Prevention of environmental damage is always better than response and clean-up. This became very obvious to residents in Metro Vancouver in 2015, when a cargo ship, the MV Marathassa, spilled 2,700 litres of fuel into the waters of English Bay.
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.
When you walk along an ocean shoreline, it’s a feast for the senses – waves crashing, birds swooping and calling, the taste of salt in the air, vividly coloured sea plants and creatures washing up in the swell of the waves. It’s easy to see that the coast is a place rich in life and biodiversity.
Increasingly, we are seeing stories of how the ocean is changing – both locally off the coast of BC, and on a global scale.
For over 14,000 years, the Haíɫzaqv (Heiltsuk) Nation has thrived on the abundance of the lands and waters in what is now known as the central coast of British Columbia.
As 2018 comes to a close, the West Coast team wanted to share our victories and milestones with our “Year in Review”
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and expecting different results…"
Stronger laws for MPAs mean better protection for marine mammals
Facing the towering pile of debris collected at the Denman Island market, I paused as an uneasy feeling of déjà vu stirred from my visit to the community shoreline clean-up one year ago.
7:29am, Thursday, August 30th, 2018:
We’re in a boardroom high above downtown Vancouver, not far from Robson Street where I’m told there used to be a great hunting path. I’m on the Federal Court of Appeal’s website, refreshing my web browser obsessively.
The Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) represents all BC’s local governments. In just a few weeks at its annual conference (September 10-14), local governments will vote on whether to demand that Chevron, Exxon and 18 other fossil fuel companies pay their fair share of climate change-related costs facing BC communities.