Anja Bauer

The Governance of Climate Change Adaptation in Ten OECD Countries: Challenges and Approaches

The governance of climate change adaptation gained increasing attention among both policy makers and researchers in recent years. Nevertheless, it is still largely unclear how governments aim to develop and implement adaptation policies. This paper takes stock of respective governance approaches at the national level in ten OECD countries. It first introduces four governance challenges that play a key role in the literature, i.e. (i) how to better integrate adaptation policies horizontally across policy sectors and (ii) vertically across jurisdictional levels, (iii) how to deal with uncertainties and integrate knowledge in adaptation policy decisions and, (iv), how to involve non-state stakeholders in adaptation decisions. Based on a desk research and a telephone survey, the paper then highlights a plethora of governance approaches the selected governments employ to cope with these four challenges. Overall, it is shown that most governance approaches are restricted to soft, voluntary ways of coordination and steering, and that national adaptation strategies often mark a centre piece around which complex governance setups emerge.

Innovation in Climate Adaptation Policy: Are Regional Partnerships Catalysts or Talking Shops?

We analyse whether and how six regional partnerships catalyse innovations in climate adaptation policies in Canada and England. The relatively rare and underexplored adaptation partnerships are collaborative arrangements in which governmental, business, and civil society actors strive to facilitate adaptation to climate change. Representing new political spaces, partnerships are expected to produce more innovative policies than hierarchies do. We find that the partnerships catalyse policy innovations in three distinct ways: through collaboration among the partners, through scaling up their activities beyond the partnerships, and by supporting national adaptation politics. However, the instrumental portfolio of the policy innovations is limited. It primarily comprises informational policies (e.g. guidelines), strategies, and plans (usually non-binding). Regarding innovation mechanisms, the analysis highlights the importance of collaboration and learning. Although there is a risk that partnerships will become talking shops, we conclude that, thus far, they support policymakers in tackling the challenges of an emerging policy field.

National Adaptation Strategies, What Else? Comparing Adaptation Mainstreaming in German and Dutch Water Management

Over the past decade, governments in many countries began to integrate or mainstream climate change adaptation into a range of sectors. Comprehensive multi-sectoral adaptation strategies have emerged as the preferred approach across Europe. The German Adaptation Strategy is a prominent example for such a comprehensive strategy. It addresses 14 sectors with national key issues and measures, and it provides orientation for other (mainly sub-national) actors. Against this trend, the Netherlands has pursued climate change adaptation mainly through a sectorally focused approach: the Dutch Delta Programme. Building on existing programmes,Governments in many it facilitates analysis and strategy development for long-term water management at a national scale with a strong regional focus. The present paper compares the two dissimilar governance approaches mainly with regard to how and to what degree they mainstream adaptation into water and coastal zone management in selected regions. After discussing strengths and weaknesses of the two approaches, we conclude that the more common multi-sectoral approach applied in Germany and most other OECD countries is not necessarily superior to sectorally focused approaches. Although the Dutch and the German cases appear to resemble alternatives, we highlight that their combination holds the promise to compensate for each other’s weaknesses. Overall, we argue that diversity in the governance of climate change adaptation is desirable because it can help to prevent that several countries fail in similar ways.

Whose look into the future? Participation in technology assessment and foresight

Technology assessment and foresight are instruments that aim to anticipate future developments and conditions and, therefore, are intended to provide orientations for present decision-making. Although to different extents, both instruments procedurally and methodologically rely on participatory procedures for anticipation. Building on the analytical concepts of co-production and boundary work, we analyze the practices of participatory knowledge production in ten technology assessment and foresight projects in Austria. In the first step, we examine the conceptualization and realization of participation by identifying their underlying rationales. In the second step, we show how different rationales influence the selection of participants and their interactions. We then show how particular actors and related role expectations are assigned to specific modes of anticipation. Finally, we highlight the covert domination of experts and project managers in the overall framing of problems and the challenges that they face when their framings are questioned by other participants.

Wissen für eine vorausschauende Politik: Der Umgang mit Unsicherheit in Strategischer Umweltprüfung, Technikfolgenabschätzung und Foresight

Moderne Gesellschaften produzieren kontinuierlich Entscheidungen (hinsichtlich technologischer, sozialer, okonomischer und okologischer Entwicklungen), sie sind sich der Konsequenzen dieser Entscheidungen aber oft nicht hinreichend bewusst und damit nur beschrankt in der Lage, die Verantwortung fur deren langfristige Folgen zu ubernehmen (Adam 1998; Beck et al. 2003).