Sirkku Juhola

Exploring Development Futures in a Changing Climate: Frontiers for Development Policy and Practice

Climate change poses the most significant foreseeable threat to the development of humankind. Among the parts of the globe liable to be affected, the developing world is the most vulnerable to climate risks. Introducing a DPR theme issue on how development policy is responding to the increasingly pressured global climate agenda, this article reviews what is being done and still needs to be done, paying particular attention to action on three policy frontiers: (i) adaptation actions and finance, (ii) mitigation policies and their governance, and (iii) the implications for development planning. It addresses what will be needed for the development community to rise to the challenge in the run-up to the Copenhagen conference in 2009 and beyond.

Capacities across scales: local to national adaptation policy in four European countries

A framework of adaptive capacity and prerequisites for planned adaptation are used to identify the resources and conditions that have enabled or constrained the development of planned adaptation at national to local levels in Italy, Sweden, Finland and the UK. Drawing on 94 semi-structured interviews with climate change actors at each scale, the study demonstrates that planned adaptation measures occur as a result of several inter-relating factors, including the existence of political will, public support (and relevant media portrayal of climate change), adequate financial resources, the ability to produce or access climate and other information, and the extent of stakeholder involvement in the design and application of adaptation measures. Specific national adaptation measures affect local capacities to implement planned adaptations, but in some cases have been complemented or substituted by internal and external networks that connect local authorities to information and resources. The study demonstrates that opportunities to engage in planned adaptation at local levels may occur given adequate interest and resources; however, both national authorities and non-governmental organizations continue to play an important role in fostering local capacities.

Understanding the framings of climate change adaptation across multiple scales of governance in Europe

Climate change adaptation strategies are emerging across Europe as societies attempt to adapt to the challenges of a changing environment. Social constructivist analyses of environmental policy – especially those emphasising ‘framing’ – can be very useful in teasing out the framings of policy problems such as adaptation. They can also shed light on the underlying assumptions that steer and guide public and environmental policy. Using the theoretical concept of framing to analyse adaptation policies across different scales of governance in four European countries – Sweden, Finland, the United Kingdom and Italy – and drawing on policy documents from those countries, as well as semi-structured interviews with practitioners, the development of adaptation policy processes and especially how adaptation has been defined within these processes are examined. Four major framings of adaptation are identified: ‘planning’, ‘economic risk’, ‘vulnerability’ and ‘existing measures’. These frames affect how adaptation is conceptualised, policy problems defined and, ultimately how policy develops.

The ability of Nordic countries to adapt to climate change: assessing adaptive capacity at the regional level

Adaptation to the impacts of climate change has become a concern in the Nordic countries. Regional responses to climate change impacts are considered to be crucial since they are likely to target specific vulnerabilities with concrete and feasible adaptation measures. The ability of the region to respond to climate change is determined to a large extent by its adaptive capacity that consists of economic, social and political capacity, as well as infrastructure and technological potential. This paper assesses the generic adaptive capacity of Nordic regions by using a set of indicators that reflect five determinants of adaptive capacity. The results of the assessments are presented in maps that illustrate that Nordic regions have high capacity but there are also significant differences between and within countries. Finally, this article also discusses arguments for and against the use of these kinds of assessments in policy-making, and the implications of this for the Nordic countries.

Climate change as governmentality : Technologies of government for adaptation in three European countries

Using the Foucauldian theoretical framework of governmentality, this paper examines the role of regulative ‘technologies of government’ in climate change adaptation. The paper examines such technologies and underlying rationalities in a multi-level context, in three European countries that represent different stages of adaptation policy development: the UK, Finland and Sweden. Drawing upon policy documents and interviews at different levels, the paper illustrates differences in technologies of government for adaptation between the relatively ‘regulative’ UK state system and Finland and Swedens traditional legalistic and welfarist systems. The study illustrates that, while the treatment of adaptation as an issue on a national level coheres with national rationalities, local and regional levels show a diversity in the development of bottom-up adaptation technologies.

Adaptive climate change governance for urban resilience

Climate change poses new challenges to cities and new flexible forms of governance are required that are able to take into account the uncertainty and abruptness of changes. The purpose of this paper is to discuss adaptive climate change governance for urban resilience. This paper identifies and reviews three traditions of literature on the idea of transitions and transformations, and assesses to what extent the transitions encompass elements of adaptive governance. This paper uses the open source Urban Transitions Project database to assess how urban experiments take into account principles of adaptive governance. The results show that: the experiments give no explicit information of ecological knowledge; the leadership of cities is primarily from local authorities; and evidence of partnerships and anticipatory or planned adaptation is limited or absent. The analysis shows that neither technological, political nor ecological solutions alone are sufficient to further our understanding of the analytical aspects of transition thinking in urban climate governance. In conclusion, the paper argues that the future research agenda for urban climate governance needs to explore further the links between the three traditions in order to better identify contradictions, complementarities or compatibilities, and what this means in practice for creating and assessing urban experiments.

Regional challenges of climate change adaptation in Finland: examining the ability to adapt in the absence of national level steering

Climate change adaptation presents a challenge for all levels of governance. As impacts of climate change are most acutely felt at the regional and local level, there is a need to understand the limits and barriers of the design and implementation of adaptation measures on these levels. The aim of this paper is to focus on the regional level in Finland in order to identify the limits and barriers to regional implementation of climate change adaptation in the absence of steering from the national level. In order to do this, the paper draws on two empirical studies on adaptation within the regions of Uusimaa and Pirkanmaa in Finland. The paper describes the manner in which voluntary initiatives at the regional and local level have emerged, and regions have acted on adaptation in the absence of clear steering from the national level.

Mainstreaming Climate Change Adaptation: The Case of Multi-Level Governance in Finland

Although mitigation of climate change dominates the climate change agenda in Finland, adaptation to climate change is increasingly recognised as an important policy issue across all levels of governance. Finland was an early mover on adaptation, being the first country in Europe to publish a National Adaptation Strategy to climate change in 2005. After a few years of mainstreaming of adaptation into regular planning, implementation and monitoring at the national level, adaptation has been recognised important and some measures have been implemented but that there are also sectors where hardly any measures have been taken. At sub-national level, actors are pursuing voluntary climate strategies that are not directly linked to the developments at the national level. This chapter highlights how the different levels of governance are disconnected in terms of their actions on adaptation. On the one hand, at the national level, the NAS predominantly concentrates on administrative sectors by mainstreaming adaptation. On the other hand, the lower levels of governance are pursuing their separate climate strategies that are based on voluntary initiatives with little input from the national level. Thus, despite the early action on adaptation, it can be argued that implementation of adaptation measures has been slow and fragmented across levels of governance.

A framework for analysing regional adaptive capacity assessments: challenges for methodology and policy making

The assessment of regional vulnerability to climate change has become an important issue in climate change adaptation. In order to aid decision making in terms of prioritising adaptation action or allocating resources for adaptation measures, both scholars and policy makers emphasise the need for comprehensive and spatially explicit vulnerability studies. Adaptive capacity is not only an important part of vulnerability assessments, it also underlies and enables the governing of adaptation activities, thus making it an issue relevant to policy. Hence, the assessment of adaptive capacity gives decision makers on international, national and regional level important information to develop adaptation policy. Drawing on current vulnerability and adaptive capacity studies, the objective of this paper is to present a framework that structures adaptive capacity assessments based on science-policy interaction, discussing the objectives of the assessment, the methodology and the use of results. The framework is applied to two examples: a pan-European assessment of adaptive capacity and an assessment of the adaptive capacity of the tourism sector in the European Alps, both on the regional level. The main findings show how decisions related to methodology can influence the use of results in decision making. In conclusion, this paper contributes to the literature by arguing that more attention needs to be paid to assessment design in order to better support the mobilisation of adaptive capacity for adaptation.

Inter-relationships between adaptation and mitigation: a systematic literature review

Based on a systematic literature review method that consists of a bibliometric and a content analysis, we examine the current state of research on climate change adaptation and mitigation inter-relationships. Although systematic literature reviews have been applied in other research fields such as health sciences, there are only a few examples in social and environmental sciences. First, we investigate in which research fields the inter-relationships between adaptation and mitigation have been studied and how they have been conceptualised. Second, we analyse what kinds of synergies, trade-offs or conflicts between adaptation and mitigation policies and practices can be identified particularly in urban studies. Third, based on selected urban studies, we examine how inter-relationships between the two policy objectives or practical measures have been studied, in which context, and what is the main outcome of these studies. We also present what suggestions there are for solving conflicts, and how synergies can be enhanced in urban areas. The results indicate that there is value in examining the two together since urban areas are balancing between adaptation and mitigation and have to negotiate trade-offs at different scales.