Climate adaptation,local institutions,and rural livelihoods: A comparative study of herder communities in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia,China

Climate variability has been evident on the Mongolian plateau in recent decades. Livelihood adaptation to climate variability is important for local sustainable development. This paper applies an analytical framework focused on adaptation, institutions, and livelihoods to study climate adaptation in the Mongolian grasslands. A household survey was designed and implemented in each of three broad vegetation types in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia. The analytical results show that livelihood adaptation strategies of herders vary greatly across the border between Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, China. Local institutions played important roles in shaping and facilitating livelihood adaptation strategies of herders. Mobility and communal pooling were the two key categories of adaptation strategies in Mongolia, and they were shaped and facilitated by local communal institutions. Storage, livelihood diversification, and market exchange were the three key categories of adaptation strategies in Inner Mongolia, and they were mainly shaped and facilitated by local government and market institutions. Local institutions enhanced but also at times undermined adaptive capacity of herder communities in the two countries, but in different ways. Sedentary grazing has increased livelihood vulnerability of herders to climate variability and change. With grazing sedentarization, the purchase and storage of forage has become an important strategy of herders to adapt to the highly variable climate. The multilevel statistical models of forage purchasing behaviors show that the strategies of livestock management, household financial capital, environmental (i.e., precipitation and vegetation growth) variability, and the status of pasture degradation were the major determinants of this adaptation strategy.     

Knowing, farming and climate change adaptation in North-Central Namibia

The agro-ecological knowledge held by Ovambo farmers in North Central Namibia has, for centuries, given them resilience to high levels of climate variability and associated impacts. New research, conducted in North Central Namibia, suggests that knowledge co-production between farmers and agricultural extension workers may, in addition, strengthen adaptive capacity to future climate change. However, this useful kind of knowledge co-production is far from automatic, and indeed the conditions which make it more likely to happen are not well understood. This paper explores agro-ecological knowledge in North Central Namibia as adaptive capacity, and suggests avenues for better conceptualising and understanding the conditions for adaptive capacity-enhancing knowledge co-production.     

Constructing legitimacy for climate change planning: A study of local government in Denmark

Existing research on climate change planning has tended to adopt an overly simplistic approach to analyzing how agency and structure mediate local governments’ responses to climate change. This research contributes to scientific capacity to predict and explain patterns of climate change planning by focusing on the concept of legitimacy and examining its influence upon the dialectic between structure and agency. A conceptual framework foregrounding legitimacy is developed based upon new institutional theory. An initiative to institutionalize climate change planning in Aarhus Municipality, Denmark, is used as a case study to validate four propositions derived from existing research but filtered through the conceptual framework. Validation of the propositions evidences a hierarchy in the salience of different forms of legitimacy, with moral and ethical arguments for undertaking climate change planning having limited social traction in Denmark in the absence of significant extreme climatic events. The analysis also generates thicker, more nuanced explanations for real-world patterns of climate change planning. The findings thereby provide a corrective to a number of assertions made in the literature, notably in relation to the role of agency in the institutionalization of climate change planning.     

The strengths and weaknesses of future visioning approaches for climate change adaptation: A review

Adaptation to climate change is about planning for the future while responding to current pressures and challenges. Adaptation scientists are increasingly using future visioning exercises embedded in co-production and co-development techniques to assist stakeholders in imagining futures in a changing climate. Even if these exercises are growing in popularity, surprisingly little scrutiny has been placed on understanding the fundamental assumptions and choices in scenario approaches, timeframes, scales, or methods, and whether they result in meaningful changes in how adaptation is being thought about. Here, we unpack key insights and experiences across 62 case studies that specifically report on using future visioning exercises to engage stakeholders in climate change adaptation. We focus on three key areas: 1) Stakeholder diversity and scales; 2) Tools, methods, and data, and 3) Practical constraints, enablers, and outcomes. Our results show that most studies focus on the regional scale (n = 32; 52%), involve mainly formal decision makers and employ vast array of different methods, tools, and data. Interestingly, most exercises adopt either predictive (what will happen) and explorative (what could happen) scenarios while only a fraction use the more normative (what should happen) scenarios that could enable more transformative thinking. Reported positive outcomes include demonstrated increases in climate change literacy and support for climate change adaptation planning. Unintended and unexpected outcomes include increased anxiety in cases where introduced timeframes go beyond an individual’s expected life span and decreased perceived necessity for undertaking adaptation at all. Key agreed factors that underpin co-production and equal representation, such as gender, age, and diversity, are not well reported, and most case studies do not use reflective processes to harness participant feedback that could enable more robust methodology development. This is a missed opportunity in developing a more fundamental understanding of how these exercises can effectively shift individual and collective mindsets and advance the inclusion of different viewpoints as a pathway for more equitable and just climate adaptation.     

Landscape adaptation to climate change: Local networks,social learning and co-creation processes for adaptive planning

The development of legitimate, operative, and feasible landscape adaptation planning for climate change is dependent on the specific characteristics of the landscape and its inhabitants. Spatial patterns, culture, governance systems, socio-economic structures, planning methods, history, and collectively envisioned futures need to be accommodated. The literature suggests that landscape is a complex and dynamic socio-ecological system, the management and adaptation of which requires systemic and integrative approaches to respond to a wide variety of drivers of change, challenges, and interests. Based on activities developed in 15 European pilot landscapes, we identify some of the key factors and conditions affecting the generation of representative local networks for landscape adaptation to climate change. We illustrate how social learning and co-creation processes can be implemented in them and how their co-produced outcomes can help local communities overcome barriers and address critical issues in adaptive planning. Our results provide a framework for the creation of similar networks in other landscapes, exploring at the same time the interactions between the composition of networks, social learning, and the quality of the co-produced outputs as a fundamental step for the development of Landscape Adaptation Plans to Climate Change.     

Learning effects of interactive decision-making processes for climate change adaptation

Learning is gaining attention in relation to governance processes for contemporary environmental challenges; however, scholarship at the nexus of learning and environmental governance lacks clarity and understanding about how to define and measure learning, and the linkages between learning, social interactions, and environment. In response, this study aimed to advance and operationalize a typology of learning in an environmental governance context, and examined if a participatory decision-making process (adaptive co-management) for climate change adaptation fostered learning. Three types of learning were identified: cognitive learning, related to the acquisition of new or the structuring of existing knowledge; normative learning, which concerns a shift in viewpoints, values or paradigms, and relational learning, referring to an improved understanding of others’ mindsets, enhanced trust and ability to cooperate. A robust mixed methods approach with a focus on quantitative measures including concept map analysis, social network analysis, and self-reflective questions, was designed to gauge indicators for each learning type. A participatory decision-making process for climate change adaptation was initiated with stakeholders in the Niagara region, Canada. A pseudo-control group was used to minimize external contextual influences on results. Clear empirical evidence of cognitive and relational learning was gained; however, the results from normative learning measures were inconclusive. The learning typology and measurement method operationalized in this research advances previous treatments of learning in relation to participatory decision-making processes, and supports adaptive co-management as a governance strategy that fosters learning and adaptive capacity.     

Studying local climate adaptation: A heuristic research framework for comparative policy analysis

Climate change poses a significant risk for communities, and local governments around the world have begun responding by developing climate adaptation policies. Scholarship on local adaptation policy has proliferated in recent years, but insufficient attention has been paid to operationalization of the unit of analysis, and methods employed are typically inadequate to draw inferences about variation across cases. This article seeks to contribute to the conceptual and methodological foundations of a research agenda for comparative analysis of local adaptation policies and policy-making. Synthesizing insights from policy studies literature and existing adaptation research, the article identifies and operationalizes two aspects of public policy—policy content and policy process—which are salient objects of comparative analysis that typically vary from one community to another. The article also addresses research design, outlining a comparative case study methodology that incorporates various qualitative analytical techniques as the vehicle to examine these policy elements in empirical settings.     

Reconceptualising adaptation to climate change as part of pathways of change and response

The need to adapt to climate change is now widely recognised as evidence of its impacts on social and natural systems grows and greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated. Yet efforts to adapt to climate change, as reported in the literature over the last decade and in selected case studies, have not led to substantial rates of implementation of adaptation actions despite substantial investments in adaptation science. Moreover, implemented actions have been mostly incremental and focused on proximate causes; there are far fewer reports of more systemic or transformative actions. We found that the nature and effectiveness of responses was strongly influenced by framing. Recent decision-oriented approaches that aim to overcome this situation are framed within a “pathways” metaphor to emphasise the need for robust decision making within adaptive processes in the face of uncertainty and inter-temporal complexity. However, to date, such “adaptation pathways” approaches have mostly focused on contexts with clearly identified decision-makers and unambiguous goals; as a result, they generally assume prevailing governance regimes are conducive for adaptation and hence constrain responses to proximate causes of vulnerability. In this paper, we explore a broader conceptualisation of “adaptation pathways” that draws on ‘pathways thinking’ in the sustainable development domain to consider the implications of path dependency, interactions between adaptation plans, vested interests and global change, and situations where values, interests, or institutions constrain societal responses to change. This re-conceptualisation of adaptation pathways aims to inform decision makers about integrating incremental actions on proximate causes with the transformative aspects of societal change. Case studies illustrate what this might entail. The paper ends with a call for further exploration of theory, methods and procedures to operationalise this broader conceptualisation of adaptation.     

Developing local adaptation strategies for climate change in agriculture: A priority-setting approach with application to Latin America

Even with substantially increased attention to climate adaptation in developing countries in recent years, there are a number of important remaining research needs: better incorporating stakeholder input; using replicable methodologies to provide comparability across different settings; assuring that stakeholder input reflects the results of climate science, not simply perceptions; and effectively linking stakeholder input with the regional and national levels at which policy changes are made. This study reports the results of a methodology for identifying and prioritizing local, stakeholder-driven response options to climate change in agriculture. The approach is based on multi-criteria scoring methods previously applied to research planning and priority-setting in agricultural and natural resource management research, public health, and other areas. The methodology is a sequential approach built around needs assessments by local stakeholders; the incorporation of climate science results; the sharing of these results and climate adaption response options with stakeholders at a series of workshops; stakeholder priority-setting exercises using multi-criteria scoring; and validation with policymakers. The application is to three diverse agroecosystems in Mexico, Peru and Uruguay. Among the many findings is that, notwithstanding the wide diversity of agro-ecosystems, there are numerous similarities in the agricultural adaptation responses prioritized by local stakeholders.     

适应气候变化政策机制的国际经验与启示

中国高度重视适应气候变化工作,实行减缓与适应并重的应对气候变化原则,已出台适应气候变化相关的战略、规划等一系列政策文件。但总体来看,中国适应气候变化政策与行动尚处于起步阶段,面临着法规制度缺位、监测评估不足、组织协调机制不完善等挑战,适应气候变化政策的类型、数量和力度都明显弱于减缓。为完善中国适应气候变化政策与机制的框架设计,文中梳理了相关研究、《联合国气候变化框架公约》下的适应气候变化国际机制及主要国家经验,提出了一套完整闭环的适应气候变化核心决策流程及关键支撑机制,并重点从开展法制建设、制定适应战略（计划）、建立监测评估机制、构建协调机制和完善资金机制等五方面,归纳了主要国家的经验与启示,最终研究提出完善我国适应气候变化政策与机制框架设计的建议,包括加快建立和完善适应气候变化法制建设、加快构建国家适应气候变化的政策体系、加快完善国家适应气候变化的机制设计、加强适应气候变化支撑能力建设、推动适应气候变化的国际合作等。     

An iconic approach for representing climate change

International and national greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals implicitly rely in part on individuals undertaking voluntary emissions reductions through lifestyle decisions. Whilst there is widespread public recognition of climate change as an issue, there are many barriers – cognitive, psychological and social – preventing individuals from enacting lifestyle decarbonisation. More effective climate change communication approaches are needed which allow individuals to engage meaningfully with climate change, thus opening new prospects for lifestyle decarbonisation. This study presents an iconic approach to engagement, tested in the UK context, which allows individuals to approach climate change through their own personal values and experiences. The iconic approach harnesses the emotive and visual power of climate icons with a rigorous scientific analysis of climate impacts under a different climate future. Although some climate icons already exist – for example the Thermohaline Circulation shutdown – these ‘expert-led’ icons fail to effectively engage ‘non-experts’. We demonstrate that the non-expert-led iconic approach helps overcome some of the cognitive and affective barriers that impede action towards lifestyle decarbonisation.     

Territorial inertia versus adaptation to climate change. When local authorities discuss coastal management in a French Mediterranean region

Adaptation to climate change is a critical issue in coastal areas, at risk from sea-level rise, erosion, and sea flooding. In territories strongly urbanized and long oriented toward tourism and a residential economy, a change in coastal management and territorial development is hard to initiate. In Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (France), a leading tourism region, this article explores how local authorities perceive climate change and talk about adaptation strategies. Interviews with municipal-level authorities, both elected officials and technical agents, reveal the influence of territorial inertia, with persistent statements promoting the beach- and residential-oriented economy and a wait-and-see attitude regarding climate change. Beach erosion is the only coastal risk interviewees really recognize, while sea-level rise and sea flooding are barely perceived. Yet evidence supporting the possibility of a future change in position is provided by the younger generation of interviewees, who are more aware of environmental challenges. Providing original data for a coastal region often considered as a model of development throughout the world, this article also proposes an original and transferable method combining geographical sampling of municipalities, text statistics and qualitative analysis of interviews, to apprehend the social representations of the coast, of climate change and coastal risks. Such a methodology is recommended prior to any quantitative assessment of climate action at local scale.     

Drought and the future of rural communities: Opportunities and challenges for climate change adaptation in regional Victoria,Australia

Australia's vulnerability to climate variability and change has been highlighted by the recent drought (i.e. the Big Dry or Millennium Drought), and also recent flooding across much of eastern Australia during 2011 and 2012. There is also the possibility that the frequency, intensity and duration of droughts may increase due to anthropogenic climate change, stressing the need for robust drought adaptation strategies. This study investigates the socio-economic impacts of drought, past and present drought adaptation measures, and the future adaptation strategies required to deal with projected impacts of climate change. The qualitative analysis presented records the actual experiences of drought and other climatic extremes and helps advance knowledge of how best to respond and adapt to such conditions, and how this might vary between different locations, sectors and communities. It was found that more effort is needed to address the changing environment and climate, by shifting from notions of ‘drought-as-crisis’ towards acknowledging the variable availability of water and that multi-year droughts should not be unexpected, and may even become more frequent. Action should also be taken to revalue the farming enterprise as critical to our environmental, economic and cultural well-being and there was also strong consensus that the value of water should be recognised in a more meaningful way (i.e. not just in economic terms). Finally, across the diverse stakeholders involved in the research, one point was consistently reiterated: that ‘it's not just drought’. Exacerbating the issues of climate impacts on water security and supply is the complexity of the agriculture industry, global economics (in particular global markets and the recent/ongoing global financial crisis), and demographic changes (decreasing and ageing populations) which are currently occurring across most rural communities. The social and economic issues facing rural communities are not just a product of drought or climate change – to understand them as such would underestimate the extent of the problems and inhibit the ability to coordinate the holistic, cross-agency approach needed for successful climate change adaptation in rural communities.     

Unpacking multilevel adaptation to climate change in the Great Barrier Reef,Australia

Multilevel governance is regarded as a promising approach to deal with the multidimensional nature of climate change adaptation. However, the policy context in which it is implemented is very often complex and fragmented, characterised by interacting climate and non-climate strategies. An understanding of multilevel decision-making and governance is particularly important, if desired adaptation outcomes are to be achieved. This paper examines how climate change adaptation takes place in a complex multilevel system of governance, in the context of Australia's Great Barrier Reef (GBR) region. It examines over one hundred adaptation strategies at federal, state, regional and local levels in terms of type, manifestation, purposefulness, drivers and triggers, and geographic and temporal scope. Interactions between strategies are investigated both at the same level of governance and across governance levels. This study demonstrates that multilevel approach is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition in responding to complex multiscale and multisector issues, such as climate change adaptation. Short-term adaptation measures; a predominant incremental, sectoral, top-down approach to adaptation; and the lack of a framework for managing interactions are major threats to effective climate adaptation in the GBR region. Coping with such threats will require long-term transformative action, establishing enabling conditions to support local adaptation, and, most important, creating and maintaining strategic interactions among adaptation strategies. Coordinating and integrating climate and non-climate strategies across jurisdictions and policy sectors are the most significant and challenging tasks for multilevel governance in the GBR region and elsewhere.     

Social capital,trust, and adaptation to climate change: Evidence from rural Ethiopia

Climate change is expected to have particularly severe effects on poor agrarian populations. Rural households in developing countries adapt to the risks and impacts of climate change both individually and collectively. Empirical research has shown that access to capital—financial, human, physical, and social—is critical for building resilience and fostering adaptation to environmental stresses. Little attention, however, has been paid to how social capital generally might facilitate adaptation through trust and cooperation, particularly among rural households and communities. This paper addresses the question of how social capital affects adaptation to climate change by rural households by focusing on the relationship of household and collective adaptation behaviors. A mixed-methods approach allows us to better account for the complexity of social institutions—at the household, community, and government levels—which drive climate adaptation outcomes. We use data from interviews, household surveys, and field experiments conducted in 20 communities with 400 households in the Rift Valley of Ethiopia. Our results suggest that qualitative measures of trust predict contributions to public goods, a result that is consistent with the theorized role of social capital in collective action. Yet qualitative trust is negatively related to private household-level adaptation behaviors, which raises the possibility that social capital may, paradoxically, be detrimental to private adaptation. Policymakers should account for the potential difference in public and private adaptation behaviors in relation to trust and social capital when designing interventions for climate adaptation.     

On matryoshkas and meaning-making: Understanding the plasticity of climate change

Climate change is a complex issue and means different things to different people. Numerous scholars in history, philosophy, and psychology have explored these multiple meanings, referred to as the plasticity of climate change. Building on psychological research that seeks to explain why meanings differ, I present an analytical framework that draws on adult developmental psychology to explore how meaning is constructed, and how it may become increasingly more complex across a lifespan in a nested manner, much like Russian dolls (or matryoshkas). I then use the framework to analyze photo voice data from a case study about local perspectives on climate change in El Salvador. The main finding from this analysis is that a developmental approach can help to make sense of why there is such plasticity of meanings about climate change. Using photos and their interpretations to illustrate these findings, I examine how perspective-taking capacities arrive at different meanings about climate change, based on the object of awareness, complexity of thought, and scope of time. I then discuss implications of this preliminary work on how developmental psychology could help climate change scholar-practitioners to understand and align with different climate change meanings and support local actors to translate their own meanings about climate change into locally-owned actions.     

“一带一路”沿线国家适应气候变化的技术需求评估

“一带一路”沿线国家受气候变化影响严重,亟需从其他国家转移适当的适应气候变化技术。技术需求评估是有效开展技术转移的必要前提。本研究利用“一带一路”沿线国家完成提交给《联合国气候变化框架公约》的技术需求评估（TNA）报告,在合作专利分类（CPC）框架下建立适应优先技术需求数据库,并根据技术需求的提及次数、技术需求的国家数目、技术需求的GDP覆盖范围以及技术惠及人口4个指标,分别从技术和地区两个角度对“一带一路”沿线国家的适应技术需求开展评估。结果发现：一方面,农林牧副渔生产中的适应技术（Y02A-40),集水、节水与高效利用水的技术（Y02A-20),沿海地区与江河流域的适应技术（Y02A-10）与对适应气候变化有间接贡献的技术（Y02A-90）这4方面的适应技术是“一带一路”沿线国家普遍关切的技术需求。另一方面,不同地区的“一带一路”沿线国家因其特有的地理区位和社会经济情况不同而产生特殊的适应技术需求。大洋洲、拉丁美洲与加勒比地区以及亚洲地区部分国家由于国内基础设施受气候变化影响十分严重,提出了保护和改造基础设施建设的技术（Y02A-30）需求;受气候变化影响,高温和降水加剧了疾病在空气和水体的传播,因此亚洲地区,大洋洲、拉丁美洲与加勒比地区特别提出了应对极端天气、保护人类健康的技术（Y02A-50）需求。为促进“一带一路”沿线国家开展有效技术转移,提高应对气候变化能力,应加大对气候适应技术研发投入,以技术接受国的技术需求为基础,并高效利用现有的“一带一路”技术转移中心网络,开展技术转移活动。     

Interface bureaucrats and the everyday remaking of climate interventions: Evidence from climate change adaptation in Zambia

When climate change policies are implemented in practice, they travel through the hands of a range of practitioners who not only mediate but also potentially transform climate interventions. This article highlights the role of a group of actors whose practices have so far received little attention in the study of climate change governance, namely the public servants who are responsible for the everyday implementation of national climate change policies and associated programmes on the ground. Situated at the frontline of the state and often engaging directly with citizens, these “interface bureaucrats” occupy a complex position in which they must balance their role as representatives of the state with the need to accommodate the pressures, interests and practical challenges associated with everyday policy implementation. In this article we examine how interface bureaucrats in Zambia seek to navigate this role as they go about implementing national climate change adaptation policies in practice, and what this means for the nature and outcome of these interventions. We identify key dilemmas of the interface bureaucrats in our study areas, namely (i) intervening with limited reach, (ii) implementing generic policies, and (iii) managing conflicting interests. We show how they address these dilemmas through highly pragmatic practices involving informal agreements with community members, discretionary adjustments of official policies, and negotiation of contested interventions. As a result, the nature and outcomes of climate change adaptation interventions end up differently from the official policies and the underlying governance interests of the central state. Our findings suggest a need for greater attention to the role of interface bureaucrats as everyday climate policy makers and point to the significance of pragmatism and compromise in the interaction between state actors and citizens in environmental interventions.     

Experience is not enough: A dynamic explanation of the limited adaptation to extreme weather events in public organizations

This study advances theory articulating the micro-level processes behind public organization adaptation to extreme weather. It tackles a persistent puzzle about the limited adaptation to extreme weather among public organizations: why does adaptation remain deficit after public organizations have experienced repeated extreme weather and some catastrophic consequences? We develop a computational agent-based model that integrates extant theory and data from semi-structured interviews of U.S. public transit agency managers, and use the model to investigate how micro-level cognition and behavior interact with environmental constraints to facilitate or impede the diffusion of adaptation. We articulate in greater detail how experience with influential extreme weather events matters to adaptation, highlighting that such experience is insufficient for adaptation to occur. A key insight is that the potential benefits from both increased risk perception and additional financial resources stemming from disaster- or non-disaster-induced opportunities can be underutilized, absent effective coupling between heightened risk perception and availability of resources that creates windows for adaptation. Using this insight, we further identify managerial and policy interventions with maximum leverage to promote adaptation to extreme weather in public organizations. The experiments show that slowing risk perception decay and synchronizing opportunities with extreme weather occurrences can stimulate adaptation.