The C-Change Project is a joint funded project with SSHRC and IDRC, headquartered out of the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa.
We are proud to present the C-Change International Community-University Research Alliance (ICURA) project, “Managing Adaptation to Environmental Change in Coastal Communities: Canada and the Caribbean”. This project links community members and university researchers from Canada and the Caribbean region in support of applied research on coastal adaptation to environmental change from the impacts of storms and sea-level rise on susceptible coastal communities. Iqaluit, growing capital of the territory of Nunavut in Canada’s Eastern Arctic, was chosen as one of our study sites as it is a coastal community, vulnerable to sea level rise and storm surges.
The C-Change project develops local community capacity designed to close the gaps between ongoing and anticipated environmental change, and the urgent need for coastal communities to foster and maintain their physical, economic, cultural, and social well-being. C-Change seeks to enhance community resilience through improved planning for adaptation. This may require mobilizing new knowledge and the development of new policy and management measures consistent with established local context and strategic planning. The focus is on immediate and downstream consequences to coastal communities of the insidious effects of sea level rise and the potential catastrophic impacts of extreme weather events. C-Change acknowledges that capacity for planning adaptation and emergency preparedness must be integrated within the local context of the community using available scientific, management, and institutional governance arrangements.
The C-Change project is led by Co-Directors Dr. Dan Lane at the Telfer School of Management of the University of Ottawa, Canada, and Dr. Patrick Watson, Director of SALISES at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, along with a team of over twenty co-researchers, collaborators, and community partners.
Study Site Locations – Four Canadian Communities - Gibsons, BC; Charlottetown, PEI; Isle Madame, Nova Scotia; Iqaluit, NU and four Caribbean communities – San Pedro, Belize; Georgetown, Guyana; Grande Riviere, Trinidad and Tobago; Bequia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines
Local Collaborations – C-Change has been working with Meagan Leach (Director of Engineering and Sustainability, City of Iqaluit), Robyn Campbell (Sustainability Coordinator, City of Iqaluit), and Colleen Healey (Climate Change Coordinator, Government of Nunavut), among others. C-Change Researcher Don Forbes has done extensive research in and around Iqaluit with M.Sc. student Scott Hatcher, and a number of colleagues from Natural Resources Canada, Memorial University, and elsewhere. The work in Iqaluit is integrated with a project on coastal community landscape hazards in the ArcticNet Network of Centres of Excellence.
Project website: www.coastalchange.ca
Project Contact(s)
Dan Lane - Canada Co-Director (Lane@telfer.uottawa.ca)
Kathy Cunningham - Canada Administrator (Cunningham@telfer.uottawa.ca)
55 Laurier Avenue East, Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5 (p) 613-562-5800 ext. 2933
