Nathalie Chalifour is a leading scholar of Canadian climate law, known for her work on the constitutional dimensions of the climate crisis, carbon pricing, and rights-based climate litigation. She is a Full Professor and Co-Director of the Centre for Environmental Law and Global Sustainability at the Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa. She is affiliated with the Institute of the Environment, where she teaches and supervises students in the interdisciplinary Master's of Environmental Sustainability program. Professor Chalifour holds a Doctorate in Law from Stanford University (2005) and a Master's in Juridical Sciences (1999), which she obtained as a Fellow of the Stanford Program in International Legal Studies and a Fulbright scholar. She was elected to the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists in 2018, and has received the Faculty of Law’s awards for Excellence in Teaching, Excellence in Research, and Public Engagement.
Professor Chalifour joined the Faculty of Law in 2003, where she teaches or has taught Environmental Law, Climate Change Law, International Environmental Law, Constitutional Law, Sustainability and the Law, Foundations of Environmental Law and Property Law. She was the founding Co-Director of the Centre for Environmental Law and Global Sustainability, and continues in that role today. As Associate Director of the Institute of the Environment from 2011 to 2015, she led the creation of the interdisciplinary Master's of Environmental Sustainability Program and served as its inaugural director. She continues to teach and supervise students in this graduate program. She was an inaugural member of the Advisory Committee to the uOttawa Ecojustice Clinic and helped establish the Secretariat for the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law, which was housed at the University of Ottawa from 2006 to 2016.
Professor Chalifour is a leading expert on the rapidly evolving legal framework for climate change in Canada. Her most recent book, Climate Change and the Canadian Constitution: Federalism and Charter Rights in a Warming World (University of Toronto Press, 2025), examines how Canada’s constitutional framework can both hinder and empower climate action. It analyzes the division of powers between federal and provincial governments and the protection of fundamental rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, including emerging rights-based climate litigation led by youth and Indigenous peoples. Her scholarship has been cited in judicial decisions, including by the Supreme Court of Canada and the Federal Court of Appeal.
Her research spans the intersections of environmental law, economics and social justice, including environmental justice, carbon pricing, biodiversity conservation, the green economy and sustainable food and agriculture. She is co-editor of three international books, including Energy, Governance and Sustainability (Edward Elgar, 2016), and a fourth collection on Food Law in Canada (Thomson Reuters, 2019). She was a contributing editor for The Canadian Brownfields Manual, a looseleaf text, from 2004 to 2014. Many of her articles can be accessed on SSRN.
Prior to joining the University of Ottawa, Professor Chalifour was senior advisor to the President of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, Senior Policy Advisor to the World Wildlife Fund Canada (WWF), and established TRAFFIC Canada (an NGO that focuses on wildlife trade). She was also an adjunct professor at Widener University, and taught at the University of Nairobi, Kenya.
Professor Chalifour is actively engaged in the development of Canadian law and policy and public interest litigation. She is frequently invited to speak at conferences and public events and appears regularly as a commentator in the media. She currently serves as pro bono co-counsel to Friends of the Earth Canada, an intervener in Mathur v. Ontario, the youth-led constitutional challenge to Ontario’s greenhouse gas emissions target before both the Superior Court of Justice and the Ontario Court of Appeal. She is also pro bono co-counsel for Clean Energy Canada as intervener in the Alberta Court of Appeal’s constitutional reference on the federal Clean Electricity Regulations. She has previously served as pro bono co-counsel to Friends of the Earth Canada and the National Association of Women and the Law in the Supreme Court of Canada reference on carbon pricing, as well as to the United Chiefs and Council of the Mnidoo Mnising as intervener in the Ontario Court of Appeal carbon pricing reference, and to Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission as intervener in the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal carbon pricing reference.
Professor Chalifour has supervised many graduate students at the LLM and PhD level. She welcomes inquiries from potential graduate students proposing to conduct research on climate litigation and climate justice.