Deborah Carlson (she/her) is a staff lawyer at West Coast Environmental Law for the Green Communities Program since 2010. She is a third-generation white settler who grew up on beautiful Treaty 4 territory in Saskatchewan. She now works in BC to support land and water management that maintains and restores healthy relationships and communities, while building climate resilience, primarily in Coast Salish territories. The work includes understanding regulatory gaps and limitations in existing federal, provincial and local law, and supporting new approaches to place-based management at landscape scales that honour and uphold Indigenous inherent authority and constitutionally protected title and rights.
Deborah has civil and common law degrees from McGill University and was called to the BC Bar in 1997. Prior to West Coast, Deborah worked on the climate change team at the David Suzuki Foundation; as an international human rights lawyer in Geneva; and as a civil litigator in Vancouver. She has also been an occasional adjunct professor at the Allard School of Law at UBC, most recently in 2025.