Chapter 3 Tackling Climate Change Adaptation at the Local Level Through Community Participation

Purpose – Adapting local areas to climate change is a wicked challenge for local administrations. A participatory research is applied to explore how local experience shared by local experts can inform decision and adaptation planning by taking into account local area characteristics and their interrelationships. Methodology/approach – We turned to local actors, who live or work in the city and who can be seen as urban experts. Their experiential knowledge has given us a better understanding of the characteristics of their communities. These experts are likely to possess a representation that reflects the local territorial sensitivities, which can help us determine how these characteristics might be impacted by climate change. Findings – A participatory approach bears many benefits such as mobilizing local stakeholders to find collective solutions. It also allows us to focus on common practices in the urban context, which are likely to be altered by changes in mean temperatures, precipitations, etc. It offers the additional benefit of putting into perspective the relations between a variety of urban issues. Research limitations – A participatory approach means relying on subjective assessments of the possible effects of climate change, which could challenge the relevance of perceived risks and the scope and types of actions taken. Originality/value of paper – The number of the available adaptation planning processes involving community stakeholders and assessments of these processes is very limited. A participatory process such as the cross-sectoral initiative organized in Quebec City can have significant repercussions on local engagement in climate change adaptation. This provides evidence of the potential of deliberation or interaction of territorial actors to improve their understanding of the issues and their adaptive capacity. On a methodological level, the participatory process in itself and the steps to organize it offered a planning frame that can be reproduced.