BASE

Bottom up Adaptation Strategies for a Sustainable Europe

A BASE analysis of EU Member State Climate Change Adaptation Strategies: Comparing approaches and drawing lessons

This presentation of a paper, by BASE partners Duncan Russel (University of Exeter), Anders Pedersen, Helle Nielsen, Anne Jensen (University of Aarhas), Silke Beck, Sabine Weiland (UFZ), Kirsi Mäkinen (SYKE), Sergio Castellari, Eleni Karali (ISPRA), Katriona Mcglade, Jenny Troeltzsch (Ecologic Institute), was given at the DCE Science for the Environment conference.

 
Abstract
It is widely acknowledged that national climate change adaptation strategies require the existence and development of administrative structures and capacity to facilitate policy integration between affected sectors and governance levels (i.e. measures for the identification of cross-sectoral and cross-scale synergies and trade-offs). The extant literature on policy integration suggests that public bodies can pursue a number of different approaches to achieve these ends, yet there are surprisingly few comparative studies seeking to evaluate how integration measures operate in different contexts and why. This paper aims to address this research gap through comparing the policy integration approaches followed by a selection of EU Member States in their climate change adaptation strategies. It does so through drawing on drawing on concepts from the policy integration and coordination literatures and data derived from policy documents, parliamentary reports and other relevant literature coupled with some interview data. Considering the differences in institutional configurations, climate change impacts and political, economic and cultural contexts, this paper seeks to better understand: 1) why different nations employ different approaches in their climate adaptation strategies; 2) the extent to which different climate change adaptation policy integration measures and strategies have been operationalized, especially in relation to their reach into other sectors; and 3) the lessons that can be learnt for climate change adaptation policy integration from the varied experiences of the Member States. 

 

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