| State-of-the-art of governance research | Innovations of Go-Adapt |
| General | So far, research on climate change adaptation has focused mainly on climate scenarios, expected impacts and respective ecological, societal and economic vulnerabilities. | The governance perspective employed in Go-Adapt is key to advance climate change adaptation because respective impacts and vulnerabilities challenge how policy making usually works. |
| Stock taking survey | Little is known about the approaches governments employ to cope with the governance challenges in the context of climate change adaptation. | The stock taking aims to provide the first comparative account of how selected governments cope with major governance challenges in the context of adaptation. |
| Policy case studies | Since adaptation governance approaches have rarely been subject to empirical political science research (at least not at the national level), little is known about how they actually function. | The case studies aim to provide first insights on the strengths and weaknesses of selected governance practices and how they shape policy making. |
| Lesson drawing | Similar governance approaches have been developed, applied and researched over years in other contexts. Although the experiences made there are highly relevant for climate change adaptation (and vice versa), they are rarely addressed jointly. | By linking governance research on related policy fields, the proposed research facilitates learning and avoids ‘tabula rasa’ in the relatively new adaptation policy field. |
| Synthesis and policy guidance | „The governance framework of adaptation is still largely in the making” (Paavola 2008, 652), and little is known about what approaches work best under what circumstances. | By combining the case study comparison with the extended literature review Go-Adapt provides the knowledge-base for innovations in the governance of climate change adaptation. |
