Debora L. VanNijnatten is Professor in the Department of Political Science/North American Studies and in Geography and Environmental Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her research and publications have focused on transboundary environmental governance in North America, at the cross-border regional, bilateral (Canada-US and US-Mexico) and continental levels. Current funded research focuses on the ability of transboundary water governance architectures (in the Great Lakes and Rio Grande/Bravo basins) to adapt to climate impacts and deep uncertainty; how to assess the climate-readiness of water-dependent local communities; and adopting a community lens on Net Zero strategies in the North. She also has a continuing interest in Canadian climate and environmental policy and Canada-US relations.
She is the author/editor of 6 books, including successive editions of Canadian Environmental Politics and Policy (Oxford University Press, 2024 most recent edition), Environmental Policy in North America: Approaches, Capacity and the Management of Transboundary Issues (University of Toronto Press, with Robert Healy and Marcela López Vallejo) and Climate Change Policy in North America: Designing Integration in a Regional System (University of Toronto Press, with Neil Craik and Isabel Studer). She has published more than 50 articles and book chapters environmental policy and governance.
As Senior Personnel on the NSF-NSERC Alliance funded Global Center for Climate Change and Transboundary Waters (GCTW) (2023-2028), her collaborative work is focused on “climate-ready communities” – understanding the governance and management capacity of local communities to respond to changing conditions in transboundary water bodies. Our work involves developing and applying an indicator set for community resilience, assessing the linkages between communities and multi-scale governance and policy frameworks, and exploring how coastline resilience might be assessed and managed – in the Great Lakes, Rio Grande/Bravo and other transboundary regions.
She is also contributing a climate policy lens as Co-Investigator on the Future Harvest Partnership project, funded under the NSERC-SSHRC Sustainable Agriculture Research Initiative. Her work here actively interrogates the utility of Net Zero in reaching our climate goals in Canada, North America and Europe, and reflects on the prospects for a unique community-based perspective on developing Net Zero strategies for Canada’s North.