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Climate change is irreversibly changing the water cycle, yet existing environmental flow assessment methods often fail to recognize the non-stationarity of hydro-climatic systems. Failure to do so will lead to the inability of environmental water management to achieve its ecological targets. Australia has undergone major reform over the past 12 years to recover water from consumptive use for environmental benefit and this paper examines how government agencies responsible for planning and delivery of environmental water establish ecological objectives, and whether there are any barriers to including climate adaptations. We used semi-structured interviews and an online survey of environmental water staff throughout Australia, focusing on southeast Australia, to gather information on methods and perceptions regarding these key issues. The results show water managers perceive current ecological objectives as unachievable and are frustrated by using outdated, government-recommended flow assessment methods. There are many general and industry-specific barriers to climate adaptation that are not insurmountable, yet the current lack of legislative and policy guidance provides little assistance on the best way to respond. We conclude that environmental water planning needs to more formally incorporate climate change considerations along with modelling approaches that can evaluate outcomes under a range of possible future hydro-climatic scenarios to ensure proactive decision making can occur. As the industry currently exists in Australia, it is ill prepared for the challenge of meeting legislated ecological targets under future climates.

Faced with increasing climate extremes and climate change impacts, local governments in California are eager to advance their adaptation measures and build local resilience. However, as previous studies and day-to-day interactions with local leaders make clear, identifying ways to resource adaptation is one of the most significant barriers to progress. This paper draws on selected findings from a study that aimed to better describe the nature of the adaptation finance challenges local governments face so as to find ways to overcome them. Building on initial findings from an online survey and nine stakeholder workshops to deepen the understanding of the nature of funding and financing challenges for local governments, we use a methodological innovation in archetype analysis, grounded theory, to develop a suite of 15 archetypal adaptation finance challenges, i.e., repeatedly found patterns of interrelated causal factors, traits, and outcomes ranging from establishing a matter of concern worthy of attention (and funding) to acquiring, using, and managing adaptation finance. These archetypes are found across different types and sizes of local governments facing different climate change threats. The resulting deeper understanding of local adaptation funding challenges represents an important contribution to the literature and opens up new avenues for intervention beyond the prevailing focus on creating new funding vehicles. We offer archetype-specific recommendations to overcome or reduce these critical finance challenges in local climate change adaptation.

When something unfamiliar emerges or when something familiar does something unexpected people need to make sense of what is emerging or going on in order to act. Social representations theory suggests how individuals and society make sense of the unfamiliar and hence how the resultant social representations (SRs) cognitively, emotionally, and actively orient people and enable communication. SRs are social constructions that emerge through individual and collective engagement with media and with everyday conversations among people. Recent developments in text analysis techniques, and in particular topic modeling, provide a potentially powerful analytical method to examine the structure and content of SRs using large samples of narrative or text. In this paper I describe the methods and results of applying topic modeling to 660 micronarratives collected from Australian academics / researchers, government employees, and members of the public in 2010-2011. The narrative fragments focused on adaptation to climate change (CC) and hence provide an example of Australian society making sense of an emerging and conflict ridden phenomena. The results of the topic modeling reflect elements of SRs of adaptation to CC that are consistent with findings in the literature as well as being reasonably robust predictors of classes of action in response to CC. Bayesian Network (BN) modeling was used to identify relationships among the topics (SR elements) and in particular to identify relationships among topics, sentiment, and action. Finally the resulting model and topic modeling results are used to highlight differences in the salience of SR elements among social groups. The approach of linking topic modeling and BN modeling offers a new and encouraging approach to analysis for ongoing research on SRs.

This paper examines conservation objectives in Australian law in the context of climate change. The rate of climate change and the scale and extent of its impacts on natural systems drive the need to re-evaluate current conservation objectives, from basic concept definitions, to overarching goals and values, to the way they are operationalized at all levels. We outline the case for reform of objectives in the legal framework for conservation and discuss three key strategies that would facilitate this transition: (1) acknowledgment in conservation law of system dynamism; (2) focus on ecosystem function, stability, and resilience; and (3) an explicit recognition that systems operate across multiple scales. Law reform is a slow process, but the potential of climate change to drive transformational changes means that urgent action is needed to overcome the limitations of current objectives and in the legal framework itself.

Ecosystem-based approaches for climate change adaptation are promoted at international, national, and local levels by both scholars and practitioners. However, local planning practices that support these approaches are scattered, and measures are neither systematically implemented nor comprehensively reviewed. Against this background, this paper advances the operationalization of ecosystem-based adaptation by improving our knowledge of how ecosystem-based approaches can be considered in local planning (operational governance level). We review current research on ecosystem services in urban areas and examine four Swedish coastal municipalities to identify the key characteristics of both implemented and planned measures that support ecosystem-based adaptation. The results show that many of the measures that have been implemented focus on biodiversity rather than climate change adaptation, which is an important factor in only around half of all measures. Furthermore, existing measures are limited in their focus regarding the ecological structures and the ecosystem services they support, and the hazards and risk factors they address. We conclude that a more comprehensive approach to sustainable ecosystem-based adaptation planning and its systematic mainstreaming is required. Our framework for the analysis of ecosystem-based adaptation measures proved to be useful in identifying how ecosystem-related matters are addressed in current practice and strategic planning, and in providing knowledge on how ecosystem-based adaptation can further be considered in urban planning practice. Such a systematic analysis framework can reveal the ecological structures, related ecosystem services, and risk-reducing approaches that are missing and why. This informs the discussion about why specific measures are not considered and provides pathways for alternate measures/designs, related operations, and policy processes at different scales that can foster sustainable adaptation and transformation in municipal governance and planning.

Both in literature and in practice, it is claimed that joint knowledge production (JKP) by researchers, policy makers, and other societal actors is necessary to make science relevant for addressing climate adaptation. Although recent assessments of JKP projects have provided some arguments in favor of their societal merit, much less is known about their scientific merit. We explored the latter by developing a conceptual framework addressing characteristics of doing JKP as well as hypotheses on potential merits and pitfalls in terms of its process, output, and impact for science. Semistructured interviews with six environmental science research leaders as well as discussions with five researchers involved in past JKP projects were used to start operationalizing the framework into criteria and compiling a survey. This survey was filled out by 144 researchers involved in Knowledge for Climate, a large Dutch multiactor research program. The findings suggest that, at least in the context of recently carried out Dutch climate adaptation projects, JKP contributes to a broader empirical knowledge base; more reflexivity on the part of researchers; and more publications for policy makers. We conclude this paper by formulating next research steps, including evaluating what would be a proper balance between more versus less participatory forms of scientific knowledge production.

A shift is taking place within environmental governance that draws attention to modes and instruments that respond to system dynamics, uncertainty, and contested values. Adaptive comanagement is one process being advanced to make governance operational as it emphasizes collaboration among diverse actors, functions across scales and levels, and fosters learning though iterative feedback. Although extensive experience with adaptive comanagement has been gained in relation to other environmental and resource issues, its potential contribution to the governance of adaption is largely unexplored. This paper probes how adaptive comanagement might offer support to climate change adaptation and identifies gaps in knowledge requiring attention. In drawing upon existing literature and applied experiences, it is argued that adaptive comanagement may contribute to climate change adaptation by building generalized adaptive capacity as well as providing a novel institutional arrangement to generate adaptive responses. At the same time, several questions emerge about adaptive comanagement in this context. Considerations are thus discussed for adaptive comanagement scholarship and application in addressing the challenge of climate change adaptation.