Environmental Law Alert Blog

Through our Environmental Law Alert blog, West Coast keeps you up to date on the latest developments and issues in environmental law. This includes:

  • proposed changes to the law that will weaken, or strengthen, environmental protection;
  • stories and situations where existing environmental laws are failing to protect the environment; and
  • emerging legal strategies that could be used to protect our environment.

If you have an environmental story that we should hear about, please e-mail Andrew Gage. We welcome your comments on any of the posts to this blog – but please keep in mind our policies on comments.

2020 Canadian Law Blog Awards Winner

As the recent COP26 UN climate negotiations in Glasgow drew to a close, we were heartened to hear new announcements made there on protecting marine spaces. Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Panama announced a new “Mega-MPA” spanning from the Galápagos to the Pacific coast of Central America, protecting some of the most productive fisheries in the world.

In late October, the BC government unveiled its long-awaited climate plan, Roadmap to 2030, to tumultuous … criticism.

With the COP26 UN climate negotiations underway until the end of this week, the world is watching political leaders to see how they will work together on reducing emissions, phasing out fossil fuels and decarbonizing the economy, and how they will support the Global South in this transition.

West Coast has reviewed the party’s ocean commitments in its election platform and assessed how they measure against the work that needs to be done. We identified a few glaring holes, many important and encouraging commitments, and several high-level statements whose effectiveness will depend on the details.

The election is over, subject to the counting of mail-in ballots in a handful of close races.* The new Parliament looks very much like the old Parliament, and many people are asking: did this accomplish anything?

Tired of reading complicated election platforms, struggling to figure out which party has your interests at heart? West Coast Environmental Law invites you to take a step back from the campaign rhetoric and look at some pretty pictures – word clouds to be precise – instead.

The 2021 election campaign is finally bringing us debates about climate change and how to tackle it.

This election, vote for a healthier, more just and sustainable future.

I didn’t need the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to release their latest climate assessment report to know that climate change is here now, or that it will only get worse. Did you?

No matter where you live, it’s likely that the climate crisis has been top of mind this summer – especially with the August 9 release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.