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Climate change adaptation policies are urgently needed, but the large volume and variety of evidence limits the ability of practitioners to make informed decisions. Here, we create an evidence map of adaptation policy research, selecting and categorizing 8,691 documents using state-of-the-art transformers-based machine learning models. We combine policy-relevant categories, such as the NATO-typology and governance levels, with automatically extracted locations and a structural topic model to provide a detailed global assessment of the tools governments are using to address climate change risks and impacts. We find that international-level policies, as well as policies in North America and much of the Global South, emphasize financial instruments, whereas national policies, particularly in Europe and Oceania, favor authority-based legislation. Collaborative approaches are most common at the local level. Despite a rapidly expanding evidence base overall, we note persistent geographic inequalities and limited evidence on information-based policies, policy implementation, and structural reforms.

Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Introduction and research questionsThis dissertation aims to assess, explain, and improve the extent to which governments make forward-looking decisions about their water infrastructure. Forward-looking decisions are especially relevant because many water infrastructure assets are reaching their end-of-lifetime due to technological ageing and changing functional demands. Governments therefore need to invest in the replacement and renewal of current infrastructure or in entirely new infrastructure. The long lifespan of water infrastructure requires governments to take into account possible impacts of developments such as climate change, economic developments, and demographic changes. Furthermore, governments worldwide committed themselves to international agreements focused on addressing long-term problems such as freshwater availability and climate change mitigation. Implementing such agreements requires national and local governments to exploit investments in end-of-lifetime infrastructure to achieve specific long-term objectives. Governments therefore need to think carefully about the future when they are preparing to invest in water infrastructure. They need to consider the relevance and impact of possible future developments for infrastructure and the potential contributions of infrastructure investments to addressing long-term problems. To ensure that infrastructure can cope with changing circumstances, they need to choose infrastructure that can remain effective across that infrastructure’s lifetime. This requires governments to make forward-looking decisions. This dissertation introduces forward-looking decisions as decisions in which governments anticipate possible future developments that could impact the long-term effectiveness of water infrastructure. Making forward-looking decisions can be especially challenging for governments because of their short budget and election cycles, their accountability to current constituents, their responsibility to provide, Wat maakt overheidsbeslissingen over waterinfrastructuur vooruitziend? Deze dissertatie beoogt de mate waarin overheden vooruitziende beslissingen over hun waterinfrastructuur nemen, te beoordelen, te verklaren en te verbeteren.

Climate variability and its impacts on the agriculture system is clearly evident in Ghana. Weather and seasonal climate forecast information service has been in operation for some time in the country. However, farmers generally do not find the information useful for their farm-level decision making. Forecast accuracy, untimeliness, and mismatch of forecast information and needs are often reported constraints for farmers to use weather and climate information. Consequently, the majority of farmers rely on their indigenous ecological knowledge to predict weather and seasonal climate patterns. At the same time, current weather and seasonal climate forecast information systems in Ghana face serious constraints in how they are used (if at all because of the one directional assumption behind its development; where only science produces new knowledge and makes it accessible for end-users with no or limited involvement of the end-users. In this context, this study addresses the central question: How can climate information services be improved through the coproduction of farmers and scientist? It aims at improving the reliability and acceptability of forecast information by integrating indigenous and scientific forecast. In this dissertation, I used a multi-method research approach, consisting of social participatory methods, mental modelling methods, forecast verification methods, and the principle of citizen science for data gathering and analysis. Initial diagnostics revealed certain issues that limit the uptake of climate information services in Northern Ghana: (1) the mismatch between forecast information provided and the farmers' information need (2) poor quality of forecast information, (3) the disconnect between forecast providers (researchers) and farmers, (4) management of unrealistic expectations of farmers. In response, I proposed a framework for second generation climate services that have the potential to facilitate co-production of relevant and accurate weath

To address the impacts of climate change, countries in South Asia are increasingly making efforts to design climate change adaptation (CCA) policies. Such policies are prepared in a complex power-loaded environment, where different policy actors struggle with one another to meet their personal or collective interests. Current CCA policy research highlights the importance of power in policy-making, but few studies have looked into this systematically. This dissertation therefore aims to study the role of power in CCA policy-making in South Asia and to recommend ways to deal with the negative effects of power. The research adopts an abductive research design, using qualitative case studies in Nepal, India and Bangladesh. Case studies at local, national and transboundary level are conducted to study how actors’ power interplay influences CCA policy-making processes and policies. This dissertation proposes a power interplay framework that describes interactions between policy actors and how actors deploy material and ideational resources to influence one another. It presents evidence of how policy actors use these resources at local and regional level to exclude local policy actors and push for short-termism in local adaptation plans and in the planning process for the transboundary Brahmaputra River basin. It shows that multiple climate policy paradigms shape the way in which adaptation is framed and approached by policy actors and that these paradigms have an important influence on how power interplay evolves. To reduce the negative effects of power – for example, the exclusion of actors – I distilled four power-sensitive design principles (PDPs) from other social science disciplines for application in the CCA context. The results of this dissertation offer theoretical contributions to the study of CCA policy-making in South Asia, and concrete and practically relevant PDPs are proposed to improve long-term CCA planning.

Many contemporary climate change and food security initiatives, including climate-smart agriculture (CSA), call for connecting and integrating different government levels, policy domains, and organizations. This boundary-crossing is frequently accompanied by difficulties including turf wars and power struggles, which risk to thwart policy development. Although the literature argues that policy entrepreneurship contributes to the crossing of level, domain, and organizational boundaries, knowledge on these dynamics is fragmented, and insights into entrepreneurial strategies, and how these are embedded in the policymaking context, are limited.Consequently, the aim of this dissertation is to understand how policy entrepreneurship contributes to the crossing of boundaries to achieve CSA. The aim is addressed through three research questions:How and why do policy entrepreneurs cross boundaries for climate-smart agriculture?How does the policymaking context influence cross-boundary policy entrepreneurship for climate-smart agriculture?How can cross-boundary policy entrepreneurship in the policy process for climate-smart agriculture be conceptualized?To understand policy entrepreneurship’s contribution to the crossing of boundaries, the dissertation focuses on two case studies of CSA policy development: the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture, and the National Climate-Smart Agriculture Strategy in Kenya. These cases have been studied through a mixed-methods research design, including a systematic literature review, congruence analysis, and frame analysis.The dissertation proposes a conceptual framework that describes cross-boundary policy entrepreneurship as a complex set of strategies that interplay with the policymaking context. This strategizing process is characterized by entrepreneurship interpreting and acting upon the policymaking context in order to reconfigure the policy process, with both intended and unintended effects. This is an ongoing process, where

Although policy entrepreneurs are assigned an important role in crossing policy boundaries and addressing complex problems, our understanding of the process is limited. This article systematically reviews 51 studies on conditions, strategies and implications of crossboundary entrepreneurship. Findings show that (1) the literature predominantly mentions issue promotion and coalition-building as crossboundary strategies; (2) vertical boundary-crossing is discussed more frequently than horizontal boundary-crossing; (3) the most reported boundary-crossing function is to expand issue arenas; (4) conditions that enable crossboundary strategies include institutional overlap, issue interpretation, power vacuum, overruling policies and lacking resources; and (5) implications of entrepreneurship include raised opposition, increased competition over leadership, augmented complexity hindering collective action, raised costs and resources, and issues regarding trust, legitimacy and authority. Policy entrepreneurship allows for micro-level insights in the emergence of crossboundary processes. We suggest future research to focus on causal processes between conditions, strategies and implications to better understand their interplay.

The global food price spikes of 2007–8 and 2010 led to increased awareness of the complexity of food (in)security as a policy problem that crosscuts traditional sectoral, spatial and temporal scales. At the European Union (EU) level, this awareness resulted in calls for better integrated approaches to govern food security. This paper addresses the question of to what extent these callswere followed by an actual shift towards better integrated EU food security governance.We address this question by applying a processual policy integration framework that distinguishes four integration dimensions: (i) the policy frame, (ii) subsystem involvement, (iii) policy goals, and (iv) policy instruments. The empirical body of evidence for assessing shifts in these dimensions draws upon an extensive analysis of EU documents complemented with interview data. We find that policy integration advanced to at least some degree: the policy frame expanded towards new dimensions of food security; a wider array ofsubsystems started discussing food security concerns; food security goals diversified somewhat and there was an increased awareness of coherence and linkages with other issues; existing instruments, including internal procedural instruments, were expanded and made more consistent; and new types of instruments were developed. At the same time, significant differences exist between policy domains and policy integration efforts seem to have come to a halt in recent years.We conclude with various policy recommendations and suggestions for follow-up research.

Climate change as expressed by erratic rainfall, increased flooding, extended droughts, frequency tropical cyclones or saline water intrusion, poses severe threats to smallholder farmers in Vietnam. Adaptation of the agricultural sector is vital to increase the resilience of smallholder farmers’ livelihoods in times of climate change. To complement efforts already implemented by farmers to reduce social vulnerability it is important to understand how farmers perceive their current and future capacity to adapt to climate change. This paper aims to explore smallholder farmers’ capacity to respond to climate change in current and future agricultural production. We carried out open, in-depth interviews (n = 13), focus group discussions, and structured interviews (n = 114) in the Thua Thien Hue province. Our findings show that farmers nowadays experience more extreme climate variability. Farmers report increasing stresses due to temperature increase and droughts. The autonomous adaptation strategies adopted by farmers include; adjusting the season calendar, using tolerant varieties and breeds, applying integrated crop production models, and income diversification. The motives for adopting particular planned adaptation options differ between farmers in crop production and livestock production. Four factors were found to be significant (p < .05) in influencing the spread of adaptation measures (AMs) farmers adopted: farm income, the number of available information sources, number of workers on the farm, and farmable land available during the summer season. Farmers report several barriers to implement adaptation strategies including; market price fluctuations, lack of skilled labour, lack of climate change information, and lack of capacity to learn and apply techniques in their daily practice. While both crop and livestock farmers participated in one or several training courses on climate change in the past years, livestock farmers were still uncertain about their future ca

Governing complex environmental issues involves intensive interaction between public and private actors. These governance processes are fraught with uncertainties about, for example, the current state of environmental affairs, the relevant set of decision alternatives, the reactions of other actors to proposed solutions or the future developments likely to affect an issue. Uncertainty comes in different shapes and sizes and different strands in the literature, which has placed emphasis either on the substance of the issue (e.g. in environmental sciences) or on the decision-making process (e.g. policy sciences). In this paper, we bring together these different strands of literature on uncertainty to present a novel analytical framework. We build on the argument that the nature of uncertainty consists of three types: epistemic uncertainty (involving the lack of knowledge about a particular system), ontological uncertainty (irreducible unpredictability due to inherently complex system behavior) and ambiguity (conflicts between fundamentally different frames about the issue at hand). Scholars have also argued the importance of differentiating between three different objects of uncertainty: substantive uncertainty (uncertainty about the content of decisions or policy issues), strategic uncertainty (uncertainty about the actions of other actors in the strategic game of decision-making) and institutional uncertainty (uncertainty about the rules of the game in decision-making). The framework is useful for analyzing and addressing the nine lives of uncertainty in decisionmaking. Better understanding of the range of uncertainties is crucial to design more robust policies and governance arrangements and to deal with wicked environmental problems.

Climate change already affects Vietnam in virtually all sectors. Agriculture in small communities is particularly vulnerable to current and projected climate change impacts. Many of the smallholder farmers in Vietnam have limited adaptive capacity to deal with these impacts. Increasingly social learning is proposed as an important mechanism to build the adaptive capacity of local farming communities. However, little is known about the interplay between social learning and adaptive capacity and how adaptive capacity could be increased in a complex hierarchical governance setting that is typical in a country like Vietnam. The dissertation therefore aims to elicit and explore the ways through which social learning can increase the adaptive capacity of smallholder farmers in central Vietnam to respond to climate change impacts. Four research questions are addressed: (i) what insights does the existing body of climate change adaptation literature provide into the interplay between social learning and adaptive capacity?; (ii) what do smallholder farmers in Vietnam perceive as their current adaptive capacity and what enables or constrains them in increasing it?; (iii) how can social learning configurations strengthen the adaptive capacity of farming communities?; and (iv) how do different levels of government enable and constrain the process of building adaptive capacity and social learning of smallholder farmers to respond to impacts of climate change in Vietnam? Overall, the dissertation shows that social learning offers many possibilities to help farmers adapt to climate change, but that climate change adaptation in developing countries creates specific contextual conditions that require an adaptive capacity-focused perspective. An adequate learning configuration that can successfully help farmers build their adaptive capacity, considers responsive design, facilitation, monitoring, and evaluation steps. Furthermore, efforts of increasing adaptive capacity should not onl

Contains fulltext : 160087.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access), The climate change problem calls for a continuously responding society. This raises the question: Do our institutions allow and encourage society to continuously adapt to climate change? This paper uses the Adaptive Capacity Wheel (ACW) to assess the adaptive capacity of formal and informal institutions in four sectors in the Netherlands: spatial planning, water, agriculture and nature. Formal institutions are examined through an assessment of 11 key policy documents and informal institutions are analysed through four case studies covering each sector. Based on these ACW analyses, both sector-specific and more general strengths and weaknesses of the adaptive capacity of institutions in the Netherlands are identified. The paper concludes that the most important challenge for increasing institutional adaptive capacity lies in combining decentralized, participatory approaches with more top-down methods that generate leadership (visions, goals) standards, instruments, resources and monitoring.