Designing infrastructure for yesterday’s climate
Art Hunter
Canada is entering an era of climate disruption: floods wash away highways, wildfires destroy towns, sea levels rise, and melting permafrost cracks roads. For decades, scientists have studied climate change in Canada’s Arctic where warming is far faster than the global average. During a recent visit to Singapore, I saw how countries use these insights to adapt their infrastructure.
Climate-related disasters are causing rapidly rising financial losses in Canada, exceeding $9-billion in 2024. Low-income households face greater vulnerability to climate risks, but have less capacity to recover. Insurance helps rebuild after disasters, but premiums are rising.
Closing the insurance protection gap requires better land-use planning, climate-resilient infrastructure, improved access to hazard information, and stronger community networks to support recovery.
The question is simple: will we invest to build the resilient, clean economy of the future, or will we spend the next decades paying the rising cost of climate disasters?