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Authors acknowledge funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Grant 642018 (GREEN‐WIN project) and funding from the project INSeaPTION as part of ERA4CS, an ERA‐NET initiated by JPI Climate, and funded by BMBF (DE), MINECO (ES), NWO (NL), and ANR (FR) with co-funding by the European Union (Grant 690462). Coastal flood risk reduction (CFRR) presents a significant public funding challenge, due to its high upfront costs and long-term benefits, and this challenge will increase with future sea-level rise. The funding challenge necessarily involves multiple levels of government, due to the regional nature of CFRR public goods involved. Yet there has been little research comparing such multilevel arrangements across countries, and in particular exploring the performance of public funding arrangements for providing coastal flood risk reduction. We address this gap, applying fiscal federalism to develop a multilevel governance analysis of public decision-making and fiscal authorities for CFRR in the Netherlands, Germany, the UK and Australia. For each country, we locate key decision-making and fiscal authorities in multilevel governance arrangements, and analyse their alignment with the benefits of CFRR measures (spillovers). We find diverse coastal flood risk governance arrangements ranging from highly centralised (NL), mixed arrangements, involving regional centralisation (Germany) or partial devolvement (UK), to full decentralisation (AUS). Further, we find that in accordance with fiscal federalism, multilevel coastal flood risk governance arrangements are generally reflective of the distribution of the benefits across different levels of government, with some exceptions (Germany and UK). Finally, exploring the outlook of current arrangements under sea-level rise, we find that major fiscal redistributions may be put under pressure by rising costs likely under SLR and future coastal development. This is particularly the case for those systems which operate under hazard-based, as opposed to risk-based, coastal protection policies. Further, we find that both fully and moderately decentralised arrangements may require greater central support for alternative measures, such as retreat, in light of growing financial burdens on local governments. Postprint

The finance sector’s response to pressures around climate change has emphasized disclosure, notably through the recommendations of the Financial Stability Board’s Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). The implicit assumption—that if risks are fully revealed, finance will respond rationally and in ways aligned with the public interest—is rooted in the “efficient market hypothesis” (EMH) applied to the finance sector and its perception of climate policy. For low carbon investment, particular hopes have been placed on the role of institutional investors, given the apparent matching of their assets and liabilities with the long timescales of climate change. We both explain theoretical frameworks (grounded in the “three domains”, namely satisficing, optimizing, and transforming) and use empirical evidence (from a survey of institutional investors), to show that the EMH is unsupported by either theory or evidence: it follows that transparency alone will be an inadequate response. To some extent, transparency can address behavioural biases (first domain characteristics), and improving pricing and market efficiency (second domain); however, the strategic (third domain) limitations of EMH are more serious. We argue that whilst transparency can help, on its own it is a very long way from an adequate response to the challenges of ‘aligning institutional climate finance’.

Win-win solutions (WWSs) that reconcile climate with economic goals offer a new suite of opportunities to build the necessary economic conditions for achieving a good life for all and reaching the Sustainable Development Goals. However, a systematic assessment of such solutions is still missing. Addressing this gap, a Global Dialogue on win-win solutions was implemented within the GREEN-WIN project to (1) co-develop a vision about ‘which kind of economy do we want for which kind of world?’, (2) identify exemplary WWSs in diverse domains of action and (3) evaluate the possibilities to scale win-win solutions and thus contribute to changing current core economic practices. Our assessment focuses on the potential of ‘scaling out, up and deep’ of solutions to attain a vision of a sustainable world. We find that critical factors for scaling such experiences across the globe are initiating and facilitating opportunities for sharing information and knowledge, boosting multi-stakeholder collaboration and co-creating and building transformative capacities, while ensuring financial support for niche experimentation.

Nature-based flood defences (NBFD) are receiving considerable attention in the coastal adaptation field. Advocates of NBFD point to their cost-effectiveness, flexibility and the range of co-benefits they produce beside flood risk reduction. However, NBFD are not yet common practice. One reason for this may be found in financial barriers. To date, there has been little attention for financial aspects of NBFD, as the literature has focused on design, effectiveness and socio-economic impact of such projects. We address this gap by analysing the financial attractiveness of real-world NBFD from the perspective of the public actor. We address the following research questions: through which mechanisms can public investments in NBFD projects be leveraged? and ii) what are the enabling conditions for these mechanisms? We find two types of revenue generating mechanisms: value capture, in which the public actor generates revenues from private beneficiaries through taxes; and co-investment, in which the project attracts in-kind or cash contributions from other actors. We illustrate the potential of these leveraging mechanisms in four case studies and find that NBFD can generate significant tax revenues in locations with high demand for certain co-benefits, whereas project size, type, timing and beneficiaries of co-benefits determine the potential for co-investment.

Flood risk in urban areas around the world is increasing due to socio-economic development and climate change. Urban climate adaptation measures are beneficial over the longer term, particularly in coastal areas, yet the upfront costs of such measures are significant. Moreover, public actors responsible for adaptation to flood risk face constrained budgets. A promising strategy for overcoming these constraints and enabling greater adaptation investment is land reclamation that includes adaptation, i.e. flood risk reduction. Land reclamation in high-value urban areas can generate substantial revenues through the sale or lease of new land, or taxes on increased economic activities, thus offsetting public adaptation investments. This paper explores the potential of land reclamation for leveraging public adaptation investments and associated distributional issues, by analysing 3 urban land reclamation and adaptation projects in Germany, the Netherlands and the Maldives. We find that all projects have leveraging potential, and leveraging in projects primarily aimed at land creation is particularly high. Further, due to low adaptation costs needed to protect revenue streams in such projects, these investments appear to be ‘low-regret’. Regarding distributional aspects, high project costs and limited public budgets for adaptation constrain public actors’ ability to ensure equitable outcomes through planning instruments, for example, social housing. Further, in implementation, competition for project benefits can lead to further inequalities. We conclude that urban land reclamation presents a significant opportunity to leverage public adaptation investments under certain conditions. We further outline future research needs including to extend land-based financing theory from related urban infrastructure sectors to inform the design of equitable governance arrangements and to better understand the role of such urban land reclamation projects in regional or national development pathways.

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552 Appropriate institutions are essential for climate change adaptation. Yet diverse approaches to institutional analysis are available, encompassing different ontological and epistemological assumptions, and thus yielding insights on very different aspects of institutions in adaptation. Therefore, efforts to expand knowledge in this domain can be usefully informed by an assessment of approaches to institutional analysis in the adaptation literature, which is to date lacking. We address this gap by conducting a systematic review of the adaptation literature addressing institutions. Our review characterises approaches to institutional analysis by identifying methodological choices and the philosophy of science underpinning them. We then analyze the distribution of approaches to institutional analysis across different adaptation situations, contextualizing our results within methodological debates in adaptation research regarding the appropriateness of positivist, interpretative, or post-normal approaches. We find that institutional analysis of adaptation is now engaging with 'how' and 'why' questions, beyond descriptive questions that characterise the adaptation 'barriers' literature, that diverse philosophies of science drive methodological choice, and that post-normal approaches, e.g. co-design approaches, hardly address institutions. We conclude that support for interpretative approaches, and for institutional analysis in post-normal approaches is needed. The latter is important for adaptation planning processes in developing countries under the UNFCCC.

In the field of adaptation governance research, current discussion on the barriers to adaptation shows that theoretical explanations for why institutions emerge and how they enable or constrain adaptation are underdeveloped. In this Perspective, we show that there is a significant opportunity to advance the understanding of adaptation governance by integrating insights that have been developed in the extensive commons literature on the institutions that work to overcome social conflicts or dilemmas. ‘Realist-materialist’ approaches to understanding such collective action are particularly valuable to adaptation governance research because they emphasize how biophysical conditions give rise to certain types of social dilemma. Climate change affects these biophysical conditions, and thus may alter dilemmas or create new ones. Based on realist-materialist reasoning, this Perspective describes six types of dilemma, illustrates each with a case from the adaptation literature and draws on insights from the commons literature regarding relevant contextual conditions and effective policy instruments for overcoming social dilemmas. The dilemma types provide entry points for rigorous comparative adaptation research to deepen understanding of how context influences adaptation governance processes.

The original version of this article was revised. The order of the author group was changed and a typo in the last name of J. David Tabara was corrected.

Appropriate institutions are essential forclimate change adaptation. Yet diverse approaches to institutional analysis are available, encompassing different ontological and epistemological assumptions, and thus yielding insights on very different aspects of institutions in adaptation. Therefore, efforts to expand knowledge in this domain can be usefully informed by an assessment of approaches to institutional analysis in the adaptation literature, which is to date lacking. We address this gap by conducting a systematic review of the adaptation literature addressing institutions. Our review characterises approaches to institutional analysis by identifying methodological choices and the philosophy of science underpinning them. We then analyze the distribution of approaches to institutional analysis across different adaptation situations, contextualizing our results within methodological debates in adaptation research regarding the appropriateness of positivist, interpretative, or post-normal approaches. We find that institutional analysis of adaptation is now engaging with ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions, beyond descriptive questions that characterise the adaptation ‘barriers’ literature, that diverse philosophies of science drive methodological choice, and that post-normal approaches, e.g. co-design approaches, hardly address institutions. We conclude that support for interpretative approaches, and for institutional analysis in post-normal approaches is needed. The latter is important for adaptation planning processes in developing countries under theUNFCCC.

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552 Analyses of climate adaptation seldom rely on the conceptual toolbox of institutional economics. Yet articles addressing institutions make up a large portion of the climate adaptation literature. With a wealth of institutionally relevant knowledge in the adaptation literature, organizing such knowledge in institutionally meaningful ways can advance the present understanding of the link between institutions and adaptation. Knowing which aspects of this link are well researched, and where in contrast research gaps lie, can provide guidance to institutional economists interested in adaptation. We contribute to this through a systematic review of the adaptation literature, assessing the consideration adaptation scholars give to different elements of the Institutional Analysis and Development framework. Results show a strong focus on collective choice and on adaptation by public actors, with an emphasis on rules in use, social interactions and, to a lesser extent, attributes of the community. Research gaps rather encompass operational and constitutional choice, private adaptation, physical interactions and biophysical conditions.

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552 This article introduces the special issue on climate adaptation and institutions. Economic accounts of climate adaptation have stressed its collective action nature and the limitations of standard economic approaches to the matter. Governance accounts, on their part, have shown that adaptation does not always happen when it is expected. Against this background, institutional economics has the potential to shed light on those societal processes and collective mechanisms leading to and shaping adaptation (or the absence of it). The selection of articles contributing to this special issue shows that climate adaptation can indeed be explored successfully through institutional economics, and that doing so fits well within the institutional economics agenda. Some recommendations for future research are provided at the end.

How should climate change adaptation research be performed? Two principles are widely accepted and articulated in current adaptation-related research programmes such as the global Future Earth programme, the European Horizon 2020 programme and the Dutch Knowledge for Climate programme, just to name a few examples. The first one is that adaptation research should be transdisciplinary and solution-oriented (also called problem-oriented) in that it aims at contributing to ‘‘real-world’’ problem solving rather than purely advancing research in its own right (Cash et al. 2003; Gibbons et al. 1994; Moss et al. 2013). Achieving this aim entails co-designing and co-producing research together with stakeholders (Swart et al. 2014). The second principle is that adaptation research should be interdisciplinary in that it integrates knowledge from a range of natural and social science disciplines. And indeed, a wide variety of methods are currently applied in adaptation research, including participatory, experimental, decision analysis, behavioural analysis, institutional analysis and climate and impact simulation methods (Hinkel and Bisaro 2014). Less consensus can be found on how exactly those two principles shall be put into practice. Regarding transdisciplinarity, there is a substantial literature that has proposed various definitions and models for transdisciplinary research, including ‘‘mode-2’’ knowledge production (Gibbons et al. 1994), post-normal science (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993) and action research (Lewin 1946). Regarding interdisciplinarity, there is hardly any dedicated literature exploring how to realise the integration of knowledge from diverse disciplines and beyond (Hinkel 2008). Nevertheless, there is a widespread model on how to combine methods, often called top-down approach (Dessai and Hulme 2004), which has dominated adaptation research from its beginnings. Climate models are run to produce climate scenarios, which are then downscaled and results are put into various sectoral climate impact models, sometimes followed by valuation methods to value projected climate impacts. Finally, the results may be fed into macroeconomic models in order to estimate economy-wide implication and/or decision analysis methods. But is the top-down model the only meaningful model of interdisciplinarity for climate adaptation? It certainly was a meaningful model in the early days of climate change research when the main question addressed was by how much adaptation could offset climate impacts at an aggregate level in order to prevent ‘‘dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system’’, which is the ultimate objective of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC 1992, Article 2). In recent years, adaptation has become a practical necessity, and the field has progressed from focusing on questions concerning climate impacts and costs and benefits of adaptation at an international scale to a much wider array of questions at all scales, related to, e.g., human perception, institutional change, equity, development and barriers to & Jochen Hinkel hinkel@globalclimateforum.org

The exchange of coherent arguments about methods applied in the field of climate change adaptation is challenging due to the growing diversity of analytical methods applied from natural science and social science. This is further complicated by the abstract and ambiguous terms, such as vulnerability and adaptive capacity, employed in the literature and the inadequate consideration given to the wider array of social science methods that are being applied now that adaptation has become a practical necessity. To address these limitations, a review and novel classification of vulnerability, impacts, and adaptation methods is presented. Methods are classified based on goals addressed, thematic clusters of variables involved, and underlying theoretical assumptions. On the top-level, methods are distinguished into impact analysis, behavior analysis, institutional analysis, and decision analysis methods. The first three branches are further classified according to descriptive, explanatory, and predictive goals, as well as theoretical assumptions. For each type, empirical conditions of applicability and examples from the literature are presented. While this classification can only be partial due to the ever growing methodological diversity in the field of climate change adaptation, we provide a more rigorous basis for the coherent exchange of methodological arguments and thereby hope to foster the interdisciplinary dialog needed to advance the field. WIREs Clim Change 2015, 6:171–188. doi: 10.1002/wcc.322 Conflict of interest: The authors have declared no conflicts of interest for this article. For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

While methodological choices are critical for solution-oriented adaptation research, the current debate on these is underdeveloped and characterized by simple dichotomies such as bottom-up and top-down as well as vaguely defined concepts such as vulnerability. Adaptation challenges and approaches for addressing them are more diverse than these labels suggest. This paper addresses this deficit by developing a diagnostic framework that helps to identify approaches suitable for addressing a given adaptation challenge. The framework was developed out of the necessity to discuss diverse approaches from natural science, social science and practice in a set of adaptation case studies conducted within the European funded MEDIATION project. Based on these case studies complemented by the literature, we iteratively abstracted typical adaptation challenges researched, typical approaches taken, and empirical, theoretical and normative criteria applied for choosing a particular approach. Our results refine the methodological debate by distinguishing between the three general adaptation challenges of identifying adaptation needs, identifying adaptation measures and appraising adaptation options. Adaptation challenges are further classified according to private and public interest involved, individual or various types of collective action involved, data/model availability, decision-making time horizon, etc. For each type of challenge and approach, we give examples and discuss salient issues. Our results point to the opportunity to apply institutional and behavioural research to support the identification of measures and possibly avoiding barriers in practice. The diagnostic framework also serves as the basis for the forthcoming guidance for assessing vulnerability, impacts and adaptation to be published by the UNEP programme of research on climate change vulnerability, impacts and adaptation.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present a formal framework of vulnerability to climate change, to address the conceptual confusion around vulnerability and related concepts.Design/methodology/approachThe framework was developed using the method of formalisation – making structure explicit. While mathematics as a precise and general language revealed common structures in a large number of vulnerability definitions and assessments, the framework is here presented by diagrams for a non‐mathematical audience.FindingsVulnerability, in ordinary language, is a measure of possible future harm. Scientific vulnerability definitions from the fields of climate change, poverty, and natural hazards share and refine this structure. While theoretical definitions remain vague, operational definitions, that is, methodologies for assessing vulnerability, occur in three distinct types: evaluate harm for projected future evolutions, evaluate the current capacity to reduce harm, or combine the two. The framework identifies a lack of systematic relationship between theoretical and operational definitions.Originality/valueWhile much conceptual literature tries to clarify vulnerability, formalisation is a new method in this interdisciplinary field. The resulting framework is an analytical tool which supports clear communication: it helps when making assumptions explicit. The mismatch between theoretical and operational definitions is not made explicit in previous work.

Adaptation is heterogeneous and relevant for a range of sectors and levels of decision-making. As adaptation moves up the policy agenda, solution-oriented adaptation research requires addressing questions that are salient to stakeholders and decision-makers at various scales and involves applying a wide range of different methods. Yet while solution-oriented adaptation research is being increasingly undertaken, there is to date a lack of synthesis of these experiences in the literature. In this paper, we aim to address this gap by synthesising findings in nine cases from the MEDIATION project (Methodology for Effective Decision-making on Impacts and AdaptaTION), an EC-funded solution-oriented adaptation research project. We do so by, first, describing methods applied for solution-oriented research in Europe and sequences of methods carried out in individual cases. Second, we assess strengths and weaknesses of individual methods in given empirical situations. Third, we analyse patterns observed in the sequences of methods and reflect on their implications for adaptation research. A strength of our approach is that detailed data on choices of research questions and methods were collected through in-depth and iterative interaction with the case study teams. We find that there is no standard recipe for adaptation; that even though social science methods are often indicated, they are often not applied; and that robust decision-making methods, while available, are often constrained because of their resource intensity. Reflecting on the implications of these findings, we argue that greater flexibility and transdisciplinarity are needed in adaptation research and that social science methods should be further supported. Finally, we find that stakeholder engagement is not a panacea and that engagement requires a more differentiated understanding of stakeholders and careful design in order to be effective.

In many cases in which climate change affects natural resources, impacts are uncertain and adaptation to climate change often involves collective action problems at the local level, which are embedded in multilevel governance regimes. Adaptive management (AM) is an emerging approach to deal with such uncertainty and complexity by promoting multilevel institutions that are robust to change and able to learn. Much of the literature evaluating AM in multilevel governance regimes, however, focuses only on the adherence to certain structural features said to make AM successful, leaving aside the question whether AM actually produces desired outcomes. This paper evaluates AM in multilevel regimes also in terms of the outcomes they produce. To this end, we first apply the Management and Transition Framework (MTF) in order to describe three multilevel regimes in Lesotho. For each regime we then observe whether it adheres to the structure features of AM. Finally, we evaluate the extent to which the outcomes, natural resource management projects, are conducive to Ostrom's (1990) ‘design principles’ for sustainable common-pool resource management. We find that, though no ideal ‘adaptive regime’ is found in Lesotho, the results confirm the AM hypotheses that decentralised decision-making, open information sources, and plurality of user interests lead to improved outcomes. Conversely, elements of the climate regime are found not to be adaptive. Our findings also confirm the appropriateness of AM as a governance approach to climate adaptation.

Adaptation to climate change occurs largely through action at the local level, which is influenced by international and national levels of political and social organization. This article explores the impact of discourse at the international level on adaptation policy at the national and local level. Discourse defines which knowledge claims, methods and rationalities are accepted and reproduced by actors as a basis for policy development and implementation; this is called ‘framing’. Scientific literature defines adaptation and vulnerability in a general way and so accommodates different framings. This article reviews the history of the concepts of adaptation and vulnerability in the literature and their relation to development. Evidence is presented for the presence of two framings of CCIAV in the literature: the ‘decision-analytic’ and the ‘institutional-analytic’. Wetlands and climate-related projects in Lesotho are analysed and evidence is presented for the reproduction of the two framings. A decision-a...

This paper presents two novel web-based applications for disseminating climate change adaptation related information. (i) The MEDIATION Adaptation Platform, one of the core outputs of the European FP7 research project MEDIATION (Methodology for Effective Decision-making on Impacts and AdaptaTION), offers a set of decision trees that can be browsed graphically to navigate over adaptation challenges and available types of methods for addressing them. This framework is interlinked both with a Toolbox and a set of case study descriptions. (ii) ci:grasp-2, the successor of the BMU-funded Climate Impacts: Global and Regional Adaptation Support Platform (ci:grasp), provides access to a growing pool of global and regional information on climate stimuli and impacts, as well as on adaptation projects. The paper identifies central user tasks for both applications and presents interaction metaphors that have been chosen to support users in fulfilling these tasks.