Europe adapts to climate change: Comparing National Adaptation Strategies

Biesbroek, Robbert; Swart, Rob; Carter, Timothy R.; Cowan, Caroline; Henrichs, Thomas; Mela, Hanna; Morecroft, Michael D.; Rey, Daniela

doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2010.03.005

Cited by 560 publications

(394 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…However, how and why cities engage in climate policy remains largely unclear and the effect of (binding or non-binding) policies from higher levels of government is hardly understood (Kelemen, 2010). Whilst scholars note a supporting effect (Biesbroek et al, 2010;Leck and Simon, 2013), the mere existence of international or indeed national climate policies is no guarantee for local plans and action (Feliciano et al, 2013;Villarroel Walker et al, 2014). There is a need to provide cross country empirical evidence on climate change policy.…”

Section: Background To Climate Change Policiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

National climate policies across Europe and their impacts on cities strategies

Heidrich

Reckien

Olazabal

et al. 2016

Journal of Environmental Management

145

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National climate policies across Europe and their impacts on cities strategies ABSTRACTGlobally, efforts are underway to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to climate change impacts at the local level. However, there is a poor understanding of the relationship between city strategies on climate change mitigation and adaptation and the relevant policies at national and European level. This paper describes a comparative study and evaluation of cross-national policy.It reports the findings of studying the climate change strategies or plans from 200 European cities from Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom. The study highlights the shared responsibility of global, European, national, regional and city policies. An interpretation and illustration of the influences from international and national networks and policy makers in stimulating the development of local strategies and actions is proposed. It was found that there is no archetypical way of planning for climate change, and multiple interests and motivations are inevitable. Our research warrants the need for a multi-scalar approach to climate policy in the future, mainly ensuring sufficient capacity and resource to enable local authorities to plan and respond to their specific climate change agenda for maximising the management potentials for translating environmental challenges into opportunities

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Section: Background To Climate Change Policiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

National climate policies across Europe and their impacts on cities strategies

Heidrich

Reckien

Olazabal

et al. 2016

Journal of Environmental Management

145

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Effective CCA strategies have been identified as a combination of both bottom-up reactive local actions at state level and global initiatives (Adger et al 2005;Biesbroek et al 2010;Ladoba 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing agricultural systems vulnerability to climate change to inform adaptation planning: an application in Khorezm, Uzbekistan

Aleksandrova

Gain

Giupponi

2015

Mitig Adapt Strateg Glob Change

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Agriculture is one of the most vulnerable sectors to climate change. The current vulnerability assessments through traditional fragmented sectoral methods are insufficient to capture the effects on complex agricultural systems. Therefore, the traditional methods need to be replaced by integrated approaches. The objective of this study is to propose a holistic vulnerability assessment method for agricultural systems. By aggregating both agro-ecological and socio-economic information, we develop an agricultural systems vulnerability index (ASVI) which allows for: (i) a classification of geographical units according to their vulnerability level; (ii) an identification of key determinants of vulnerability for each unit; (iii) an assessment of adaptation policy scenarios considering their effects on the sustainability of the analysed systems. The proposed method is applied in the Khorezm region of Uzbekistan -a representative irrigated agricultural region in the Lower Amu Darya river basin. A decision support tool is used to facilitate multi-criteria decision analysis, including the computation of the index and performing sensitivity analysis of the results. The assessment for Khorezm reveals significant spatial differences of vulnerability levels due to a variation of contributing factors, e.g. natural resources, water productivity, rural-urban ratio. It reveals also that feasible land and water management policies could reduce the vulnerability in Khorezm, particularly in the districts with the poorest agro-ecological conditions. Overall, the proposed method could support national and local authorities in the identification of sustainable adaptation policies for the agriculture sector.

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“…Policy studies outside of southern Africa to date have identified the importance of strengthening partnerships and collaborations to manage the impacts of climate change, as well as developing an appropriate institutional context and supporting policy instruments (Massey et al 2014;Biesbroek et al 2010). The need to build such policy activities upon cross-sector dialogue and actions has also been recognised in southern Africa by the establishment of inter-ministerial climate change committees and task forces in countries such as Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe (Stringer et al 2014).…”

Section: Adaptation As a Cross-cutting Policy Issuementioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change adaptation and cross-sectoral policy coherence in southern Africa

et al. 2018

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To be effective, climate change adaptation needs to be mainstreamed across multiple sectors and greater policy coherence is essential. Using the cases of Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia, this paper investigates the extent of coherence in national policies across the water and agriculture sectors and to climate change adaptation goals outlined in national development plans. A two-pronged qualitative approach is applied using Qualitative Document Analysis of relevant policies and plans, combined with expert interviews from non-government actors in each country. Findings show that sector policies have differing degrees of coherence on climate change adaptation, currently being strongest in Zambia and weakest in Tanzania. We also identify that sectoral policies remain more coherent in addressing immediate-term disaster management issues of floods and droughts rather than longer-term strategies for climate adaptation. Coherence between sector and climate policies and strategies is strongest when the latter has been more recently developed. However to date, this has largely been achieved by repackaging of existing sectoral policy statements into climate policies drafted by external consultants to meet international reporting needs and not by the establishment of new connections between national sectoral planning processes. For more effective mainstreaming of climate change adaptation, governments need to actively embrace longer-term cross-sectoral planning through cross-Ministerial structures, such as initiated through Zambia's Interim Climate Change Secretariat, to foster greater policy coherence and integrated adaptation planning.

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Europe adapts to climate change: Comparing National Adaptation Strategies

Cited by 560 publications

References 36 publications

National climate policies across Europe and their impacts on cities strategies

National climate policies across Europe and their impacts on cities strategies

Assessing agricultural systems vulnerability to climate change to inform adaptation planning: an application in Khorezm, Uzbekistan

Climate change adaptation and cross-sectoral policy coherence in southern Africa

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