The project Go-Adapt focused on the governance of climate change adaptation, i.e. on the ways in which adaptation policies and instruments are developed and implemented by governments in selected developed countries at different levels. Why is this governance perspective important? Adaptation to climate change is understood as “adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic changes or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities” (IPCC 2001; IPCC 2007; see also OECD 2008, 1). Public policies on adaptation are supposed to either build adaptive capacities thereby increasing the ability of various actors to adapt to climate change, or to improve adaptation directly by putting capacities into action (Nelson et al. 2007; Adger et al. 2005). By focusing on interesting practices of ‘how to do it’, Go-Adapt helps to develop and implement adaptation policies that are concerned with the ‘what to do’. So far, however, “[t]he governance framework of adaptation is still largely in the making” (Paavola 2008, 652) and little is known about the governance of adaptation policies because this issue has largely been neglected (IPCC 2007, 19f; Schipper & Burton 2008). Consequently, there is a lot to learn through governance research. Not paying attention to the challenge of how to deliver adaptation policies through adequate governance arrangements any longer would inevitably hamper adaptation efforts. In this sense, “institutional requirements for adaptation” are also acknowledged as important in facilitating adaptation to climate change in the latest IPCC report from 2007 (Adger et al. 2007, 731; Klein et al. 2007, 747). | |
