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.     

Integrating farmers’ adaptive knowledge into flood management and adaptation policies in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta: A social learning perspective

Flood management and adaptation are important elements in sustaining farming production in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD). While over the past decades hydraulic development introduced by the central government has substantially benefited the rural economy, it has simultaneously caused multiple barriers to rural adaptation. We investigate the relational practices (i.e., learning interactions) taking place within and across the flood management and adaptation boundaries from the perspective of social learning. We explore whether and how adaptive knowledge (i.e., experimental and experiential knowledge) derived from farmers’ everyday adaptation practices contributes to local flood management and adaptation policies in the selected areas. We collected data through nine focus groups with farmers and thirty-three interviews with government officials, environmental scientists, and farmers. Qualitative analysis suggests that such processes are largely shaped by the institutional context where the boundary is embedded. This study found that while the highly bureaucratic operation of flood management creates constraints for feedback, the more informal arrangements set in place at the local level provide flexible platforms conducive to open communication, collaborative learning, and exchange of knowledge among the different actors. This study highlights the pivotal role of shadow systems that provide space for establishing and maintaining informal interactions and relationships between social actors (e.g., interactions between farmers and extension officials) in stimulating and influencing, from the bottom-up, the emergence of adaptive knowledge about flood management and adaptation in a local context.     

A survey of urban climate change experiments in 100 cities

Cities are key sites where climate change is being addressed. Previous research has largely overlooked the multiplicity of climate change responses emerging outside formal contexts of decision-making and led by actors other than municipal governments. Moreover, existing research has largely focused on case studies of climate change mitigation in developed economies. The objective of this paper is to uncover the heterogeneous mix of actors, settings, governance arrangements and technologies involved in the governance of climate change in cities in different parts of the world.The paper focuses on urban climate change governance as a process of experimentation. Climate change experiments are presented here as interventions to try out new ideas and methods in the context of future uncertainties. They serve to understand how interventions work in practice, in new contexts where they are thought of as innovative. To study experimentation, the paper presents evidence from the analysis of a database of 627 urban climate change experiments in a sample of 100 global cities.The analysis suggests that, since 2005, experimentation is a feature of urban responses to climate change across different world regions and multiple sectors. Although experimentation does not appear to be related to particular kinds of urban economic and social conditions, some of its core features are visible. For example, experimentation tends to focus on energy. Also, both social and technical forms of experimentation are visible, but technical experimentation is more common in urban infrastructure systems. While municipal governments have a critical role in climate change experimentation, they often act alongside other actors and in a variety of forms of partnership. These findings point at experimentation as a key tool to open up new political spaces for governing climate change in the city.     

A conceptual framework for analysing adaptive capacity and multi-level learning processes in resource governance regimes

Governance failures are at the origin of many resource management problems. In particular climate change and the concomitant increase of extreme weather events has exposed the inability of current governance regimes to deal with present and future challenges. Still our knowledge about resource governance regimes and how they change is quite limited. This paper develops a conceptual framework addressing the dynamics and adaptive capacity of resource governance regimes as multi-level learning processes. The influence of formal and informal institutions, the role of state and non-state actors, the nature of multi-level interactions and the relative importance of bureaucratic hierarchies, markets and networks are identified as major structural characteristics of governance regimes. Change is conceptualized as social and societal learning that proceeds in a stepwise fashion moving from single to double to triple loop learning. Informal networks are considered to play a crucial role in such learning processes. The framework supports flexible and context sensitive analysis without being case study specific.First empirical evidence from water governance supports the assumptions made on the dynamics of governance regimes and the usefulness of the chosen approach. More complex and diverse governance regimes have a higher adaptive capacity. However, it is still an open question how to overcome the state of single-loop learning that seem to characterize many attempts to adapt to climate change. Only further development and application of shared conceptual frameworks taking into account the real complexity of governance regimes can generate the knowledge base needed to advance current understanding to a state that allows giving meaningful policy advice.     

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.     

IPCC AR6报告解读：气候变化对城市、住区和关键基础设施的影响与适应

IPCC AR6 WGII评估了气候变化对城市、住区和关键基础设施的影响、风险及应对。气候变化对城市影响的程度和范围逐渐增加,全球城市化的过程与气候变化相互作用加剧了城市和住区的风险。通过社会基础设施、基于自然的解决方案和灰色/工程基础设施所采取的适应措施对气候恢复力发展均有贡献,而城市适应差距在世界各地普遍存在。气候恢复力发展需要多方协作、弥合政策行动差距、提升适应能力。评估报告的经验和案例为我国城乡地区适应和应对气候变化风险提供借鉴。     

Navigating climate crises in the Great Barrier Reef

A dramatic escalation of extreme climate events is challenging the capacity of environmental governance regimes to sustain and improve ecosystem outcomes. It has been argued that actors within adaptive governance regimes can help to steer environmental systems toward sustainability in times of crisis. Yet there is little empirical evidence of how acute climate crises are navigated by actors operating within adaptive governance regimes, and the factors that influence their responses. Here, we qualitatively assessed the actions key governance actors took in response to back-to-back mass coral bleaching – an extreme climate event – of the Great Barrier Reef in 2016 and 2017, and explored their perceptions of barriers and catalysts to these responses. This research was, in part, a product of collaboration and knowledge co-production with Great Barrier Reef governance actors aimed at improving responses to climate crises in the region. We found five major categories of activity that actors engaged with in the wake of recurrent mass coral bleaching: assessing the scale and extent of bleaching, sharing information, communicating bleaching to the public, building local resilience, and addressing global threats. These actions were both catalyzed and hindered by a range of factors that fall within different domains of adaptive capacity; such as assets, social organization, and agency. We discuss the implications of our findings as they relate to existing research on adaptive capacity and adaptive governance. We conclude by coalescing insights from our interviews and a participant engagement process to highlight four key ways in which the ability of governance actors, and the Great Barrier Reef governance regime more broadly, can be better prepared for, and more effectively respond to extreme climate events. Our research provides empirical insight into how crises are experienced by governance actors in a large-scale environmental system, potentially providing lessons for similar systems across the globe.     

The role of adaptive capacity in incremental and transformative adaptation in three large U.S. Urban water systems

Urban water systems need to serve increasing numbers of people under a changing climate. Studies of systems facing extreme events, such as drought, can clarify the nature of adaptive capacity and whether this might support incremental (marginal changes) or transformative adaptation (fundamental system shifts) to climate change. We conducted comparative case studies of three major metropolitan water systems in the United States to understand how actions taken in response to drought affected adaptive capacity and whether the adaptive capacity observed in these systems fosters the preconditions needed for transformative adaptation. We find that while there is ample evidence of existing and potential adaptive capacity, this can be either enabled or diminished by the specific actions taken and their cascading effects on other parts of the system. We also find social dimensions, such as public acceptance, learning, trust, and collaboration, to be as critical as physical elements of adaptive capacity in urban water systems. Finally, we suggest that changes in practices initiated during drought, combined with sustained engagement, collaboration, and education, can lead to substantial and long-lasting changes in values around water, a precursor to transformative adaptation.     

Framing the application of adaptation pathways for rural livelihoods and global change in eastern Indonesian islands

In developing countries adaptation responses to climate and global change should be integrated with human development to generate no regrets, co-benefit strategies for the rural poor, but there are few examples of how to achieve this. The adaptation pathways approach provides a potentially useful decision-making framework because it aims to steer societies towards sustainable futures by accounting for complex systems, uncertainty and contested multi-stakeholder arenas, and by maintaining adaptation options. Using Nusa Tenggara Barat Province, Indonesia, as an example we consider whether generic justifications for adaptation pathways are tenable in the local context of climate and global change, rural poverty and development. Interviews and focus groups held with a cross-section of provincial leaders showed that the causes of community vulnerability are indeed highly complex and dynamic, influenced by 20 interacting drivers, of which climate variability and change are only two. Climate change interacts with population growth and ecosystem degradation to reduce land, water and food availability. Although poverty is resilient due to corruption, traditional institutions and fatalism, there is also considerable system flux due to decentralisation, modernisation and erosion of traditional culture. Together with several thresholds in drivers, potential shocks and paradoxes, these characteristics result in unpredictable system trajectories. Decision-making is also contested due to tensions around formal and informal leadership, corruption, community participation in planning and female empowerment. Based on this context we propose an adaptation pathways approach which can address the proximate and systemic causes of vulnerability and contested decision-making. Appropriate participatory processes and governance structures are suggested, including integrated livelihoods and multi-scale systems analysis, scenario planning, adaptive co-management and ‘livelihood innovation niches’. We briefly discuss how this framing of adaptation pathways would differ from one in the developed context of neighbouring Australia, including the influence of the province's island geography on the heterogeneity of livelihoods and climate change, the pre-eminence and rapid change of social drivers, and the necessity to ‘leap-frog’ the Millennium Development Goals by mid-century to build adaptive capacity for imminent climate change impacts.     

适应性治理与气候变化：内蒙古草原案例分析与对策探讨

适应性治理通过边学边做,针对各地方的社会经济条件、自然生态系统、地方知识文化等基本特征,基于一个动态、自下而上和自组织的过程不断测试和修正制度安排与知识体系,形成一个旨在解决实际问题的循环过程。通过内蒙古3个地区案例的对比分析研究,基于对其气候变化风险和社会脆弱性的评估,发现其在气候变化影响下形成的不同程度的社会脆弱性正是源于不同的草原利用机制和基于此的社会合作机制。正是因为3个案例地的牧民有着不同的社会资本和社会记忆,所以他们面对极端天气导致的自然灾害时,采取了不同的应对方式,有的牧户可以依赖于社会资本移动牲畜来渡过难关,有的牧户则可以在嘎查范围内重启社会记忆,通过合理安排草场利用和移动牲畜提高自身的抗灾能力,而有的牧户则只能通过买草料独立抗灾。这样不同的结果有力证明了适应性治理在提升这些地区气候变化应对能力方面的必要性和可行性。在地区层面引入适应性治理,可以满足各利益相关方的需求,有利于自然、社会及管理的多学科协同,与“未来地球计划”的协同设计、协同实施和协同推广理念不谋而合,是“未来地球”思想在气候变化适应研究中的实践。     

Planning adaptation based on local actors’ knowledge and participation: a climate governance experiment

Involving a wide-range of stakeholders at different moments in the planning of urban adaptation to climate change can help to overcome different barriers to adaptation, such as a lack of common perception, or control over options. This Article argues for an approach that involves a wide range of actors throughout the planning process in order to confront the challenges of urban adaptation to climate change. It builds on the results of a three-year participatory action research project to identify the catalysts with which local administrations can overcome the lack of data, the low level of engagement around the climate issue, and the cause-and-effect linkages of climate change impacts on the urban environment. Significant factors include territorial rootedness, leveraging actors’ experience, interaction between actors, as well as the valuing of local actors as experts of territorial management rather than as novices with regard to climate change adaptation. In addition to contributing towards the engagement of a large number of stakeholders around adaptation issues, a planning process that involves representatives from various sectors and during several stages contributes to a greater understanding of these issues and their linkages. It follows that such a process will bring changes to urban practices by better articulating local concerns about climatic issues.

Policy relevance

Although participation is commonly advocated in policy responses to climate change, only few empirical studies have investigated the ways in which local actors' knowledge can be integrated into climate change adaptation planning processes. The article builds on the results of an action research project carried out in Québec City, Canada, to address the relevance of involving a progressively broader range of actors as the adaptation process moves through its various phases. Given that a multitude of barriers to adaptation are at play at different times in a municipality, collaborations between local stakeholders emerge as a key factor. These collaborations provide greater insight into the linkages between climate change impacts and the urban environment and, in doing so, bring into question ordinary urban management and design practices.     

Creating adaptive social-ecological fit: The role of regional actors in the governance of Sea-level rise adaptation in San Francisco bay

Sea level rise is one of the most pressing climate adaptation issues around the world. Often, coastal communities are interdependent in their exposure to sea level rise – if one builds a seawall, it will push water to another – and would benefit from a coordinated adaptive response. The literature on social-ecological systems (SES) calls for actors placed at higher levels of governance (e.g. regional government in a metropolitan area) to improve coordination between local managers by serving as brokers. However, we lack empirical insight on how higher-level actors might improve coordination in practice, and theoretical development on the implications of their intermediation. To address these gaps, we study the case of adaptation to sea level rise in the San Francisco Bay Area. We build a social-ecological network of social actors and shoreline segments using original survey data and simulated scenarios of tidal and traffic interdependencies between shoreline segments. We perform a frequency analysis of network motifs that operationalize social-ecological ‘fit’ in the context of the Bay Area. We find that regional actors and non-governmental organizations increase social-ecological fit by providing intermediation between actors who work on different shoreline segments, whether interdependent or not. This shows that these actors provide adaptive social-ecological fit, future-proofing the Bay Area to current and future climate adaptation challenges.     

Urban greenspace as a climate change adaptation strategy for subtropical Asian cities: A comparative study across cities in three countries

Interest in nature-based approaches for climate change adaptation in cities is growing. Whilst there is a growing field of scholarship in a European and North America setting, research on the policy and governance of urban greenspace for climate adaptation in subtropical Asia is limited. Given the different development patterns, environmental characteristics and governance arrangements in subtropical cities, plus their comparatively large population and high climate risk, this is a significant knowledge gap. In response, this paper evaluates competences – skill sets, capabilities, and supporting policy and legislation – to enact adaptation through greenspace across different governance contexts; and assesses how international rhetoric on nature-based adaptation becomes localised to subtropical Asian city settings. We conduct interviews with stakeholders, plus review of relevant policy and city-specific research, for three cities with different governance and development contexts: Hanoi (Vietnam); Taipei (Taiwan); and Fukuoka (Japan). Across all three cases, we find that institutional structures and processes for connecting different remits and knowledge systems are a bigger challenge than a lack of appropriate policy or individuals with the required technical knowledge. However, opportunities for civil society participation and consideration of justice issues vary between the cities according to the socio-political context. These findings illustrate the value of individuals and organisations able to work across institutional boundaries in linking greenspace and adaptation agendas for subtropical Asian cities; and the importance of competence in collaboration with developers and civil society so that the rapid development or regeneration seen in subtropical Asian contexts does not tend towards green climate gentrification. More broadly, our findings show that the diverse nature of subtropical Asian cities means the role of greenspace in climate adaptation is likely to be context-specific, and thus that caution must be exercised against uncritically importing best practices from exemplar cases elsewhere.     

Discourse and desalination: Potential impacts of proposed climate change adaptation interventions in the Arizona–Sonora border region

The specter of climate change threatens fresh water resources along the U.S.–Mexico border. Water managers and planners on both sides of the border are promoting desalination—the conversion of seawater or brackish groundwater to fresh water—as an adaptation response that can help meet growing water demands and buffer against the negative impacts of climate change on regional water supplies. However, the uneven distribution of costs and benefits of this expensive, energy-intensive technology is likely to exacerbate existing social inequalities in the border zone. In this paper, we examine the discourses employed in the construction of the climate problem and proposed solutions. We focus our analysis on a proposed Arizona–Sonora binational desalination project and use insights from risk and hazards literature to analyze how, why, and to what effect desalination is emerging as a preferred climate change adaptation response. Our risk analysis shows that while desalination technology can reduce some vulnerabilities (e.g., future water supply), it can also introduce new vulnerabilities by compounding the water-energy nexus, increasing greenhouse gas emissions, inducing urban growth, producing brine discharge and chemical pollutants, shifting geopolitical relations of water security, and increasing water prices. Additionally, a high-tech and path-dependent response will likely result in increased reliance on technical expertise, less opportunity for participatory decision-making and reduced flexibility. The paper concludes by proposing alternative adaptation responses that can offer greater flexibility, are less path dependent, incorporate social learning, and target the poorest and most vulnerable members of the community. These alternatives can build greater adaptive capacity and ensure equity.     

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.     

Social risk perceptions of climate change: A case study of farmers and agricultural advisors in northern California

Crop and livestock farmers must respond to climate change, including a range of physical and cultural impacts and risks. In rural northern California, farmers face extreme drought and catastrophic wildfires with increasing frequency. I draw on an extended case study of farmers and agricultural advisors in Siskiyou County to understand how rural agriculturalists perceive risks when navigating climate change discourses. While farmers are changing their management practices in response to the physical effects of climate change, many perceive substantial social risks within their communities if they align themselves publicly with climate change beliefs or actions. Perceived social consequences included loss of access to the benefits of membership in formal and informal farming groups. Efforts focused on educating or convincing farmers of climate science may, in some contexts, increase rather than decrease the perceived social risks of climate action. The framing of climate policies, programs, and practices – especially by public agricultural advisors like Cooperative Extension Advisors and local USDA staff (e.g., Farm Service Agency) – is important not only for increasing farmer participation, but also for reducing perceived social risks associated with climate change. Interventions that focus on livelihood impacts and validate existing land stewardship-oriented values have more potential to increase the pace and scale of climate change mitigation and adaptation in agriculture.     

Narratives,narrations and social structure in environmental governance

Avoiding further aggravation of the consequences of global environmental change remains a complex governance challenge. Social relational structure among actors plays a key role for enhancing the capacity of collaborative approaches to environmental governance. We present an encompassing conceptual framework to advance understanding of the mechanisms that shape dynamics in environmental governance entities. Narrative theory is integrated with insights on group dynamics grounded in social network theory to contextualize local social complexities in governance processes. We assume that social relational structure between actors, and narrations they tell, co-produce narratives and dynamics at the group level. Three important mechanisms that influence dynamics are described: (1) the interplay between collaborative relationships and narrative congruence between individual actors, (2) the characteristics of actors, and (3) the actors’ embeddedness in the wider social structure. A set of testable hypotheses on the interplay between narration, narratives and social relational structure in environmental governance processes is presented. We conclude by discussing why we regard this framework useful to study local and regional governance entities in the context of addressing global environmental change.     

Household and community responses to impacts of climate change in the rural hills of Nepal

The research was designed to answer how households and local communities in rural Nepal are responding to the impacts of climate change. Using four villages as case study units, a mixed method approach was adopted in a multi-scaled process carried out at community, district and national levels. The research found that adaptation practices being adopted differ according to household well-being and are largely governed by access to education, information and resources within the community. Responses such as livelihood and income diversification, internal migration, share cropping, taking consumption loans, use of alternative energy and use of bio-pesticides were found to mostly vary according to well-being status of the interviewees. Development of adaptation plans, strategies and support mechanisms should take account of the different adaptation practices and needs of households. If such individual situations are not considered, adaptation responses may be ineffective or even be maladaptive and increase vulnerability. The research also found that the autonomous, unplanned and reactive nature of adaptation practices chosen by rural communities can contribute to further inequity and unequal power relations. The knowledge generated from this research contributes to understanding of how climate change contributes to vulnerability, but also how local practices and lack of an effective climate policy or response measures may magnify the effects of many existing drivers of vulnerability in terms of maladaptation and increasing social inequalities.     

Co-management and the co-production of knowledge: Learning to adapt in Canada's Arctic

Co-management institutional arrangements have an important role in creating conditions for social learning and adaptation in a rapidly changing Arctic environment, although how that works in practice has not been clearly articulated. This paper draws on three co-management cases from the Canadian Arctic to examine the role of knowledge co-production as an institutional trigger or mechanism to enable learning and adapting. Experience with knowledge co-production across the three cases is variable but outcomes illustrate how co-management actors are learning to learn through uncertainty and environmental change, or learning to be adaptive. Policy implications of this analysis are highlighted and include the importance of a long-term commitment to institution building, an enabling policy environment to sustain difficult social processes associated with knowledge co-production, and the value of diverse modes of communication, deliberation and social interaction.     

Policy integration: Do laws or actors integrate issues relevant to flood risk management in Switzerland?

Existing research emphasizes interdependencies between social and ecological systems in climate change adaptation. Ecological systems are often complex and span several issues that are not integrated in the social governance system. In order to increase the fit between social and ecological systems, understanding factors that promote the integration of interdependent issues is crucial. In this paper, we consider 11 issues related to flood risk management, e.g., technical flood protection and habitat loss, which are typically addressed in different policy sectors but exhibit ecological, functional, or geographical interdependencies. We analyze two bases for issue integration: a) political actors connecting issues and, b) the legal framework cross-referencing issues. We propose a network method for systematic comparisons between issue integration based on actors and integration based on laws. For the case of Swiss flood risk management, we find that actor- and law-based issue integration co-vary and might be self-reinforcing. We further find that issue integration mostly rests on laws, although cases exist where actors are the main basis of integration. Results promote our understanding of potential bases for the integration of policy issues, thereby contributing knowledge about adaptive governance capacities in social-ecological systems that buffer the effects of climate change.