Climate Change and Submarine Cables: Three Immediate Challenges
Climate Change and Submarine Cables: Three Immediate Challenges
Climate change is no longer an abstract or distant issue. Its effects are increasingly visible in everyday life. Even in Geneva, Switzerland, far from any ocean, long-term residents can observe how Mont Blanc has less snow cover today than it did two decades ago.
If such changes are evident inland, their impact on coastal and marine environments — where submarine cable infrastructure is located — is even more significant.
Focusing on their regulatory and legal implications, this article highlights three immediate climate-related challenges affecting submarine cables that are particularly relevant to Latin America and other emerging regions.
1. Coastal Erosion: A Direct Threat to Cable Integrity and National Connectivity
One of the most visible effects of climate change is accelerated coastal erosion, driven by sea-level rise, stronger storm surges, and changes in sediment dynamics. For submarine cables, this translates into immediate operational challenges, particularly in the shore-end segment, where cables are most vulnerable. The gradual loss of sediment reduces burial protection, leaving cables exposed to mechanical stress and to external aggression from anchors, fishing activity, and even opportunistic individuals searching for copper during low tides.
This situation becomes particularly critical in countries where international connectivity depends on a limited number of landing stations. In parts of Latin America and in Small Island Developing States (SIDS), cable landing stations are often located in low-lying coastal areas, frequently below 10 metres above sea level. In such contexts, a single extreme event — such as a storm surge, flood, or coastal landslide — may be sufficient to disrupt connectivity for an entire country for hours, days, or even longer, especially where redundancy is limited.
From a regulatory perspective, however, this evolving risk is not always adequately captured as addressed in the Report of Working Group 3, Fostering Connectivity & Geographic Diversity, of the International Advisory Body on Submarine Cable Resilience (ITU-ICPC) 1. Cable landing permits are typically granted on the basis of Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs), which traditionally focus on the impact of the infrastructure on the surrounding environment. In many cases, they do not fully address the inverse scenario: the impact of environmental change — particularly climate-driven coastal dynamics — on the integrity and resilience of the infrastructure itself.
In some jurisdictions, these risks are considered through separate mechanisms, such as critical infrastructure protection frameworks or they remain only partially addressed or are not systematically incorporated into regulatory oversight. This creates a structural gap, as subsea infrastructure approved under past environmental assumptions may no longer be aligned with current or future risk conditions. Notably, many cables deployed during the boom of the early 2000s were designed under climate assumptions that did not anticipate the scale or speed of today’s environmental changes.
As coastal erosion accelerates, operators may find themselves in a complex position. On the one hand, they are expected to ensure continuity of telecommunications services and maintain the integrity of their systems. On the other hand, they may face regulatory uncertainty regarding the extent to which they are required — or even permitted — to proactively adapt their infrastructure to evolving coastal risks.
Therefore, there is a clear need for regulatory adaptation. Incorporating periodic reassessment of climate-related risks into existing frameworks — whether through updated EIAs, renewal processes, or integration into national critical infrastructure monitoring systems — is becoming increasingly necessary. At the same time, regulatory frameworks should provide sufficient flexibility to allow timely implementation of resilience measures, ensuring that submarine cable systems can continue to support national and global connectivity in a rapidly changing coastal environment.
2. Increasing Storm Intensity: From Force Majeure to Foreseeable Risk
Climate change is also increasing the frequency and intensity of storms, and this phenomenon is no longer confined to traditional hurricane or typhoon zones. Countries historically located outside major cyclone corridors are now experiencing more frequent and intense extra-tropical storms, with wind speeds exceeding 100 km/h. These evolving weather patterns are challenging long-standing assumptions about infrastructure design and resilience.
As a result, infrastructure that was not originally engineered to withstand such conditions must now be reassessed and, in many cases, reinforced. For submarine cable systems, storms can have a direct and immediate impact on landing stations and associated terrestrial infrastructure. This includes structural damage to buildings, such as roofs and support elements, as well as flooding, power outages, and disruption of backhaul connectivity. Even when the wet plant remains intact, these failures can lead to service interruptions with significant operational consequences.
This is the point at which climate change transitions from an operational issue into a contractual and legal one. When cable owners commercialize capacity services, they typically commit to defined service levels through Service Level Agreements (SLAs). In the event of outages, clients — particularly wholesale customers — may seek compensation or invoke contractual remedies, including termination rights if the disruption extends beyond a specified period.
Traditionally, such events would fall within the scope of force majeure clauses, shielding operators from liability where events are considered unforeseeable and beyond their control. However, as extreme weather events become more frequent and predictable, their characterization as force majeure may no longer be sustainable in certain cases.
There is a growing risk that courts and arbitral tribunals will increasingly treat certain climate-related events as foreseeable, particularly where there is clear evidence of evolving weather patterns over time. Under this approach, cable owners would be expected to take reasonable steps to adapt their infrastructure to these risks, including reinforcing structures, enhancing flood protection, or repositioning vulnerable segments of their systems. Failure to do such may expose operators to claims for damages from their customers, on the basis that the disruption was not truly unforeseeable and could have been mitigated.
From a regulatory standpoint, there is an increasing case for establishing minimum resilience standards for critical telecommunications infrastructure, requiring operators to incorporate climate risk into the design, maintenance and upgrading of their systems. In practice, such standards could supersede — or at least significantly influence — the interpretation of contractual limitations of liability, particularly where overriding public interest considerations, such as national connectivity and service continuity, are at stake.
3. Sustainable Cable Landing Stations: Balancing Resilience and Climate Objectives
Alongside the physical impacts of climate change, a more subtle but increasingly relevant transformation is taking place in the way submarine cable landing stations are powered. The growing emphasis on sustainability, combined with rising energy costs and the need for greater operational resilience, is driving the integration of renewable energy systems — particularly photovoltaic solar installations — into cable infrastructure.
In many regions, especially where electricity costs are high or grid reliability is uncertain, operators are incorporating solar panels together with battery storage and backup generators, creating hybrid energy systems capable of supporting continuous operations. This shift is not only motivated by environmental considerations, but also by economic and strategic factors, including the reduction of operating expenses and increased energy autonomy.
At the same time, governments in various jurisdictions are promoting the adoption of renewable energy through incentives such as subsidies, tax benefits and preferential regulatory treatment. Cable landing stations, as energy-intensive facilities, are natural candidates to benefit from these schemes. However, participation in such programmes often entails compliance with specific regulatory requirements, including technical standards, reporting obligations and eligibility conditions that may not have traditionally applied to telecommunications infrastructure.
As a result, landing stations are gradually evolving beyond their original function and, in some cases, may be subject to an additional layer of regulation associated with energy generation. This may include permitting requirements, grid interconnection rules and environmental compliance obligations. The convergence of telecommunications and energy regulation introduces new complexity, requiring operators to comply with overlapping regulatory frameworks that were not originally designed to interact.
Submarine cable systems are critical infrastructure, and their operation depends on uninterrupted power supply. While renewable energy systems can enhance resilience by reducing dependence on unstable grids, they may also introduce new risks if not properly designed and integrated. The intermittent nature of solar generation, for example, requires robust storage and backup solutions to ensure continuity of service.
In this context, the integration of renewable energy must be carefully aligned with the operator’s contractual obligations. Cable owners remain bound by service level commitments and any failure in power systems that leads to service disruption may give rise to liability towards customers. This creates a need to balance sustainability objectives with reliability requirements, ensuring that environmental improvements do not inadvertently compromise service continuity.
Final Remarks
Climate change is no longer a future risk for submarine cable systems, but a present reality with direct operational and legal implications. Coastal erosion, increasing storm intensity, and the transition towards renewable energy are already affecting infrastructure integrity, service continuity and regulatory frameworks. These challenges reveal a growing gap between the environmental conditions under which cables were originally designed and permitted, and the dynamic risks they now face.
At the same time, the distinction between unforeseeable events and manageable risks is becoming increasingly blurred. What was traditionally treated as force majeure may, in certain cases, now be considered foreseeable, with corresponding implications for liability, contractual obligations and the duty of operators to adapt their infrastructure. This shift places pressure not only on cable owners, but also on regulators, who must ensure that existing frameworks remain fit for purpose in a changing climate.
Addressing these challenges will require regulatory adaptation, including the incorporation of climate risk into permitting, the establishment of minimum resilience standards, and greater flexibility to enable timely infrastructure upgrades. Ultimately, ensuring the resilience of submarine cables is essential to safeguarding national connectivity and the global digital economy in an increasingly uncertain environmental context.
At the same time, if governments expect submarine cable owner to invest in climate resilience, such requirements should be accompanied by credible and measurable public commitments to climate action. Instruments such as sustainability-linked sovereign bonds 2 provide one indication that environmental objectives are backed by accountability mechanisms and tangible incentives, reducing the risk that climate commitments remain merely aspirational or exist only on paper.
International Advisory Body on Submarine Cable Resilience (ITU-ICPC), IAB Report of the Working Groups 2026, 10 July 2026. Available at:
https://www.itu.int/digital-resilience/submarine-cables/iab-working-groups/
See: Uruguay´s Sovereign Sustainability-Linked Bond (SSLB) 2026 Annual Report. Available at: https://www.mef.gub.uy/innovaportal/file/32220/1/sslb-4th-annual-report-may-2026.pdf
Andrés Fígoli is the author of the two-volume book “Legal and Regulatory Aspects of Telecommunication Submarine Cables” and is the director of Fígoli Consulting, where he provides legal and regulatory advice on all aspects of subsea cable work. Mr. Fígoli graduated in 2002 from the Law School of the University of the Republic (Uruguay), holds a Master of Laws (LLM) from Northwestern University, and has worked on submarine cable cases for more than 20 years in a major wholesale telecommunication company. He also served as Director and Member of the Executive Committee of the International Cable Protection Committee (2015-2023).
This article was first published in Submarine Telecoms Forum Magazine #151 – September 2026.
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