Table of Contents
- Executive Summary
- Introduction
- Guiding Principles
- Our Goal
- Climate Change Impacts in the North
- Challenges
- Collective Action
- Strategies for action
- Conclusion
- Contacts
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Pan-Territorial Adaptation Strategy
Our Goal
The goal of the Pan-Territorial Adaptation Strategy is to optimize benefits for the North by ensuring:
- Strong partnerships are maintained between and among local, territorial, federal and Aboriginal governments and organizations, as well as intergovernmental and circumpolar forums, the private sector and academia
- Effective communication and information sharing occurs among partners
- Coordination of adaptation actions across the North is enhanced, with flexibility for territory-specific action
Yukon
Increased higway maintenance costs
Warmer winters cause the permafrost under many Yukon highways to melt, resulting in significant damage to the roadbed and road surface. On permafrost-free stretches of highway, annual repair costs average about $4,000 per kilometre. The north Alaska Highway between Destruction Bay and the US border, in contrast, averages $30,000 per kilometre, or $6 million each year for that 200-km-long section.
Invasive species
White sweet clover and other invasive plants are spreading throughout the territory with warming temperatures, displacing high quality forage for wildlife and in some cases posing a threat to human health.
Spruce bark beetle
The beetle has killed about 300,000 hectares of spruce forest in the Alsek River corridor in southwest Yukon in what is the largest and most intense outbreak ever seen in Canada. The dead trees are a high fire risk, have little value as lumber, and offer poor habitat for many species.
