Influencing resilience: the role of policy entrepreneurs in mainstreaming climate adaptation

Abstract

One way to make development pathways more resilient in the face of a changing climate has been through mainstreaming adaptation into government policies, planning and sectoral decision‐making. To date, many of the transferable lessons have taken the form of technical approaches such as risk assessments and toolkits. This article instead draws on evidence from South Asia to emphasise some of the more tacit and informal approaches used to influence adaptation policy. Despite their apparent significance in policy processes, such tactics are often neither planned for nor well reported in resilience‐building projects and programme documents. Using evidence to populate a typology of influencing strategies, this article looks particularly at the role of policy entrepreneurs who navigate the political complexity of both formal and informal governance systems to promote successful adaptation mainstreaming. It concludes with recommendations for adaptation and resilience programming that can more effectively harness the breadth of influencing strategies.

Building resilience from the ground up

“…They highlight the important differences between donor understandings of resilience and those of vulnerable people in the Sahel, and emphasise and explore subjective dimensions of resilience with local community members. Tanner et al (2019) emphasise that building resilience is different from business-asusual development, but that adaptation and development processes are inextricably linked. Their article illustrates how disseminating information about the weather and climate through these systems helps people in farming communities access and use it to take better decisions.…”

“…Tanner et al (2019), for example, focus on scaling up via the political processes of influencing government policy planning and sectoral decision-making on climate adaptation. Tanner et al (2019), for example, focus on scaling up via the political processes of influencing government policy planning and sectoral decision-making on climate adaptation.…”

“…This illustrates a practical case where well-designed and communicated access to previously unavailable information enables people to become more resilient. Tanner et al (2019) emphasise that building resilience is different from business-asusual development, but that adaptation and development processes are inextricably linked. As such, climate change is increasingly being integrated or 'mainstreamed' into development planning and sectoral decision-making, in order that adaptation measures become 'part of a broader suite of measures within existing development processes and decision cycles' (OECD, 2009).…”

“…Many of the articles focus on influencing public officials to bring about transformational changes. Tanner et al (2019), for example, focus on scaling up via the political processes of influencing government policy planning and sectoral decision-making on climate adaptation. Young and Ismail (2019) document and describe resilience in Darfur, and how local actors are linking to and engaging with government and wider civil society networks, resulting in a shared understanding of the experiences of local people and their ability to manage variability.…”

“…Each brings a different perspective on the significance and operationalisation of efforts to build resilience to climate extremes and disasters. The contributing authors describe resilience-building at different scales, for different types of projects and interventions: from gender-differentiated perspectives within households in Ethiopia, Burkina Faso and Chad (Le Masson et al, 2019;McOmber et al, 2019), to devolved community planning and financing in Mali and Senegal (Beauchamp et al, 2019); from sector-wide agricultural extension support in Sudan (Young and Ismail, 2019), to early warning systems in Ethiopia and Nicaragua (Ewbank et al, 2019), national social protection programmes in Ethiopia (Ulrichs et al, 2019) and advocacy for mainstreaming into government policy in South Asia (Tanner et al, 2019).…”