disaster-
related bottlenecks along the CNC.

Increases in repairs and maintenance that result from climate change are a significant 
burden for any transportation infrastructure built in the Canadian North (Palko and 
Lemmen 2017). The cost-prohibitive nature of maladaptation and unpredictability of 
climate change could create costly inefficiencies along the corridor. 

4.4 INFRASTRUCTURE AND VULNERABLE COMMUNITIES

Northern communities are considerably vulnerable to climate change. Isolation, 
amplified warming, infrastructure sensitivity and limited adaptive capacity compound 
and perpetuate socioeconomic stressors and environmental risk, leading to decreased 
resilience (Birchall and Bonnett 2020; Ford et al. 2017; Davoudi et al. 2013; IPCC 2014). 
While environmental risk can be largely mitigated through adaptation infrastructure, 
socioeconomic stressors need to be addressed through other forms of policy. 
Consequently, successful adaptation of the CNC will remain contingent on balancing 
the risks and benefits of infrastructure expansion, and the implications this may have on 
the resilience of vulnerable communities. 

Adaptation to climate change seeks to reduce the costs and risks associated with a 
warming world and understanding vulnerability to climate change is a critical aspect of our 
ability to reduce any negative consequences (IPCC 2014). However, the complexity of 
vulnerability continues to hinder infrastructure adaptation in the Canadian North; because 
both resilience and vulnerability to climate change are social and physical, an approach to 
adaptation that balances both aspects of vulnerability is necessary (Kehler and Birchall 
2021; Naylor et al. 2020). Despite the dire need to understand it, exactly how to assess 
infrastructure vulnerability in northern Canada remains unclear, and the resulting gaps in 
understanding continue to prevent successful adaptation (Ford et al. 2015). Due to several 
considerable challenges, decision-making around adaptation for vulnerable communities is 
contentious: there are few collaborative efforts between social and technical disciplines to 
assess vulnerability to climate change and adequately inform decision-makers (Ford et al. 
2015); ineffective stakeholder consultation results in decisions that perpetuate vulnerability 
(Johnson et al. 2015; MacDonald and Birchall 2019); inaccessibility of climate science 
hinders understanding for community members (Benevolenza and DeRigne 2018); and 
political and mindset barriers restrict the ability of climate adaptation to succeed (Birchall 
and Bonnett 2021). Such challenges present significant obstacles for new infrastructure 
such as the CNC. Effective adaptation plans require a clear understanding of what 
vulnerabilities will be perturbed, created or diminished.

In the face of such complex vulnerability, infrastructure expansion can have both 
benefits and unintended costs. While some costs for vulnerable communities are 
physical or economic, many are social, and the consequential reduction in resilience has 
the potential to destabilize any effort for adaptation. Socioeconomic stressors remain 
a critical, although under-represented aspect of adaptation: “If a community does not 
have the skills or resources to recover from or overcome the stresses of climate change, 



23

then regardless of existing policies they will continue to be perpetually vulnerable” 
(Kehler and Birchall 2021, 472). Reduction of such stressors is best done through 
increasing access to public services such as education, housing, health services, 
sanitation or other basic needs (Kehler and Birchall 2021). However, in northern Canada, 
issues explored in the previous sections compound and reduce resilience substantially: 
economic vulnerability due to reliance on a single resource can cause systemic 
socioeconomic stressors in response to market fluctuations; warming continues to 
increase environmental risk; and the downloading of costly maintenance and adaptation 
to local governments further depletes resources needed for addressing ongoing 
issues and bolstering local resilience. Sulzenko and Fellows (2016) identified that there 
would be a difficult transition period in which communities along the corridor would 
struggle to provide public services in response to the expected economic activity and 
population growth; however, due to climate change, the resolution of this transition 
period is not guaranteed. Infrastructure adaptation is impossible if communities are not 
resilient, and resilience only occurs when there is adequate provision of public services 
to reduce socioeconomic stressors (IPCC 2014), making this transition period inherently 
vulnerable to market fluctuations or climate-related disasters. 

While the CNC itself has the potential to better connect northern communities and 
increase Canada’s play in the global economy, due to the complex vulnerability of 
northern communities to climate change, without adequate planning the project could 
just as likely have the opposite effect, burdening them with the costs of maladaptation 
and maintenance, or further isolating vulnerable communities due to disaster-related 
infrastructure failure. Approaching resilience of the CNC from a holistic and dynamic 
perspective, considering both environmental and socioeconomic risks and taking an 
interdisciplinary approach to vulnerability assessments could reduce these risks.



24

Case Study: Churchill, Manitoba 

Churchill, Manitoba, a small town at the mouth of the Churchill River along the shoreline of 
Hudson Bay, provides unique insight into the significant risks of resource speculation, expanding 
infrastructure in the North and the cascading effects of high-risk economic endeavours. The 
town was initially a result of federal and provincial interest in a port city that could facilitate 
international trade routes in the 1930s. Still to this day, the town is connected to the rest of Canada 
by only one overland train route (Montsion 2015). Despite the difficulty of economic diversification 
for resource-based towns, Churchill was able to expand into eco-tourism, transportation and 
health-care services (Montsion 2015). However, climate change continues to threaten the town 
in several ways. For instance, receding Arctic sea ice has endangered belugas living in Hudson 
Bay and increased dangerous encounters with polar bears, to the detriment of the town’s tourism 
industry and public safety (Wilder 2017; Smith et al. 2017). Most prominently, permafrost thaw has 
significantly impacted the community by causing disruptions to its overland rail connection.

The federal government completed the Hudson Bay Railway connecting Churchill to the south in 
1929. CN Railway operated the lines until 1997, before being sold to privately owned OmniTRAX 
(Montsion 2015). Over time, due to increasing temperatures and subsequent permafrost thaw, 
maintenance grew increasingly costly, and in spring 2017 two unseasonably late winter storms 
resulted in flooding that washed out the rail line in more than 10 places (Porter 2017). The 
economic impacts to the town were substantial due to the disruption of tourism and access to 
supplies, resulting in a steep rise in the cost of living and an inability to provide critical health care 
to surrounding communities (Hoye 2017). Shockingly, despite the town’s reliance on the rail line, 
significant cost meant that no public or private entity was willing to restore the line — both the 
federal government and OmniTRAX denied any responsibility for repairs and filed lawsuits against 
one another (CBC News 2018). After more than a year without rail service, through a public-
private partnership spearheaded by First Nations groups and local governments, the line was 
purchased, repaired and finally resumed service in early December 2018 (Geary 2018). 

Churchill illustrates the complexity of vulnerability that results as climate change increases risks. 
Churchill is vulnerable in a combination of ways: physically, due to permafrost thaw and other 
environmental risks; economically, as climate change threatens the diversity of its economy; 
socially, due to a minoritized population and high costs of living; and politically, due to the lack of 
collaboration and communication between levels of government. Regardless, Churchill is clearly 
resilient in other ways too, as demonstrated by its capacity to persevere and collaborate even 
in the face of the isolation caused by the rail line’s failure. Not all vulnerable communities lack 
resilience, and fostering resilience through unconventional means, such as supporting strong 
social cohesion and internal networks, can help vulnerable communities adapt to climate change 
(Usamah et al. 2014). 



25

5. ADAPTATION CONSIDERATIONS:  
RESILIENCE THROUGH A DYNAMIC APPROACH
Resilience in the Canadian North is complex. Resource-based economies, remote 
towns, marginalized populations and an unforgiving landscape amplify vulnerability to 
climate change and magnify the risks of costly maladaptation. Approaching adaptation 
of northern transportation infrastructure requires planning for the uncertainty and 
complexity of climate change by respecting the extraordinary circumstances northern 
communities face. 

Planning for adaptation and resilience in the Canadian North faces hard limits and 
ample constraints. However, effective planning can facilitate flexibility. Adaptation 
is, first and foremost, local (Barnett et al. 2008; IPCC 2014; Siders 2019; Williams et 
al. 2020). The previous section highlighted the need for adaptation strategies to be 
context specific — meaning that, regardless of a similarity in risks or hazards, effective 
adaptation in any two communities will vary depending on local culture, values 
or socioeconomic processes — something that is even more relevant in northern 
communities (Tran et al. 2021; Van Assche, Birchall and Gruezmacher 2022). Van 
Assche, Birchall and Gruezmacher (2022) find that effective resilience planning for 
northern communities means having a vision of the future — founded through an 
inclusive process that values non-Western knowledge — a realistic and deliberate plan 
to achieve it, and the necessary governance tools to incite action. This approach relies 
on substantial co-operation across levels and domains of governance, local autonomy 
to implement detailed policy and an appreciation of local contexts (Bonnett and 
Birchall 2022; Van Assche, Birchall and Gruezmacher 2022).

The federal government has already commissioned hard adaptation practices focusing 
on engineering resilience for projects like the CNC (Palko and Lemmen 2017). However, 
limiting adaptation to hard measures alone would likely be ineffective. The IPCC (2014) 
identifies the following principles for effective adaptation: place- and context-specific 
approaches; significant intergovernmental co-operation; reduction of vulnerability; 
public engagement and integration of non-Western knowledge systems; and focus on 
low-risk, high-benefit policy measures that provide co-benefits for both adaptation 
and mitigation. In this case, an urban and regional planning approach can enable 
effective adaptation through policy directed toward increasing evolutionary resilience 
within communities by focusing on addressing vulnerability through environmental risk 
reduction and increasing adaptive capacity. 



26

5.1 ENVIRONMENTAL RISK REDUCTION: INFRASTRUCTURE ADAPTATION

Reduction of environmental risk is a vital aspect of adaptation (Davoudi et al. 2013; 
Field 2018). This can be achieved through two complementary planning methods: hard 
infrastructure adaptations and non-structural, resilience-focused soft infrastructure 
adaptations. Currently, Canada’s northern transportation system is ineffective due 
to gaps in connectivity (Palko and Lemmen 2017), leading to many isolated and 
vulnerable northern communities without reliable access to essential services. While 
expanding infrastructure can facilitate connectivity, as stated previously, the potential 
for maladaptation is high. Hard adaptation measures have limits, and in the face of 
unmitigated climate change these limits are sure to be exceeded. Soft adaptations, 
such as altered land use, diminish the risks of infrastructure failure associated with 
climate change.

Engineering of structural, hard adaptation measures are not the typical realm of 
adaptation planners. Given the complexity of adaptation for northern communities, 
in order to avoid maladaptation, a basic understanding of the physical challenges 
of Arctic infrastructure design is necessary. Climate Risks and Adaptation Practices 
— For the Canadian Transportation Sector details construction techniques and 
technologies for the adaptation of transportation infrastructure (Palko and Lemmen 
2017). This includes permafrost-melt adaptation for all-season roads such as 
embankment thickening, geotextiles or thermosyphons, or for rail transportation, stone 
embankments or sun sheds. However, Palko and Lemmen (2017) stress that barriers 
such as costs, isolation and short construction seasons are likely to restrict adaptation 
initiatives across the North. Moreover, while opportunities due to climate change are 
often touted, in reality this is not the case for northern Canada. Climatic changes 
that are opening northern marine waters are also causing significant challenges for 
overland transportation: changes in operating windows and load capacities of winter 
roads are reducing access; permafrost degradation poses immediate and future risks to 
transportation infrastructure; and adaptation techniques are cost-prohibitive and rely 
on specialized equipment and materials (Palko and Lemmen 2017).  

While hard adaptation alone has the potential to provide some benefit, it cannot be 
overstated that long-term effective adaptation also requires soft adaptation measures 
that focus on resilient community design (Van Assche, Birchall, and Gruezmacher 
2022). Such measures focus on adjusting human behaviour and fostering resilience 
through planning (Bonnett and Birchall 2020). For northern communities, this may 
include planned relocation, altered land use and building controls, increased setbacks 
or effective emergency management (Bonnett and Birchall 2020). Building resilience 
into community design is critical for emergency management. Transportation networks 
that include redundancy, are well connected and have a high degree of modularity are 
able to facilitate recovery after a disaster (Allan and Bryant 2011; French et al. 2019). 



27

5.2 SOCIOECONOMIC STRESSOR SUPPORT: SMART ADAPTATION AND 
ADAPTIVE CAPACITY

The reduction of socioeconomic stressors is simultaneously the most crucial and 
undervalued adaptation to climate change (Kehler and Birchall 2021); underestimating 
the complexity of adaptation as a social process can lead to misunderstandings 
about infrastructure adaptation (IPCC 2014). Smart adaptation uses policy to 
reduce vulnerability to climate change by addressing socioeconomic stressors and 
consists of low-risk policy choices that provide multiple benefits, such as reductions 
in GHG emissions and economic growth (Field 2018; IPCC 2014). Simultaneously, 
a community’s adaptive capacity can be similarly supported by addressing local 
socioeconomic constraints stemming from limited economic resources, equity or 
access to technology or information (Adger and Barnett 2009; Ford and King 2013). 
Clearly, a place-based approach that considers socioeconomic stressors is critical 
to the feasibility of the CNC; yet this is threatened by governments’ willingness to 
implement any adaptation at all, as short-term economic and political priorities 
consistently take precedence over necessary long-term resilience and adaptation 
goals (Birchall, MacDonald and Slater 2021; Ford and King 2013; Ojwang et al. 2017). 
Successful adaptation of the CNC, and likely the Canadian North in general, hinges on 
overcoming political barriers to effective adaptation and implementing the strategies 
outlined here. 

When it comes to adaptation, priority should be given to reducing vulnerability 
and exposure to risk (IPCC 2014). While exposure to risk is generally reduced by 
infrastructure adaptation, vulnerability to climate change is significantly more complex 
and therefore requires a dynamic and flexible approach (Benevolenza and DeRigne 
2018; Ford et al. 2015; Kehler and Birchall 2021; Naylor et al. 2020; Pandey et al. 2017). 
Smart adaptation seeks to mitigate risk through measures that are win-win, decreasing 
disaster vulnerability while also facilitating economic growth (Field 2018). These policy 
decisions include investments of public funds in strategies that are low economic 
risk and high adaptation benefit, such as poverty reduction, transportation networks 
or public health (IPCC 2015). Addressing socioeconomic stressors is increasingly 
recognized as a crucial element for adaptation to climate change to be economically 
sustainable (Kehler and Birchall 2021; OECD 2015). This approach reduces vulnerability 
in many ways while remaining flexible and effective over the long term by using low-risk 
policy measures that are established through a process grounded in public engagement 
and integration of non-Western knowledge systems (Field 2018; IPCC 2014). 

Long-term vulnerability reduction strategies should include co-benefits for other 
objectives; this way, regardless of what climate change brings, funds and resources 
are not wasted. Smart adaptation strategies have significant potential to increase 
resilience of northern communities. Smart adaptation policy could increase local 
municipalities’ ability to cope with maintenance costs, while boosting efficiency and 
reducing potential gaps in northern transportation infrastructure perpetuated by 
climate change. Because short-term outcomes tend to be the focus of policy decisions 
(Birchall, MacDonald and Slater 2021; Ford et al. 2017; IPCC 2014), in respect to the 
CNC, it will be critical to investigate the long-term opportunities and constraints of 



28

infrastructure expansion. From this perspective, it is easy to see the value of multi-level 
governmental co-operation. Without support across all levels of government, such a 
complex approach is likely to fail. 

For the CNC to avoid maladaptation and increases in vulnerability, considerable 
analysis is required to determine what policy measures are necessary to address the 
significant socioeconomic stressors present across northern Canada. Pearce et al. 
(2020) urge engaging local and Indigenous communities early and often to identify if a 
corridor is desirable and relevant to them; research here echoes this sentiment: in order 
for adaptation policy to be effective there must be sufficient public participation (IPCC 
2014; Johnson et al. 2015; Kehler and Birchall 2021; Williams et al. 2020; MacDonald 
and Birchall 2019). However, if a community is not resilient, then participation in 
collaborative planning with decision-makers is impractical due to a fragmentation 
of perspectives (Johnson et al. 2015), further highlighting the critical need for smart 
adaptation policy that first and foremost reduces socioeconomic stressors preventing 
resilience. Furthermore, the IPCC (2014) identified that there is high confidence that 
Indigenous, local and traditional knowledge systems are a crucial resource to effective 
adaptation. Despite this knowledge, and to their detriment, adaptation initiatives across 
the Arctic consistently discount any integration of non-Western knowledge systems, 
despite offers of support from Canadian Indigenous leaders (Dene Nahjo et al. 2018; 
Tran et al. 2021). 

Limited adaptive capacity, often due to a lack of smart adaptation policies and 
abundance of systemic socioeconomic stressors, significantly restricts the ability 
of northern communities to successfully adapt to climate change. Consequently, 
bolstering a community’s adaptive capacity requires taking smart adaptation 
approaches built upon effective and equitable public participation. Reframing the value 
of public participation is critical to the CNC and adaptation of infrastructure to climate 
change in general. Northern communities cannot effectively participate in decision-
making while plagued by socioeconomic stressors in a system that doesn’t recognize 
the significant value of non-Western knowledge systems to adaptation. Rectifying 
these shortcomings is a crucial aspect of effective adaptation to climate change in the 
Canadian North.



29

6. CONCLUSION
This paper explores considerations for climate change adaptation of vulnerable 
northern infrastructure. By using an urban and regional planning approach to delve into 
the complex interrelations between adaptation and resilience, the potential implications 
of expanding northern transportation infrastructure are uncovered. In doing so, this 
paper highlights the need for a holistic and dynamic approach to adaptation and 
resilience and explores the consequences of failing to do so. The extent to which the 
CNC could enhance resilience of northern infrastructure remains unclear; however, 
due to the unpredictable and drastic effects of climate change, the potential for 
maladaptation and its resulting systemic repercussions remains significant. Resilience 
in northern Canada is a function of both environmental risk and the severity of 
socioeconomic stressors. Consequently, adequate consultation of local and Indigenous 
communities coupled with a critical analysis of the ways in which the project increases 
or decreases the severity of socioeconomic stressors and environmental risk remains at 
the forefront of adaptation for the corridor. 

The feasibility of the CNC is drastically reduced due to climate change, as significant 
increases in environmental risk threaten existing infrastructure, magnify maintenance 
costs and push the limits of adaptation measures. To overcome these barriers would 
require a reimagining of Canada’s northern transportation system. While the CNC offers 
the potential to reduce gaps in the transportation system and thereby improve access 
to essential services for isolated northern communities, the expansion of traditional 
transportation infrastructure does not necessarily incite long-term resilience in the 
face of climate change. For northern communities, existing systemic socioeconomic 
stressors reduce adaptive capacity and perpetuate physical vulnerability: resource-
based economies result in economic vulnerability; overwhelming adaptation costs 
threaten the efficiency of critical infrastructure; ecological fragility and infrastructure 
sensitivity enlarge climatic impacts; and increasing disaster risk restricts access to basic 
goods and services. 

The proposed CNC, if approached equitably, provides many opportunities for building 
resilience in the Canadian North and addressing systemic constraints in northern 
adaptation. Planning for resilience requires a community-oriented approach built on 
a foundation of sustainable theories and equitable methods. Sustainable planning 
theories include those such as smart growth, transit-oriented development or biophilic 
cities. However, these approaches are not always applicable or even possible for 
every community, particularly for small rural or northern locations. Determining what 
approaches can foster community resilience requires equitable planning methods, 
which strive to use public participation to investigate the needs and wants of 
community members and collaborate to co-produce adaptation plans. Unfortunately, 
participatory methods of adaptation planning continue to be a challenge across the 
globe. Social systems, power structures and resource hoarding limit equitable access 
to participation and can hinder the resilience of the entire community. Policy can 
address these challenges; examples include policy intended to foster sustainable local 
food networks, enhance basic services and infrastructure, bolster access to health 
systems or build accessible social safety nets. Constraints in northern adaptation, such 



30

as lagging implementation, limited intergovernmental co-operation and increasing 
maladaptation risks, can be addressed through this approach to policy.

Further study would require significant research into each local context, deliberate 
consideration of existing adaptation plans across all levels of government, a more 
robust economic analysis from a climate change perspective and intentional dialogue 
with affected local and Indigenous communities to determine desirability and feasibility. 
Crucially, significant consideration will have to be given to the long-term, systemic 
effects of expanded transportation networks on individual communities and the 
resulting maintenance and adaptation costs, economic vulnerability and disaster risks. 

For the Canadian Northern Corridor Research Program, future research directions 
on resilience and adaptation should include further academic review, empirical 
investigation and applied research:

1) Research best practices to engage with northern and Indigenous communities 
on infrastructure expansion while fostering equitable decision-making through 
collaboration across all levels of government, agency of local community 
members and integration of non-Western knowledge systems.

2) Robust economic analysis of increased capital and maintenance costs of the 
proposed infrastructure due to the effects of climate change, such as permafrost 
thaw, wildfire or overland flooding. 

3) Further analysis, through empirical investigation, to identify existing gaps and 
barriers to adaptation in northern communities, such as limited intergovernmental 
co-operation, as well as best practices for addressing them. 

4) Investigation of how to support sustainable and desirable economic 
diversification in northern communities through a community-based approach.

5) Review of specific soft adaptations to foster resilience in transportation 
infrastructure, such as land use decisions focused on diversity, connectivity, 
modularity and redundancy.

6) Capitalizing on the uncertainty of climate change and global decarbonization 
as an opportunity for Canada to spearhead the reimagination of northern 
transportation to means that are sustainable and flexible.

For the CNC to remain dynamic and durable in a warming climate, it is critical that the 
project is built upon a foundation of effective adaptation principles and good planning. 
This approach is grounded in the reduction of vulnerability through place- and context-
specific approaches, with a foundation of public engagement and integration of non-
Western knowledge systems. This requires significant intergovernmental co-operation, 
and a focus on low-risk, high-benefit policy measures that provide co-benefits for 
both adaptation and mitigation in the long term. In this way, the CNC may be a unique 
opportunity to spearhead reimagination of transportation infrastructure, foster 
collaboration across all levels of government, enable equity and reconciliation and 
promote resilience for all Canadians.



31

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About the Authors

Jeff Birchall is an Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning in the Department 
of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta, where he serves as Director 
of the Climate Adaptation and Resilience Lab. Jeff has broad research and teaching 
experience in environmental change, how climate impacts influence infrastructure and 
the built form, and the decision dynamics around adaptation planning and resilience at 
the local scale. Jeff is a registered professional planner (RPP, MCIP) with education in 
geography, environmental studies and planning, climate change and sustainability. 

Sarah Kehler is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Alberta; her general area 
of study is Urban and Regional Planning. She is currently a research assistant with the 
Climate Adaptation and Resilience Lab, focusing on barriers to achieving equitable and 
effective policy for adaptation and resilience to climate change. She holds a MSc in 
Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and a BA with a double major in Human Geography 
and Design. Recently her work has focused on the influence of governance structure in 
provision of policy and planning, and the importance of social vulnerability within climate 
change adaptation policy. 

Nicole Bonnett is a PhD candidate in the School of Urban and Regional Planning, Dept. of 
Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta. Situated in the Climate Adaptation 
and Resilience Lab, Nicole’s research explores local-scale climate change impacts and 
adaptations, with a focus on policy/ action implementation. 



39

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