Christopher Carter, AICP
About Me
C.J. grew up in Siksikaitsitapi (Blackfoot Confederacy) Territory in the countryside amidst the Northern Rocky Mountains of Montana. He is deeply grateful to global mentors, who have shaped him and ushered in a practice of supporting grounded leaders to face defining issues of our time.
In his free time, he is an avid alpinist and competitive ski mountaineer who also enjoys film, poetry and long chats with elders and kin.
Professional Biography
C.J. is the founder and president of Nunataq (ˈnuː.nə.tæk), a B-Corp providing planning and visual communications for clients on six continents. For over a decade he has served organizations in the creation of vital multi-stakeholder processes, teams, award winning plans and films. His clients include the Wildlife Conservation Society, Commission for Environmental Cooperation, the Nature Conservancy, Polar Bears International, the Blackfoot Confederacy, Iqra Fund Pakistan and the Mica Group.
Since 2014 he has served on working groups at the United Nations, namely in the design and implementation of the Paris Agreement Article 8 concerning climate induced loss and damage, as well as the legal protection of intergenerational justice, human and Indigenous land rights. He has participated in eight United Nations UNFCCC climate negotiations, two Sendai Framework sessions on Disaster Risk Reduction and the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues representing Arctic science organizations and Tribal Governments. Involvement in negotiations led to the founding of the Youth Arctic Coalition, development of climate policy teams, art-based actions inside the high security blue zone, and live management of social media channels to ensure accessibility to the often exclusionary multilateral negotiations.
He completed graduate studies at the University of British Columbia in urban and regional planning with a focus on climate adaptation. There he served as a researcher on the Resilient-C research team led by resilience scholar Dr. Stephanie Chang where their team designed Resilient-C, a free digital platform to promote Coastal Risk Resilience across 170 Canadian coastal communities, using 25 indicators of disaster resilience to catalyze peer-to-peer learning between practitioners in the coastal zone – an initiative which has led to 4,000 risk reduction actions along that Nation’s shores. In completion of his Masters Thesis he advised the District of Squamish, British Columbia in the creation of their first Integrated Flood Hazard Management Plan completing baseline ecosystem and social vulnerability mapping for coastal flooding, and the first known application of participatory budgeting in disaster risk reduction in North America.
As a licensed professional planner he remains dedicated to solutions that address root problems and improve the well-being of people and the Land. In 2018, he founded the Native Land Project with the Amskapi Piikani (Blackfeet Nation) Tribal Business Council, Indigenous researchers and Montana State University to complete Indigenous-led systems and land tenure research that benefit Tribal Nations in the Northern Rockies. Collaboration with the Amskapi Piikani has led to The Piikani Well-being Project – that Nation’s first Human Well-being and Development Index, grounded in 80 variables monitoring 8 systems determined by local people. This index mobilizes Indigenous held data to guide human and agricultural system health across the Nation's current 1.5 million acre land base as they reclaim traditional governance and recover from the devastating COVID-19 pandemic. In April 2022, after three years of participatory planning, their team legislated Agriculture Resource Management Plan and Food Sovereignty Plans, making them the first Tribal Nation in the United States to complete such plans in house and with an integrated climate adaptation approach.
Education
105375 | University of British ColumbiaGraduation Date:
Degree Level: Graduate
University of British Columbia
Graduation Date:
Degree Level: G
Social
Personal URL: https://www.nunataqsolutions.com/LinkedIn URL: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-j-carter-88b73518
Facebook URL: https://www.facebook.com/nunataqsolutions/
Instagram URL: https://www.nunataqsolutions.com/