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

Abstract

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.

Does Climate Finance Support Institutional Adaptive Capacity in Caribbean Small Island and Developing States? An Analysis of the Green Climate Fund Readiness Grants

“…In addition, two key components for more efficient national policies have been identified: the degree of environmental and climate policy integration, meaning cross-sectoral ministries' understanding of the importance of climate change adaptation and their subsequent consideration of the impacts of climate change on their national policies [5][6][7][8], and the adaptive capacity of institutions, meaning their ability to enable the adaptive capacity of the country, and the external actors that promote change [9][10][11][12][13]. These two elements are not necessarily present in the institutional make-up of countries, with ministries often working in silos and with potential conflictual objectives (Runhaar, Driessen, and Uittenbroek) [7].…”

Adaptive Resilience of Complex Safety-Critical Sociotechnical Systems: Toward a Unified Conceptual Framework and Its Formalization

“…Resilience is a concept that has been defined in many scientific fields. For instance, resilience is studied in natural science: physics [1], biology [2], ecology [3], and climate [4]; in social sciences: psychology [5], sociology [6], and economics [7]; in formal sciences: mathematics [8] and computer science [9]; and in applied sciences: engineering [10], health [11], and supply chain [12]. Depending on the field, the interpretation of what is and what is not resilience is very different and sometimes contradictory.…”

Climate Adaptation at the Local Scale: Using Federal Climate Adaptation Policy Regimes to Enhance Climate Services

“…As summarized in Table 1, all the Kresge initiatives were formulated and implemented by multiple partner organizations under a more or less collaborative model of interaction. It is our sense that the federal climate adaptation policy regime complex suggested through reanalysis of the Kresge case studies bears the hallmarks associated with theories of adaptive governance [27][28][29][30][31][32]. Adaptive governance is characterized by decentralized decision making, a reliance on procedural rationality, and a highly contextual application of science and technical information.…”

“…"Situational" in its applicability [10,27]: Adaptation initiatives driven or enabled through the federal policy regime do not necessarily apply to all jurisdictions in the same way. Rather, contingencies and circumstances determine the degree to which governance models, experienced extreme events, or anticipated changes in climate parameters will impact resources or service streams addressed through a given policy or approach to governance.…”