Foreign‐Funded Adaptation to Climate Change in Africa: Mirroring Administrative Traditions or Traditions of Administrative Blueprinting?

Abstract

Climate change impacts are most severe in developing countries with limited adaptive capacity. Accordingly, in Africa, climate change adaptation has become an issue of international funding and practice. As suggested in the Introduction to this special issue, administrative traditions could play a role in how adaptation plays out. This, however, raises questions about how foreign funding regimes coincide with recipients' administrative traditions, especially on the African continent where administrative traditions are often meagerly established. To address these questions, this article takes an explorative approach. From a literature review of African state governance and development aid approaches, we take colonial legacy as the most distinctive factor responsible for African administrative traditions. In addition, we define three ways in which foreign aid programs have dealt with African administration: (1) aligning with donor administration, (2) blueprinting administration, and (3) ignoring administration. Using 34 African countries' National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs), we analyze how African governments actually frame adaptation as a governance challenge. We contrast these frames with: (1) administrative traditions based on colonial legacy and (2) the ways in which development aid programs have historically dealt with recipient African administrations. Our findings indicate that NAPAs only meagerly refer to the administrative tradition that could be expected based on colonial legacy, but extensively refer to blueprint ideas common among international donors, or ignore administration altogether. We discuss the implications for adaptation to climate change.

Evaluating flood adaptation governance in the city of Calabar, Nigeria

“…Our study highlights that flood adaptation in complex developing cities will not be addressed successfully by any one category of actor or by a single governing approach. There could be implications of such approach that promotes interactions between formal and informal institutions for other partners and, especially, funders (Vink and Schouten, 2018). We argue that rather than limit their enthusiasm to participate in climate hazard management in the developing cities that lack a form of decentralised governance, better recognition of informal networks is likely to enhance participation and result in improved risk management.…”

Public Bureaucracy and Climate Change Adaptation

“…Second, the emergence of a more polycentric climate governance system offers the possibility of designing and implementing policies that are aligned to existing administrative traditions so as to prevent policy misfits. However, as demonstrated in several articles of this special issue (e.g., Vink and Schouten, ; Biesbroek et al, ; Rahman and Tosun, ), international donors and transnational legislation and policy, such as those furthered by the EU can—and often will—push for administrative and policy reforms, guidelines and exchanges of best practices, and specific reporting procedures. That said, ignoring the diversity of administrative traditions can have negative consequences for the uptake of adaptation measures domestically, and also result in “blueprinting”—as opposed to recognizing the richness and diversity of how states (could) respond to climate impacts.…”

“…Vink and Schouten (), meanwhile, ask if international donor influence and reporting requirements under the UNFCCC have forced African countries to abandon their administrative traditions. Contrasting 34 African countries’ National Adaptation Programs of Action (NAPAs) with the ways in which development aid programs have historically dealt with recipient African administrations, they use the concept of administrative blueprinting to characterize the misfit between the administrative traditions of a recipient country and the requirements from donors in terms of (good) governance principles.…”

Scientific Advice and Administrative Traditions: The Role of Chief Scientists in Climate Change Adaptation

“…Previous studies assessing administrative traditions usually focused on established Western democracies in Europe and North America or post‐Soviet or post‐colonial states (Painter & Peters, ; Verheijen, ). Israel, other small or young countries, as well as African states (Vink & Schouten, ) are often overlooked. Research characterizing current adaptation strategies “remains in its infancy” (Ford et al, , p. 801).…”