Cross-level differences and similarities in coastal climate change adaptation planning

AbstractCoastal cities are exposed to high risks due to climate change, as they are potentially affected by both rising sea levels and increasingly intense and frequent coastal storms. Socio-economic drivers also increase exposure to natural hazards, accelerate environmental degradation, and require adaptive governance structures to moderate negative impacts. Here, we use a social network analysis (SNA) combined with further qualitative information to identify barriers and enablers of adaptive governance in the Barcelona metropolitan area. By analyzing how climate change adaptation is mainstreamed between different administrative scales as well as different societal actors, we can determine the governance structures and external conditions that hamper or foster strategical adaptation plans from being used as operational adaptation tools. We identify a diverse set of stakeholders acting at different administrative levels (local to national), in public administration, science, civil society, and the tourism economy. The metropolitan administration acts as an important bridging organization by promoting climate change adaptation to different interest groups and by passing knowledge between actors. Nonetheless, national adaptation planning fails to take into account local experiences in coastal protection, which leads to an ineffective science policy interaction and limits adaptive management and learning opportunities. Overcoming this is difficult, however, as the effectiveness of local adaptation strategies in the Barcelona metropolitan area is very limited due to a strong centralization of power at the national level and a lack of polycentricity. Due to the high touristic pressure, the legal framework is currently oriented to primarily meet the demands of recreational use and tourism, prioritizing these aspects in daily management practice. Therefore, touristic and economic activities need to be aligned to adaptation efforts, to convert them from barriers into drivers for adaptation action. Our work strongly suggests that more effectively embedding adaptation planning and action into existing legal structures of coastal management would allow strategic adaptation plans to be an effective operational tool for local coastal governance.

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Envisioning Climate Change Adaptation Futures Using Storytelling Workshops

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13126630 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (12) ◽

pp. 6630

Author(s):

Rachel Harcourt ◽

Wändi Bruine de Bruin ◽

Suraje Dessai ◽

Andrea Taylor

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Social Change ◽

Climate Change Adaptation ◽

Local Community ◽

Adaptation Planning ◽

The West ◽

Community Or ◽

Rebel Groups ◽

The Future ◽

The Government

Engaging people in preparing for inevitable climate change may help them to improve their own safety and contribute to local and national adaptation objectives. However, existing research shows that individual engagement with adaptation is low. One contributing factor to this might be that public discourses on climate change often seems dominated by overly negative and seemingly pre-determined visions of the future. Futures thinking intends to counter this by re-presenting the future as choice contingent and inclusive of other possible and preferable outcomes. Here, we undertook storytelling workshops with participants from the West Yorkshire region of the U.K. They were asked to write fictional adaptation futures stories which: opened by detailing their imagined story world, moved to events that disrupted those worlds, provided a description of who responded and how and closed with outcomes and learnings from the experience. We found that many of the stories envisioned adaptation as a here-and-now phenomenon, and that good adaptation meant identifying and safeguarding things of most value. However, we also found notable differences as to whether the government, local community or rebel groups were imagined as leaders of the responsive actions, and as to whether good adaptation meant maintaining life as it had been before the disruptive events occurred or using the disruptive events as a catalyst for social change. We suggest that the creative futures storytelling method tested here could be gainfully applied to support adaptation planning across local, regional and national scales.

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Aligning Climate Change Adaptation Planning with Adaptive Governance: Lessons from Exeter, NH

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education ◽

10.1111/j.1936-704x.2015.03198.x ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 155 (1) ◽

pp. 83-98 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Semra A. Aytur ◽

Jory S. Hecht ◽

Paul Kirshen

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Climate Change Adaptation ◽

Adaptation Planning ◽

Adaptive Governance

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Just Adapt: Engaging Disadvantaged Young People in Planning for Climate Adaptation

Politics and Governance ◽

10.17645/pag.v9i2.3892 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 9 (2) ◽

pp. 100-111 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Anna R. Davies ◽

Stephan Hügel

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Young People ◽

Public Participation ◽

Climate Change Adaptation ◽

Climate Adaptation ◽

Sense Of Self ◽

Educational Interventions ◽

Adaptation Planning ◽

Limited Attention ◽

Climate Action

The visibility of young people in climate change debates has risen significantly since the inception of the Fridays for Future movement, but little is known about the diversity of positions, perspectives and experiences of young people in Ireland, especially with respect to climate change adaptation planning. To close this knowledge gap, this article first interrogates key emergent spaces of public participation within the arena of climate action in Ireland in order to identify the extent of young people’s participation and whether any specific consideration is given to disadvantaged groups. It then tests the impacts of workshops specifically designed to support disadvantaged young people’s engagement with climate change adaptation which were rolled out with a designated Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools school in inner-city Dublin, Ireland. We found limited attention to public participation in climate change adaptation planning generally, with even less consideration given to engaging young people from disadvantaged communities. However, positive impacts with respect to enhanced knowledge of climate change science and policy processes emerged following participation in the workshops, providing the bedrock for a greater sense of self-efficacy around future engagement with climate action amongst the young people involved. We conclude that what is needed to help ensure procedural justice around climate action in Ireland are specific, relevant and interactive educational interventions on the issue of climate change adaptation; interventions which are sensitive to matters of place and difference.

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Climate Change, Adaptation Planning and Institutional Integration: A Literature Review and Framework

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su131910708 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (19) ◽

pp. 10708

Author(s):

Nate Kauffman ◽

Kristina Hill

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Climate Change Adaptation ◽

Urban Governance ◽

Climate Adaptation ◽

Adaptation Planning ◽

Institutional Processes ◽

Institutional Settings ◽

Planning Processes ◽

Future Work

The scale and scope of climate change has triggered widespread acknowledgement of the need to adapt to it. Out of recent work attempting to understand, define, and contribute to the family of concepts related to adaptation efforts, considerable contributions and research have emerged. Yet, the field of climate adaptation constantly grapples with complex ideas whose relational interplay is not always clear. Similarly, understanding how applied climate change adaptation efforts unfold through planning processes that are embedded in broader institutional settings can be difficult to apprehend. We present a review of important theory, themes, and terms evident in the literature of spatial planning and climate change adaptation to integrate them and synthesize a conceptual framework illustrating their dynamic interplay. This leads to consideration of how institutions, urban governance, and the practice of planning are involved, and evolving, in shaping climate adaptation efforts. While examining the practice of adaptation planning is useful in framing how core climate change concepts are related, the role of institutional processes in shaping and defining these concepts—and adaptation planning itself—remains complex. Our framework presents a useful tool for approaching and improving an understanding of the interactive relationships of central climate change adaptation concepts, with implications for future work focused on change within the domains of planning and institutions addressing challenges in the climate change era.

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