Governing climate change in Dutch cities: anchoring local climate strategies in organisation,policy and practical implementation

Although Dutch cities were among the forerunners in local climate policy, a systematic overview on climate mitigation and adaptation policy is still missing. This study aims to fill this gap by analysing 25 Dutch cities using indicators for the level of anchoring in policy, organisation and practical implementation as well as multi-level relations. Since Tilburg, Amsterdam, Den Haag and Rotterdam show a higher performance than other Dutch cities, these four cities are used as reference cities. The findings suggest that structural integration of climate mitigation and adaptation is limited in Dutch cities. The study points at three recent trends in local climate governance in the Netherlands: (i) decentralisation within municipal organisations, (ii) externalisation initiatives that place climate policy outside the municipal organisation and (iii) regionalisation with neighbouring municipalities and the provincial government.     

Understanding urban vulnerability,adaptation and resilience in the context of climate change

This paper introduces a special issue of Local Environment that has arisen through collaboration between academic researchers and the Urban Planning and Design Branch of UN-Habitat, focused on how we can understand and respond to the challenges of urban vulnerability, adaptation and resilience in the context of climate change. The paper establishes the existing state of the art in the field, and considers critical challenges that are emerging in the research-based literature. In this context, it introduces UN-Habitat's Cities and Climate Change Initiative and reflects on the lessons learnt and challenges ahead, drawing on insights from across the papers in the special issue. In conclusion, it identifies the role of international/transnational co-operation, the relation between adaptation and mitigation, issues of multi-level governance and the ways in which change in urban socio-technical systems might be achieved as critical issues across the science/policy interface where increased dialogue and the co-production of knowledge needs to focus in order to advance this agenda.     

Insurance sector management of climate change adaptation in three Nordic countries: the influence of policy and market factors

The insurance industry is important for facilitating climate change adaptation. Insurance companies’ involvement is, however, influenced by national adaptation policy. The literature suggests that especially policy factors – government interventions, political priorities and public–private cooperation – and market factors – cost offset, cost mitigation, planning flexibility and business opportunities – shape private actor approaches. To increase the understanding of insurance company involvement in adaptation, this study examines how insurance companies’ approaches are influenced by policy and market factors in three countries: Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The study found that the policy factors tested significantly shaped the approaches of the companies assessed, while market factors currently appear less influential. This is likely due to the absence of climate risk and adaptation in political debates and among insurance policyholders. The study discusses the potential role of the insurance industry in adaptation governance and suggests how barriers facing insurance companies could be overcome.     

Exploring the autonomous adaptation strategies to climate change and climate variability in selected villages in the rural northern savannah zone of Ghana

Evidence abounds attesting to changes in the global climate. In Ghana, climate change and climate variability have brought several exposure-sensitivities on different people and at different times. Due to the multiplicity of climate change and climate variability effects, adaptation strategies invariably could be influenced by several factors. This paper assesses the adoption of adaptation strategies in the rural northern savannah zone of Ghana as a result of climate change and variability. Using two villages each from Savelugu Nanton, West Mamprusi and Kassena Nankana East Districts, which are slightly different as case studies, the paper unearthed panoply of varied adaptation strategies in each of them including intensification of irrigation; integration of livestock production; changes in tillage practices; fertiliser application on farms; shift from agriculture to non-farm jobs; seasonal migration and purchase of drought insurance for maize. The results indicate that the relativity in adoption and utilisation of the different adaptive strategies are interlinked with geographical, social, economic, institutional and political factors and processes in the villages. The findings drum home the essentiality of location-specific planned adaptation strategies for climate change through a bottom-up approach, in order to ensure their effectiveness and sustainability.     

Embeddedness of climate change adaptation: established procedures and contending discourses for flood protection in Espoo,Finland

Calls for more stakeholder participation and cooperation, the acknowledgement of uncertainties as well as for flexible and robust solutions have become frequent in the literature on climate change adaptation. Recent studies show that these calls are taken up only reluctantly in local adaptation compared to sectoral and technical solutions. The aim of this study is to examine to which extent adaptation as an embedded process within the local context allows for stakeholder participation, cooperation and the robustness and flexibility of adaptation measures. It applies an analytical approach, combining an action framework of adaptation and document-based discourse analysis, to assess both the procedural and the substantive viewpoint of an adaptation case in Finland. This twofold approach provides insight into how the adaptation process and content influence and condition each other. The analysis highlights how new approaches to adaptation have to compete with prevailing discourses and institutionalised practices, as public authorities take the dominant role in adaptation, striving for certain and safe solutions. This process has few participatory elements and leaves little leeway to address uncertainty.     

Valuing welfare impacts of climate change in coastal areas: a French case study

Beach protection has become a major issue in reducing coastal risks (erosion and flooding). It is thus advisable to study residents’ preferences for mitigation strategies. Willingness-to-pay (WTP) by permanent and secondary residents for flood protection provided to properties by Languedoc-Roussillon beaches (French Mediterranean coast) is investigated by a contingent valuation study. Results show that WTP is more influenced by risk perception variables than by socio-economic ones. The WTP is then extrapolated on the basis of different adaptation strategies (laissez-faire, managed retreat, denial etc.) which provided information about expected damage associated with sea level rise at the 2100 time horizon.     

Barriers and enablers to climate change adaptation in hierarchical governance systems: the case of Vietnam

Governments fulfil important roles in increasing the adaptive capacity of local communities to respond to climate change impacts, particularly in developing countries. Existing studies on how governments enable and constrain the ways in which local level communities learn and build their adaptive capacity, however, generally adopt network or market-oriented types of governance. However, the most vulnerable regions to climate change impact in the world are generally governed through hierarchical policy systems. This research aims to understand how the hierarchical policy system in Vietnam creates enables and/or constrains the policy capacity of policy actors to contribute to effective climate change adaptation. We conducted interviews (n?=?26) with key actors at multiple levels of government. Our findings show the importance of clear legal institutions, available financing for implementing policies, and the training of governmental staff, particularly at district and commune levels where the policy capacities are generally too low to deal with climate change impacts. We conclude that any efforts to support local actors (i.e. smallholder farmers) should include investments in policy capacity to ensure uptake and upscaling of adaptation actions more broadly.     

Barriers and guidelines for public policies on climate change adaptation: A missed opportunity of scientific knowledge‐brokerage

Progress in formulating and implementing effective adaptation policies is often hampered by a wide variety of barriers that are well documented in the literature. Among the barriers are lack of awareness, certainty, resources and political commitment. Since these and other barriers can be overcome (e.g., by raising awareness, closing knowledge gaps, and increasing resources), numerous decision‐support frameworks (mainly written guidelines) have been developed for this purpose. The present paper takes stock of both the barriers in adaptation policymaking, as documented in the literature, and the guidelines that aim to facilitate public policies on climate change adaptation. It then compares to what degree selected adaptation guidelines serve as knowledge‐brokerage tools that provide guidance on how to overcome the barriers addressed in the scientific literature. The comparison shows that adaptation guidelines address barriers of adaptation policymaking neither comprehensively nor systematically. Since most adaptation guidelines focus on (subjective) experiences with good practices than on empirical research findings, we conclude that they represent a missed opportunity of scientific knowledge‐brokerage in climate change adaptation.     

The overlooked role of New York City urban yards in mitigating and adapting to climate change

There is a dearth of research focusing on the role that urban residential open space plays in climate change adaptation, despite evidence suggesting that environmental benefits accrue when even small pockets of open space are made permeable and vegetated. In densely built New York City, there are 21,448?ha (53,000 acres) of such land. One city block with adjoining contiguous open space was investigated to quantify its existing environmental value and also its potential to provide enhanced services through redesign. The study block's open space was found to be 35% permeable and planted with 96 trees, storing 45,359?kg (100,000?lb) of carbon. Simulations conducted using the United States Environmental Protection Agency Stormwater Management Model contrasting normal, light, and heavy precipitation years suggested that increases in annual precipitation could be fully mitigated by reducing impervious surface cover by 25%. The preservation of the existing vegetated residential urban open space and the conversion of paved surfaces to a pervious condition both appear to be effective strategies for enhancing the city's ability to adapt to and mitigate for climate change.     

The local governance of climate change: new tools to respond to old limitations in Esmeraldas,Ecuador

This article argues that climate change, seen as a socially constructed anticipation of natural disasters and a future-risk that plays out in present politics, is enabling the emergence of new modes of governance in cities of the global south. The article focuses on the process by which the city of Esmeraldas, Ecuador, developed a Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Strategy. Within the context of climate change adaptation, Esmeraldas mobilised new discourses, stakeholders, and planning mechanisms to address pre-existing urban planning and development limitations. This discursively enabled the municipality's ongoing governance project by leveraging resources, creating consensus, and informing practice. Climate change adaptation thus became an important mechanism for engaging with local priorities, particularly those of the most vulnerable populations, and for bridging the gap between the formal world of policymaking and the reality of life in the city, which is more often structured by informality.     

Youth,climate change and visions of the future in Miami

ABSTRACT

Miami, FL, is one of the most climate-vulnerable cities in the United States. At an average elevation of only 6 feet above sea level, parts of the city could be made uninhabitable by rising oceans within the next 40 years. The effects of climate change are already beginning to be seen, but the subject of climate change is nevertheless modelled, imagined and contested in the future tense. Today's young people are similarly future oriented, but unlike older generations they will live to feel climate change's full future effects. This study investigates knowledge of and experiences with climate change among young adults in Miami, and their visions of the future in light of predicted changes. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 19 long-term residents of the city between the ages of 18 and 30 who were students at Miami-Dade College or Florida International University. I discuss participants’ sense of personal responsibility to inform themselves and the individualised understandings of climate science that emerge, their disillusionment with politics and resulting perception of individual responsibility for climate mitigation, and their negotiation of personal future plans in light of fatalistic visions of the future. These young adults’ perspectives on rising seas in their home city are revealed to be socially structured by ideals of individual agency and self-reliance, which become paradoxically disempowering because of the impossibility of addressing the transformational impacts of climate change through individualised means.     

Nepalganj,the centre of the world: local perceptions of environmental change and the roles of climate-change adaptation actors

This paper explores community perspectives of environmental change and the role development actors in the regional Nepali town of Nepalganj. Understanding these perceptions is crucial for planning future adaptation to climate change and ensuring that these measures are sustainable and in line with community priorities. Firstly, I contend that whilst the local community in Nepalganj may be experiencing the impacts of climate change, they are unfamiliar and disassociated with the concept. Secondly, I identify a number of risks and opportunities around the role of local government, international development organisations and local non-government organisations in future adaptation actions. Participant perceptions of these institutions in their community reinforce a number of established critiques of development around themes such as poor consultation and short project timelines. The long-term success of adaptation actions will be shaped by the ability and willingness of development actors to evolve their practices by listening to local communities.     

Understanding consumer behaviour and adaptation planning responses to climate-driven environmental change in Canada's parks and protected areas: a climate futurescapes approach

Parks and protected areas are a global ecological, social and health resource visited by over 8 billion people annually. Their use can yield substantial benefits, but only if a balance between ecological integrity and sustainable visitation is struck. This research explores the potential influence of climate-driven environmental change on visitation to North America's most popular glacier, the Athabasca Glacier in Jasper National Park, Canada. Photorealistic environmental visualizations were used to gauge visitors’ perceptions of environmental change and potential impacts on consumer behaviour. Results suggest that impacts could substantially diminish the site's pull as a tourism destination. Rather than improving visitation prospects, expert-proposed adaptations underestimated the importance of perceived naturalness and contributed to further potential decline. Findings are relevant to protected areas planning and management. They suggest that a natural path to climate change adaptation is the best way to support both ecological integrity and the long-term tourism pull of protected areas.     

A picture of change: using photovoice to explore social and environmental change in coastal communities on the Andaman Coast of Thailand

Coastal communities experience a wide array of environmental and social changes to which they must constantly adapt. Further, a community's perception of change and risk has significant implications for a community's willingness and ability to adapt to both current and future changes. As part of a larger study focusing on the adaptive capacity of communities on the Andaman Coast of Thailand, we used Photovoice to open a dialogue with communities about changes in the marine environment and in coastal communities. This article presents the results of two exploratory Photovoice processes and discusses prospects for using the Photovoice method for exploring social and environmental change. Changes examined included a number of broader environmental and social trends as well as ecological specifics and social particularities in each site. Participants also explored the social implications of environmental changes, the impacts of macro-scale processes on local outcomes, and emotive and active responses of individuals and communities to change. Photovoice is deemed a powerful method for: examining social, environmental, and socio-ecological change, triangulating to confirm the results of other scientific methods, revealing novel ecological interactions, and providing input into community processes focusing on natural resource management, community development, and climate change adaptation.     

The ambiguity of federalism in climate policy-making: how the political system in Austria hinders mitigation and facilitates adaptation

Although the impacts of federalism on environmental policy-making are still contested, many policy analysts emphasise its advantages in climate policy-making. This applies to the mitigation of climate change, in particular when federal governments (as in the U.S.) are inactive. More recently, federalism is also expected to empower sub-national actors in adapting to local impacts of climate change. The present paper analyses the role federalism in Austria played in greening the decentralised building sector (relevant for mitigation) on the one hand, and in improving regional flood risk management (relevant for adaptation) on the other. In line with the so-called matching school of the environmental federalism research strand we conclude that Austrian federalism proved to be more appropriate for regional flood protection than for mitigating climate change. We highlight that it is not federalism per se but federalism embedded in various contextual factors that shape environmental policy-making. Among these factors are the spatial scale of an environmental problem, the nitty-gritty of polity systems, and national politics (such as federal positions on climate change mitigation).     

Between science and local knowledge: improving the communication of climate change to rural agriculturists in the Bolgatanga Municipality,Ghana

ABSTRACT

There is an overwhelming scientific consensus that global climate is changing with associated devastating, yet differential impacts on different world regions. This, therefore, calls for efforts to improve our understanding of the phenomenon as a way of enhancing mitigation and adaptation measures. Although a lot has been done in this respect, the present study examines the extent to which misnomers associated with the calendar months and local climate events can be employed to convey the phenomenon of climate change to rural agriculturists in the Bolgatanga municipality. The study establishes that the names of the calendar months, which serve as goalposts for local agricultural practices no longer portray their true meaning due to climate change. The study, therefore, recommends the use of nuanced ways of communicating climate change to local agriculturists, using scientific research, lived experiences as well as socially and culturally embedded tools such as misnomers associated with local climate events.     

Adaptive capacity and climate change: the role of community opinion leaders

The contribution of the informal community sector to the development of collective response strategies to socioecological change is not well researched. In this article, we examine the role of community opinion leaders in developing and mobilising stocks of adaptive capacity. In so doing, we reveal a largely unexplored mechanism for building on latent social capital and associated networks that have the potential to transcend local-scale efforts – an enduring question in climate change adaptation and other cross-scalar sustainability issues. Participants drawn from diverse spheres of community activity in the Sunshine Coast, Australia, were interviewed about their strategies for influencing their community objectives and the degree to which they have engaged with responding to climate change. The results show community opinion leaders to be politically engaged through rich bridging connections with other community organisations, and vertically with policy-makers at local, state, national and international levels. Despite this latent potential, the majority of community opinion leaders interviewed were not strategically engaged with responding to climate change. This finding suggests that more work is needed to connect networks knowledgeable about projected climate change impacts with local networks of community opinion leaders. Attention to the type of community-based strategies considered effective and appropriate by community opinion leaders and their organisations also suggests avenues for policy-makers to facilitate community engagement in responding to climate change across sectors likely to be affected by its impacts. Opportunities to extend understanding of adaptive capacity within the community sector through further research are also suggested.     

Government response to climate change in China: a study of provincial and municipal plans

In this paper, we provide an overview of local and regional climate change plans in China by scrutinizing planning documents from 16 cities, four autonomous regions, and 22 provinces. We develop and apply an evaluation protocol to understand goals, process, and strategies in these plans. We also conduct interviews with government officials to provide a context for subnational climate change planning. The results indicate that current climate change planning in China is characterized by the ‘top-down’ approach, in which the central governmental incentives play a vital role in shaping provincial and municipal plans. In addition, most plans have the following issues: vague definition of what characterizes a low-carbon city/region; deficiency in the quality of greenhouse gas inventory and reduction targets; insufficient strategies provided to respond to climate change; inadequate stakeholder engagement; and weak horizontal coordination. Finally, we offer recommendations to improve climate change planning in China.     

Formulating and implementing climate change laws and policies in the Philippines,Mexico (Chiapas), and South Africa: a local government perspective

Faced with the prospects of a changing climate, a small but increasing number of countries are developing legal and regulatory frameworks that explicitly address climate change. Moreover at least some of these laws and policies carve out substantial roles for local governments. The present paper surveys three countries from different regions in the Global South that have developed or are developing such laws and policies: the Philippines (Asia-Pacific), Mexico and more specifically its State of Chiapas (Latin America), and South Africa (Africa). It examines those experiences through two different lenses. The paper first reviews the steps by which those laws or policies were developed. For this review, criteria for effective consultative processes are proposed. The study then examines the three climate change laws or policies per se. To this end, a framework including four modes of multi-level urban climate governance (governing by regulation, governing through enabling, governing by provision, governing with representation and consultation) is utilised. The paper ends with synthetic conclusions as to which experiences represent promising practices, and what other lessons are relevant for countries embarking on such processes.     

Managing climate change vulnerabilities: formal institutions and knowledge use as determinants of adaptive capacity at the local level in Sweden

Though managing vulnerabilities posed by climate change calls for effective strategies and measures, its challenges have hitherto not been fully understood. In Sweden, municipalities have recently started incorporating vulnerability management into their political and administrative agendas. This study discusses such experiences and explores how institutional determinants may influence adaptive capacity within a local case study area, to illustrate emerging challenges and opportunities for Swedish municipalities in managing climate vulnerabilities. Specifically, formal institutional structure and the use of knowledge are analysed, concluding that vulnerability management often is focused on technical and reactive fixes, due to limited co-operation between local sector organisations, lack of local co-ordination, and an absence of methods and traditions to build institutional knowledge. Even so, opportunities, such as a high capacity to examine risks to technical systems and important establishments which in turn facilitates protection of technical infrastructure exposed to climate variability and change, also exist.