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This article critically examines UNEP's Adaptation Gap Report 2023 (AGR2023) as a foundational source in the narrative that insufficient adaptation finance is the primary barrier to climate change adaptation and, based on this analysis, offers suggestions for future Conference of the Parties (COP) discussions on the adaptation framework. This article identifies key methodological challenges in AGR2023's estimation of the adaptation finance gap. These issues are traced back to deeper systemic issues within the UNFCCC adaptation framework, including the misalignment of national adaptation plans (NAPs) with the UNFCCC mandate and the lack of clear boundaries for adaptation activities. The article calls for more informed and evidence-based COP discussions, which should lead to a fundamental rethinking of the adaptation framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communities need to implement adaptation strategies to prepare for the challenges posed by rising sea levels. In the U.S., federal funding will be required to support coastal communities’ adaptation, yet little is known about what the general public thinks about different sea-level rise adaptation strategies. In two studies, we investigated how support for different broad categories of adaptation strategies (managed retreat, resistance, accommodation, rebuilding in place) varied among Americans. We hypothesized that perceiver characteristics (e.g., political ideology) and the framing of community characteristics (risk and resilience) would predict support for adaptation. In Study 1 (N = 368), we asked participants to report their strategy preferences for a community in their own locale, then randomly assigned them to read about a hypothetical community which varied in terms of risk and resilience. People were much more willing to support adaptation strategies in high-risk communities. Strategy support was predicted by political ideology, eminent domain beliefs, and climate change concern. In Study 2 (N = 1048), we sought to extend our findings by collecting data from a nationally representative sample. We manipulated community framings of social capital and resources, but these framings related to resilience had little effect on strategy support. However, perceiver characteristics mattered, for instance, eminent domain endorsement predicted support for managed retreat. Across both studies, participants supported adaptation and opposed rebuilding without changes. We describe the ways these findings might be used by policymakers, and the implications of the research for communicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the UNFCCC, the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) plays a central role as a policy framework for adaptation. While significant efforts, including research, have been made on the NAP scheme (which includes NAP formulation as one component), a critical evaluation of the entire NAP scheme is lacking. This includes an analysis of the relationship between the NAP process and the NAPs, their nature and intended functions, the interlinkages and implications of various COP agreements and guidelines on the NAPs, and alignment with the concept of the adaptation planning process. This paper analyzes COP Decisions, relevant documents from constituted bodies, and efforts by relevant international organizations to better understand how the NAP scheme is constructed and operated in order to clarify its strengths and weaknesses. To get an idea of how countries understand the COP Decisions and other relevant guidance for formulating their NAPs, we also reviewed the NAPs of nine countries in the Asia-Pacific region (Bangladesh, Cambodia, Fiji, Kiribati, Nepal, PNG, Sri Lanka, Timor-Leste, and Tonga). As a result, we find critical issues in the international agreements and actions on the NAPs that may become obstacles to global, and eventually national, adaptation efforts and make specific policy recommendations to address these challenges. Key policy insights Neither the NAP process nor the NAPs themselves have been well defined by the COP. As a result, formulated NAPs have no more in common than a 'plan on adaptation developed by the national government.' It is vital for the COP to define the NAP process and the NAPs more clearly, including their roles and relations, and to ensure consistent support for developing countries' adaptation efforts through the NAP scheme. The COP should define the NAP process as the adaptation planning process (AP process) and find the roles of the NAPs as the 'grand design of the AP process' to enhance the consistency and effectiveness of global efforts on adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sea level rise induced flooding is projected to cause significant damage to the low-lying coastal areas of many countries around the planet. Many households located in vulnerable areas have already started to adapt to flooding, although some empirical studies indicate that informal adaptation is reaching its limit and that more formal countermeasures by governments will be necessary to cope with the increased flood risks. In such cases, public support for flood adaptation policy is crucial to ensure a successful and timely adaptation, as these strategies can directly affect coastal residents. However, there is limited understanding on the mechanisms and factors that determine public support for flood adaptation policy. Thus, this study proposes a new model – the Foundation of Adaptation Policy Support (FAPS) – which integrates the Protection Motivation Theory and the Risk Information Seeking and Processing models. FAPS was tested using structural equation modelling with latent variables and data that was collected from a household questionnaire survey conducted in the Tokyo lowland areas (n = 388), with the super levee representing a policy that could be applied to sea level rise adaptation. The proposed FAPS model showed a good fit with the collected data, indicating that the strongest predictors of policy support include the perceived effectiveness of the policy and the importance of the issue of flooding to individuals. Other important predictors of policy support include knowledge about flooding, the opinions of surrounding people (i.e. family and friends), and the systematic processing by respondents of information related to floods. The FAPS model sets the foundation for understanding the mechanisms of public support for adaptation policy and provides new insights into designing and planning such policies in practice. Key policy insights Perceived policy effectiveness and the importance of addressing floods are the strongest predictors of public support for adaptation policy. Increasing people's knowledge about flooding is essential to communicate the importance of adaptation policy. Investigating people's knowledge and the perceived importance of the issue of flooding prior to designing policies can predict public preferences for certain countermeasures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scientific literature shows that in many developing countries, variability in rainfall and temperature in growing season has detrimental effects on agricultural output, especially when the variability is high. It is yet unclear to what extent or threshold these variations impair the agricultural productivity in some parts of Africa. In this study, we answer this research question using a dynamic panel threshold model on a panel dataset of East African countries for the period 1961–2020. We incorporate climate variables disaggregated into growing and non-growing seasons. The empirical results indicate that growing rainfall variability has significant effects on agricultural output. More specifically, we found a significant negative effect from rainfall variability in spring and summer, when precipitation variability exceeds thresholds of −0.533 mL and −0.902 mL respectively. However, these effects are indistinguishable from zero in fall season. Regarding a growing-season temperature variability, we found no significant effects across seasons. Policy implications are discussed.

The article addresses the issue of adaptation policies by comparing two regions in Asia: Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia. The aim is to highlight the directions and the degree of progress of the policies implemented, as well as their determinants. The methodology included an analysis of bibliographic materials and available data. As a result, it was possible to establish that the scope of carrying out adaptation policies varies depending on the country, and it is not possible to speak of a common continental policy or even a common regional policy. The degree of a country’s development determines the sophistication of the policy pursued.

Climate change is a key socioeconomic and environmental concern in South Africa. The South African government introduced several climate change initiatives to address the impacts of climate change, resulting in the proliferation of climate adaptation policies across spheres of government. This paper studies different climate change adaptation policies and climate policy paradigms (CPP) to understand the adaptation landscape; it explains and compares the changes in CPP in South Africa over time. We mapped 40 policy documents from 2004 to 2022, which shows 12 national policies, 12 provincial (sub-national) policy documents and 14 metropolitan city policy documents. We then used 12 national policy documents to illustrate and understand the CPP. The research shows that different stakeholders have shaped climate change adaptation policy, both private and public firms advised on climate change policy and there are a number of different funding partners supporting the adaptation policy like GEF, C40 and GIZ. The changing policy environment has introduced new frameworks, objectives and processes. Therefore, more efforts will be needed going forward to guide adaptation policy across national, provincial and local governments. We find that several CPPs have emerged, that is different paradigms encompassing a range of policy goals, framings and instruments. The present National CC Adaptation Strategy (NCCAS) mandates adaptation across all levels of government and allows all important stakeholders to address climate change consequences. This NCCAS increases the number and ambition of adaptation policy, encourages integrated approaches, policy coherence and clear direction on how to handle climate risks and impacts in varied South Africa and its global commitment. Changes in policy paradigm enable the use of new policy instruments, including funding and budget mechanisms. Finally, climate adaptation policy has become more ambitious and stringent, requiring all levels of government to plan for climate change. The climate change policy landscape in South Africa has grown over the past 18 years, with policy development across different spheres of government (national, sectoral, provincial and metros), New CPPs have emerged, supported by new policy frames, goals and instruments. The NCCAS provides a clear policy goal, which also provides new policy instruments to implement climate actions and acts to enhance integrated approaches, The lack of domestic budget allocation remains a challenge for national government, but external partnerships have begun to provide support for policy development. Notably, a shift from a flexible to stringent approach to climate policy is needed to deliver effective climate action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This study is an attempt to review the climate change phenomenon through the theoretical lens of "Political Ecology of Health." It identifies the strategic implications of climate change policies on health and well‐being in the Sundarbans region of India and other related factors which come into play in determining the health status there. It encapsulates the existing vulnerabilities observed in this eco‐sensitive region and tries to reflect on the community's perception of the climate change crises inflicted upon them. The paper presents a comprehensive review of current conditions in the region. In addition to utilizing electronic databases, the author also reached out to experts from pertinent organizations with related expertise to gather supplementary references. Adapting to climate change is crucial to cope with the changing surroundings and elevate competency. Since Sundarbans' adaptation strategies are intricately dependent on historical positionality, community behavior, gender roles, social capital, and ecoregion sensitivity, the well‐being and recovery in the community are very much context‐specific. Thus, it must give space to discourses of newer politics of adaptation, emerging from a rigorous ecological standpoint. Looking into the matter through the lens of "situated knowledge, political economy and socio‐ecological relationships" brought out important issues like land‐ownership conflict, fading away of the traditional knowledge system, conspicuous utilization of funds and a poor public health system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scientific literature shows that in many developing countries, variability in rainfall and temperature in growing season has detrimental effects on agricultural output, especially when the variability is high. It is yet unclear to what extent or threshold these variations impair the agricultural productivity in some parts of Africa. In this study, we answer this research question using a dynamic panel threshold model on a panel dataset of East African countries for the period 1961–2020. We incorporate climate variables disaggregated into growing and non-growing seasons. The empirical results indicate that growing rainfall variability has significant effects on agricultural output. More specifically, we found a significant negative effect from rainfall variability in spring and summer, when precipitation variability exceeds thresholds of −0.533 mL and −0.902 mL respectively. However, these effects are indistinguishable from zero in fall season. Regarding a growing-season temperature variability, we found no significant effects across seasons. Policy implications are discussed. Impact statement: The findings suggest that African countries should speed up renovating/investing in small scale technologies to alleviate the impact of the within growing season precipitation variability. To mitigate the effect caused by the growing seasonal variability in precipitation, technologies such as flexible planting, rainwater harvesting, smart water-management systems that use drop-bydrop, sprinkler irrigation processes to improve agricultural output. Furthermore, new policies should be implemented by governments to encourage innovation in technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the state policy of ensuring the adaptation of Russian agriculture to climate change, provides an overview of the main trends and problems in the development of the irrigation complex, agricultural insurance, interventions in the domestic grain market. The influence of technological and spatial shifts in the structure of agricultural production on the dynamics of grain harvest is assessed, the relationship of these shifts with changes in agro-climatic conditions is described. It is noted that the main risks for the agro-food system associated with increased climate contrast are realized not only in a situation of crop losses due to climate disasters, but also in a situation of growing yields (in favorable weather conditions) while maintaining an undeveloped system for regulating domestic agricultural markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing countries are considered extremely vulnerable to climate change, due to their socioeconomic context (high levels of poverty) and high dependence of their livelihoods on natural resources. Rural areas in these countries concentrate most of the poorest and food-insecure people in the world, with farmers being among the most vulnerable to climate change. The impacts of climate change are expected to be spatially heterogeneous. In this sense, this paper aims at exploring the direct, marginal effect of climate change on farming system choice and its implications to food security in Mozambique, using a space-for-time approach. Our results suggest that major changes are to be expected in farming system choice and their spatial distribution due to climate change, which will potentially impact the livelihoods and food security status of smallholder farmers. Farming systems including food/cash crops and/or livestock, which are among the most food secure, will tend to be replaced by other systems in all climate scenarios. Mixed farming systems (including food and livestock) and livestock-oriented systems, mostly food insecure, predominant in arid areas are expected to expand with climate change. Food security and innovation stress maps were sketched out from the modelling results, identifying priority areas for public intervention. We also highlight how our approach can be an effective and easily replicable framework to address this type of issues in other developing regions facing similar problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flood resilience policy and planning are highly localized in the United States (US) and many parts of the world, with local governments responsible for a wide range of land use and infrastructure investment decisions that drive flood risk and response. However, many local governments lack the resources to plan for and adapt to increased flooding without external support. State governments can help by promulgating rules and providing guidance and resources that make flood resilience planning at the local level easier, more likely, and more equitable. However, very little is known about the programmes and policies US states can and do develop to support local flood resilience, how much these programmes and policies vary between states, and the extent to which states are going beyond required or standard practice. In this study, we develop an evaluation framework for state flood policies and programmes that captures the types of programmes and policies used by states in the US, distinguishing between required or standard practices and more advanced approaches. We use a numeric scoring system to operationalize four distinct categories of state policy: information provision, planning guidance, regulations and standards, and funding and financing. The scoring system accounts for whether states incorporate climate change and social equity into their resources. We then apply the framework and scoring system to the eight states of the Great Lakes region: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Our findings demonstrate both the consistencies and variation in state-level flood management programmes and policies, identify policy leaders in the region, and reveal areas where states can prioritize further investment and policy development for better flood risk management. The study provides an evaluation framework for scholars and practitioners of subnational flood policies and programmes, and descriptive insights into the status of state-level flood resilience policy and planning in the Great Lakes region. Evaluations of state and other subnational government support for local flood resilience should centre on information provision, planning guidance, setting regulations and standards, and providing funding and financing to support better planning and implementation of relevant policies. In the Great Lakes region of the US there is wide variation between states in their adoption of standard and more advanced strategies for supporting local flood resilience, and the emphasis they give to justice and equity. States that have adopted more advanced strategies can serve as an important resource for learning and sharing of experience across localities or subnational regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to analyze the gap between the level of heat wave adaptation policies and heat wave effects in South Korean municipalities. First, the types of industries in municipalities were classified using factor analysis and cluster analysis. Second, the level of heat wave adaptation policy in the municipalities was assessed using a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process analysis. Third, the gap between the level of heat wave adaptation policy and the heat wave effect was analyzed. The results show that the heat wave adaptation policies were established in accordance with the heat wave effects to at least some degree. However, closer to the long-term future (2095), the policies have not sufficiently matched the level of heat wave effects. The proportion of municipalities with insufficient levels of heat wave adaptation policies against the heat wave effects was higher among urban-type municipalities. The analysis results suggest two policy implications. First, the heat wave adaptation policies of municipalities should be established through continuous feedback on the predictions of future heat wave effects. Second, urban-type municipalities should strengthen their planning authority and competence by securing a professional workforce and budgets for the establishment of heat wave adaptation policies.

Despite two decades of investment in climate change adaptation knowledge, planning and policy, the Australian policy and scientific community is now at an adaptation impasse, with effective, equitable and timely adaptation rare and negative impacts proliferating as a result. Drawing on Australia as an illustrative and globally relevant case study, we describe and diagnose the adaptation impasse using a novel four-part heuristic – Adaptation as Spectre, Signal, Social and Systems – to characterise adaptation knowledge and action and their evolution over time. We examine the relationship between these adaptation types and argue that an underlying political economy at odds with the demands of adapting to climate change is generating the adaptation impasse. We suggest that to overcome the impasse we need to transform adaptation into a science and practice that is imaginative, pluralist, and caring. • The Adaptation scientific and policy community is at an impasse. • This impasse can be explored through a 4-part heuristic: Spectre, Signal, Social, and Systems. • An underlying political economy at odds with the demands of adapting to climate change is the primary cause of this impasse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasingly severe effects of climate change have resulted in a shift in countries' approach to climate policy. From an initial focus on mitigation efforts, adaptation to climate change is now given equal importance. Adaptation policies in individual countries provide for different sets of instruments owing to different natural conditions and climate change impacts and their resulting problems as well as different approaches related to the sociopolitical characteristics of the country. In the paper, we identify and classify adaptation policy instruments and then look for the differences and similarities in the adaptation instrument mixes included in the national adaptation strategic documents of selected European countries. We focused on Western European (WE) and Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, as the latter are underrepresented in studies on adaptation policies. Based on text-mining methods, i.e., categorisation of policy instruments using a set of criteria and clustering, we looked for similarities and differences between the adaptation instrument mixes in the chosen European countries. We found similarities between the two CEE countries studied—Poland and Lithuania. These countries are also different from WE countries in this regard. The results indicate that CEE countries have a sectoral rather than systemic approach to adaptation policy, and instruments from the management sphere are less prominent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the first to analyse the role of women authors in fostering justice-relevant topics in climate adaptation research. As representation, citation and payment patterns remain gender-biased across scientific disciplines, we explore the case of climate science, particularly adaptation, as its most human-oriented facet. In climate research and policy, there has been a recent surge of interest in climate justice topics: mentions of justice have increased almost tenfold in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group 2 reports between the latest assessment cycles (AR5 and AR6). We conduct a systematic examination of the topic space in the adaptation policy scholarship. As it is a vast and rapidly growing field, we use topic modelling, an unsupervised machine learning method, to identify the literature on climate justice and related fields, as well as to examine the relationship between topic prevalence and the gender of the authors. We find climate change adaptation policy research to be male dominated, with women holding 38.8% of first and 28.8% of last authorships. However, we observe topic-specific variability, whereby the share of female authors is higher among publications on justice-relevant topics. Female authorship is highly linked to topics such as Community, Local Knowledge, and Governance, but less to Food Security and Climate Finance. Our findings corroborate the evidence that female authors play a significant role in advancing the research and dialogue on the relationship between climate change and areas that have meaningful impact on lives of women and other marginalised groups.

Self-adaptation of complex systems is a very active domain of research with numerous application domains. Component systems are designed as sets of components that may reconfigure themselves according to adaptation policies, which describe needs for reconfiguration. In this context, an adaptation policy is designed as a set of rules that indicate, for a given set of configurations, which reconfiguration operations can be triggered, with fuzzy values representing their utility. The adaptation policy has to be faithfully implemented by the system, especially w.r.t. the utility occurring in the rules, which are generally specified for optimizing some extrafunctional properties (e.g. minimizing resource consumption). In order to validate adaptive systems' behavior, this paper presents a model-based testing approach, which aims to generate large test suites in order to measure the occurrences of reconfigurations and compare them to their utility values specified in the adaptation rules. This process is based on a usage model of the system used to stimulate the system and provoke reconfigurations. As the system may reconfigure dynamically, this online test generator observes the system responses and evolution in order to decide the next appropriate test step to perform. As a result, the relative frequencies of the reconfigurations can be measured in order to determine whether the adaptation policy is faithfully implemented. To illustrate the approach the paper reports on experiments on the case study of platoons of autonomous vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As climate change continues to be politically divisive, developing communications that align with right-leaning beliefs may increase bipartisan support for climate policy. In two experimental studies (Study 1, Australia, N = 558; Study 2, USA, N = 939), we tested whether an economic or national identity loss message would elicit greater support for mitigation and adaptation policies when compared to one another and to a control message. We also tested whether the direct effects of these loss-orientated messages were conditional on political orientation (specifically, identifying as politically right-leaning). In both studies, preliminary analyses indicated that there was a high level of support for both types of climate policy, but when compared to their left-wing counterparts, right-wing adherents were less likely to support mitigation and adaptation policies in either sample. Australian (Study 1) identification—although not American identity (Study 2)—also uniquely predicted adaptation support (but not mitigation support). There were no significant message frame or interaction effects in the Australian (Study 1) or US sample (Study 2). This suggests that neither an economic nor national identity loss message may be effective in overcoming the political polarization of climate change in Australia or the USA. Nevertheless, national identity could still play a useful role in Australian climate communications given its positive relationship to adaptation policy support and therefore warrants further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Calls for transformative adaptation to climate change require attention to the type of capacity building that can support it. Community-level capacity building can help to ensure ownership and legitimacy of longer-term interventions. Given that marginalized communities are highly vulnerable to climate risk, it is important to build their capacity to adapt locally and to integrate their perspectives into higher-level adaptation measures. Current adaptation policy does not pay sufficient attention to this. Using a Cape Town-based project on water governance in low-income urban settlements, this paper explores how a transdisciplinary research project supported capacity building. Our findings suggest that knowledge co-creation at the community level is central to the capacity building that is needed in order to inform transformative adaptation. The collaborative methodology used is also important; we illustrate how a transdisciplinary approach can contribute to transformative adaptation where knowledge is co-produced to empower community-level actors and organizations to assert their perspectives with greater confidence and legitimacy. We argue that if capacity building processes shift from the top-down transferal of existing knowledge to the co-creation of contextual understandings, they have the potential to deliver more transformative adaptation. By considering diverse sources of knowledge and knowledge systems, capacity building can start to confront inequalities and shift dominant power dynamics. Adaptation policy could provide more guidance and support for community-level transdisciplinary processes that can enable this type of transformative adaptation. Key policy insights To address equity and justice issues as well as climate risk, adaptation policy needs to better support transformative adaptation. Community-level capacity building, called for by developing countries, will benefit from more attention to bottom-up approaches as a complement to top-down ones. Community-led research that draws on a diversity of knowledge systems can effectively inform the development of transformative adaptation interventions. Transdisciplinary research methods present a promising pedagogical approach to building transformative adaptation capacity. Adaptation policy for capacity building would benefit from a broader understanding of governance that includes local participation and values bottom-up contributions. A priority for capacity building is getting previously excluded actors a spot at the negotiating table as well as skills to substantiate their arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-adaptation of complex systems is a very active domain of research with numerous application domains. Component systems are designed as sets of components that may reconfigure themselves according to adaptation policies, which describe needs for reconfiguration. In this context, an adaptation policy is designed as a set of rules that indicate, for a given set of configurations, which reconfiguration operations can be triggered, with fuzzy values representing their utility. The adaptation policy has to be faithfully implemented by the system, especially w.r.t. the utility occurring in the rules, which are generally specified for optimizing some extra-functional properties (e.g. minimizing resource consumption). In order to validate adaptive systems’ behaviour, this paper presents a model-based testing approach, which aims to generate large test suites in order to measure the occurrences of reconfigurations and compare them to their utility values specified in the adaptation rules. This process is based on a usage model of the system used to stimulate the system and provoke reconfigurations. As the system may reconfigure dynamically, this online test generator observes the system responses and evolution in order to decide the next appropriate test step to perform. As a result, the relative frequencies of the reconfigurations can be measured in order to determine whether the adaptation policy is faithfully implemented. To illustrate the approach the paper reports on experiments on the case study of platoons of autonomous vehicles.

Climate change risks have become a major concern of climate change adaptation, and a systematic risk assessment is required as the first step as well as a key principle of national adaptation policy processes. Although many countries conducted risk assessments, a debate over a systematic assessment process continues, and results of the risk assessment provide limited information to making adaptation policies. Based on a case study of South Korea, this research aims to establish a national-level risk assessment process which includes systematic methodologies given the current limited time/resource and insufficient climate change information. A four-step risk assessment process is proposed: (1) collecting scientific evidence, (2) making list of preliminary risks, (3) making lists of risks and prioritising the risks, (4) categorising the risks. Enough scientific evidence and data about climate change risks of Korea were retained through first two steps, and three components of risk (hazard, exposure, vulnerability) are systematically involved by assessing the magnitude and adaptive capacity of risks. As results of the risks assessment, 93 national-level climate change risks of Korea are identified, and most high priorities in risks have high risk magnitude but low adaptive capacity. This research provided insights for direction of national adaptation policy of each sector by categorising the risks into four categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As adaptation have received increasing attention, national adaptation policies and plans have been substantially developed. Despite the significant roles of national policy for adaptation, barriers to national adaptation policy have been overlooked and our understanding of the barriers is not sufficient as we expect. Also, the barriers are pointed out a reason of the current adaptation gaps. To address this situation, we use a systematic literature review to examine the barriers to adaptation policy specifically at the national level, as well as their origin, impact, and solutions to overcome them, considering the importance of national-level adaptation for the overall adaptation. Scrutinising a sample of eighteen articles, we identify eight categories of barriers to national adaptation policy. Lack of resources, fragmentation, and lack of awareness and communication are the most commonly identified barriers to national adaptation policy. We also find that the literature does not provide sufficient detail on the underlying causes of the barriers, the relationships between them and their consequences. The literature also gives limited attention to solutions for overcoming barriers, and the suggestions made are too general and normative to be helpful in practice. But the existing literature helps to interrogate and visualise the interlinkages between the origins, barriers and impacts, as well as between different barriers. This highlights that barriers should be addressed simultaneously and provides preliminary insights into a deeper understanding of the barriers. We conclude by outlining the key knowledge gaps and future research priorities to help support national adaptation policy processes.

Although over 70 countries adopted a national climate change adaptation plan (NAP), little is known about the extent to which these plans are implemented. NAP monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems can play an important role in tracking implementation but have rarely been studied. Based on a systematic review including outreach to country representatives and international organizations, a comprehensive inventory of NAP M&E systems is compiled documenting government practices from over 60 countries. In contrast to previous studies, this stocktake does not rely on stated intentions of M&E but requires evidence such as monitoring and evaluation reports. The extent of NAP M&E involvement globally and countries' respective status are determined and compared to a baseline from the 2017 Adaptation Gap Report of the United Nations Environment Programme. Results show a 40% increase in the number of countries that are developing or using NAP M&E systems and almost a doubling of published NAP evaluations. However, over 60% of countries that adopted a NAP do not systematically assess its implementation, leaving a critical gap in understanding the impacts of NAPs. These findings support calls for greater attention to the quality of adaptation planning and for assessing its implementation and effectiveness. • More than 60% of countries that adopted a national adaptation plan (NAP) are not tracking its implementation. • 23 countries have published a NAP implementation report and 15 have undertaken a NAP evaluation, almost twice as many as 2017. • Almost 40% of countries reporting on NAP implementation are developing countries but only three are Least Developed Countries. • The number of countries engaged in developing or using mechanisms to track NAP implementation has increased by 40% since 2017. • NAP M&E systems support reporting on adaptation progress under the Global Stocktake of the Paris Agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With increasing population growth and urban sprawl, many coastal lowlands are unprecedentedly vulnerable to climate change and its impacts, such as rising sea levels, increasing extreme storm events, and coastal flooding. Quantifying coastal flood vulnerability serves as a tool to identify a system’s weakness, monitor its change, and support making targeted climate adaptation policies. The assessment framework proposed in this research uses principal component analysis (PCA) and a weighting method to build a composite indicator of flood vulnerability index and evaluate the vulnerability for 256 coastal census tracts and 24 municipalities along the coast of Connecticut, USA. The research uses Keiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test and Bartlett’s test of sphericity to test sample adequacy and performs data standardization for all indicators. Through PCA, 30 coastal vulnerability-related indicators were grouped into four major dimensions: hazard exposure, socio-economic, physical/land use and land cover, and natural. The findings highlight the variations of flood vulnerability across highly urbanized areas, suburban areas, and rural areas; and the gradient from coastal low-elevation region to high-elevation inland area. This variance is unevenly caused by different dimensions although they may trade-off with each other when aggregated, the dominant dimensions play a significant or decisive role in the vulnerability assessment. This research built an automatic and objective assessment framework that is flexible enough to be applied at a smaller scale so as to obtain detailed analysis and it can be used as a decision-making support system.

Climate change adaptation is increasingly being mainstreamed into all types of organizations across the world. A large number of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), such as the European Union, the World Bank, or Food and Agriculture Organization, have already started to mainstream adaptation. Yet, despite a surge in scholarly interest in climate policy integration over the past decade, adaptation is still predominantly studied as a local issue and mainstreaming in IGOs remains poorly understood. In this article, we develop and test an innovative framework for examining adaptation mainstreaming practices in IGOs. Using quantitative and qualitative data derived from extensive fieldwork conducted between 2017 and 2020, we examine mainstreaming practices in a large number of IGOs and arrive at two key findings. First, adaptation has been mainstreamed within the procedures and outputs of IGOs across ten (nonclimate) issue areas, while there is also evidence of important issue-specific variation. Second, there is variation across mainstreaming practices in the sense that discursive mainstreaming is most common, whereas more concrete collaboration, policy change affecting projects and programs, and budget allocations are less common. We conclude with a discussion of how our framework can inform the theory and practice of global adaptation governance. KEY POLICY INSIGHTS IGOs have mainstreamed adaptation into a large array of issue areas, yet scholarly and practical debates remain siloed. Mainstreaming adaptation has advanced most in IGOs in the areas of food and development and least in the domain of migration and security. Discursive mainstreaming is more common than other types of adaptation mainstreaming in IGOs, regardless of the issue area. Global governance is a distinct setting in which powerful states, institutional complexity, and funding constraints strongly affect IGO practices to successfully mainstream adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As flood risk is projected to increase, effective flood risk management (FRM) is crucial not only for mitigating direct flood damage but also for contributing to the long-term improvement of livelihoods and hence the socioeconomic development of flood-prone areas in developing countries. While many studies have assessed avoided damage as the benefit of flood countermeasures, few recognize the impact on improvements in livelihood resulting from risk reduction. We present a novel framework that captures the dynamic relationship between decreasing flood risk perception and improvements in household livelihoods. Using the case of flood-prone Bago, Myanmar, we apply this framework to evaluate 127 flood management strategies under different assumptions of future climate change and socioeconomic features. We show that the benefits of improved livelihoods, when quantified alongside avoided flood losses, have a significant impact enough to change the cost-efficiency rankings of flood management strategies. The findings highlight the importance of incorporating livelihood improvements into FRM decision making to promote the sustainable development in flood-prone areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monitoring and evaluating adaptation policies can have various functions, including identifying and understanding the need for intervention, facilitating the design of new adaptation policies, or justifying budget allocation. The purpose of this study was to analyze climate change adaptation policies in agriculture. For this purpose, a Multi-criteria analysis approach was used. Data collection was done using a questionnaire consisting of 86 adaptation policies in 5 categories including financial and credit policies, research, planning and technology, infrastructure and conservation of water and soil resources, training and extension, and Institutional policies. Criteria of effectiveness, urgency, efficiency, power, side effects, equity, flexibility, organizational legitimacy, and feasibility were used for evaluation. Samples selected, using purposive sampling. Visual PROMETHEE software used to analyze the data. Results showed that the effectiveness criterion was the most important criterion. Among the financial and credit policies "provide low interest facilities to prioritize the pattern of optimal national and regional cultivation" was the most important policy. "Planning to integrate native and modern agricultural knowledge to introduce new options for adaptation or climate change", "installing smart water meter on agricultural water wells”, and "reviewing the process of submitting surface and groundwater harvesting permits" were the most important policies among “research, planning and technology”, “infrastructure policies” and “institutional policies” categories, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-adaptive systems have to implement adaptation policies described by sets of rules that express how the components are reconfigured within the system, the priority of a given reconfiguration to happen, when a given (sequence of) event(s) occurs, and when specific conditions on the system state are satisfied. However, when this priority is given by a fuzzy value (e.g., high, medium, low) depending on external and internal events, it has to be implemented inside the software with particular implementation choices made. This paper is dedicated to the validation of adaptation policies, using a model-based testing approach and a verdict establishment that is based on both the runtime verification of temporal properties, and the detection of inconsistencies between the adaptation policy and the reconfigurations implemented in the self-adaptive system. We propose means to establish a test verdict based on the respect of the adaptation policy by the implementation, along with coverage measures of the rules. This provides interesting feedback on the adaptation policy rules, allowing to detect reconfigurations that should not have occurred, high-priority reconfigurations that are never triggered, or low-priority reconfigurations that are too frequently executed, potential inconsistencies in the rules, or wrong interpretation of priorities. The test verdict is made based on the analysis of the execution traces of the system, which is stimulated using a usage model that describes the probabilities of external events to occur. An experiment, performed on a vehicular ad-hoc network of autonomous vehicles, illustrates the interest of the approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of climate change on agricultural production are pushing countries to reconsider risk management policies in their development plans. Opportunities exist to increase agricultural production and improve the policy environment. However, policymakers lack local empirical evidence to provide local solutions to agricultural development in many developing countries, including Togo. This paper assesses farmers' willingness to pay for weather index-based insurance (WII) as a market option for sharing climatic risks. A choice modeling approach is used based on data collected from 704 randomly selected households in northern Togo, West Africa. Statistical analysis of the data shows that dry spells are the major concern of farmers and maize is perceived as the most affected food crop. Results also indicate that respondents are willing to participate in a WII market and would prefer insuring crops, such as maize over sorghum and rice against drought by paying on average about $14.5 per hectare. The results show that WII should not be offered standalone, but interlinked with other factors such as providing drought tolerant and high yielding varieties; loans to organized farmers' groups; and weather information through TV, radio and mobile phones in local languages, while encouraging education to enable the diffusion of more advisory services. These factors are likely to influence positively farmers' preferences in participating in a WII market. Key policy insights Very often, insurance is seen as a magic bullet in agricultural risk management policy discussions. A standalone WII could suffer from low adoption, a problem that calls for other policy options. As a climate change adaptation policy, WII could be bundled with other risk-reducing options for a better uptake and to improve farmers' welfare. WII can be an effective channel for farm credit facilities and advisory services, as well as other agricultural risk management interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-hazards are a great concern in the present world. Likewise, the coastal part of Bangladesh is highly vulnerable to multi-hazards, including waterlogging, surface water salinity, land use change, prolonged dry seasons, and groundwater salinity. Multi-hazards and associated risks make local adaptations more difficult over time. Thus, the purpose of this study is to explore the connection between multi-hazards and their associated socio-ecological risks in the southwestern coastal part of Bangladesh. Mixed-methods approaches were used to collect all the data, and statistical analyses were performed to analyze the data. Results revealed that waterlogging significantly influenced local food access, poverty, child marriage, and divorce problems. Surface water salinity and land use change showed significant differences with the widening of salinity-affected areas. Waterlogging, land use change, and a prolonged dry season all showed significant differences in freshwater access. Prolonged dry seasons and groundwater salinity both have a significant impact on human health. Waterlogging and groundwater salinity significantly influence human migrations. These findings may strengthen local adaptation policies for salinity hazards, land use planning, household poverty, food access, livelihoods, water access, health effects, child marriage, and human migration. In addition, our findings indicate the potential to address the existing knowledge gaps pertaining to coastal hazards, risks, and adaptation issues. • Links between multi-hazards and socio-ecological risks have been identified. • Waterlogging increases multiple risks in coastal communities. • The findings could guide the formulation or strengthening of a multi-hazard adaptation policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]