Search

Whereas the literature on adaptation is rich in detail on impacts, vulnerability and constraints to climate adaptation, less is known about the conditions that facilitate adaptation in practice. We examined the constraints and opportunities for adaptation in water and land use planning in three regions: the Guadiana River Basin in Spain and Portugal, the Tisza River Basin in Hungary and western Inner Mongolia in China. We analysed the conditions that either facilitate or constrain adaptation in relation to 1) adaptation actors, 2) adaptation strategies and 3) adaptation objectives. Many adaptation assessments concentrate on climate impacts and the potential of adaptation strategies. The conditions that enable people to act on adaptation are studied less. Yet, these have been identified as particularly important for successfully implementing adaptation. We find that adaptation is enhanced by pilot projects that test and debate new ideas through collaboration between recognised actors from civil society, policy and science. Promising for adaptation is the integration of (traditional) agro-environmental land use systems that regulate regional climate impacts with new technologies, organisational responsibilities and financial instruments. A key challenge is to create flexible and equitable financial instruments that facilitate benefit- and burden-sharing, social learning and that support a diverse set of potentially better-adapted new activities rather than compensate for climate impacts on existing activities.

This deliverable reports on the work done in ADAM work package P3d. It examines the constraints and opportunities for mainstreaming adaptation to climate change in land use and water management in three study regions: the Guadiana River Basin in Spain and Portugal, the Tisza River Basin in Hungary and the Alxa region in western Inner Mongolia, China

In the EU, regions are acquiring greater decisional powers in the recent years. However, the ‘new regions’ do not longer correspond to the divisions that once were useful to the particular goals of the old nation-states, but are now created upon other new cooperation goals, including environment and sustainability, that transcend country borders. The mainstreaming of climate change into regional development goals and processes, including the adoption of new forms of governance and resource management related to adaptive management of shared resources such as transboundary river basins, entail the need to find new ways of cooperation and collaboration capable to erode existing regional divisions while at the same time developing new ones. We look at the role played by ‘atypical’ bridging organisations in the case of the Guadiana river basin, in Iberia, and to the extent that the new emerging cross-border institutional arrangements can be seen as an effective adaptive management response to mounting environmental threats such as climate change and water scarcity.