IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/wirecc/v1y2010i2p212-231.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Institutions and policy processes: the means to the ends of adaptation

Author

Listed:
  • Stephen R. Dovers
  • Adnan A. Hezri

Abstract

Institutions and institutional change are mentioned often but rarely specified in discussions of climate adaptation. Policy change is proposed, but the detail of policy processes less often discussed. Adaptation to increased climate change and variability will require policy interventions to change behaviors across multiple sectors, requiring policy processes constrained or enabled by institutional settings. Detailed discussion of how to redesign policy processes and institutions are especially rare at the crucial jurisdictional scales of national and sub‐national policy and planning. We review coverage of policy and institutions in the adaptation literature and clarify key issues by drawing on the domains of public policy, institutional change, and sustainable development. The distinction between, but close dependencies among, institutions, institutional systems, organizations, policy processes, policy instruments, and management are emphasized. We propose that the climate policy literature has rapidly become large enough that a tendency of self‐referencing has developed, and that insights can be gained from other areas. Within existing parameters of law, politics, and governance, options are identified that could embed considerations of climate adaptation into policy processes and institutional systems, with focus on enabling cross‐sectoral policy integration (‘mainstreaming’), decision making under conditions of uncertainty, vertical (‘cross‐scale’) policy coordination, issues of capacity and devolution, and policy evaluation and learning. The value of seeking lessons from past policy interventions and from cognate policy sectors is explored. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. This article is categorized under: Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change > Institutions for Adaptation

Suggested Citation

  • Stephen R. Dovers & Adnan A. Hezri, 2010. "Institutions and policy processes: the means to the ends of adaptation," Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 1(2), pages 212-231, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:wly:wirecc:v:1:y:2010:i:2:p:212-231
    DOI: 10.1002/wcc.29
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.29
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/wcc.29?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Atampugre, Gerald & Mensah, E. & Mabhaudhi, Tafadzwanashe & Cofie, Olufunke, 2022. "Towards a framework for assessing the sustainability of social-ecological landscapes," IWMI Books, Reports H051655, International Water Management Institute.
    2. Hyun Kim & David W. Marcouiller & Kyle Maurice Woosnam, 2021. "Multilevel Climate Governance, Anticipatory Adaptation, and the Vulnerability‐Readiness Nexus," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 38(2), pages 222-242, March.
    3. Elissa Waters & Jon Barnett, 2018. "Spatial imaginaries of adaptation governance: A public perspective," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 36(4), pages 708-725, June.
    4. Shahbaz Mushtaq & Jarrod Kath & Roger Stone & Ross Henry & Peter Läderach & Kathryn Reardon-Smith & David Cobon & Torben Marcussen & Neil Cliffe & Paul Kristiansen & Frederik Pischke, 2020. "Creating positive synergies between risk management and transfer to accelerate food system climate resilience," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 161(3), pages 465-478, August.
    5. Georg Weinhofer & Timo Busch, 2013. "Corporate Strategies for Managing Climate Risks," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(2), pages 121-144, February.
    6. Guillaume Simonet & Alexia Leseur, 2019. "Barriers and drivers to adaptation to climate change—a field study of ten French local authorities," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 155(4), pages 621-637, August.
    7. Monios, Jason, 2019. "Polycentric port governance," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 26-36.
    8. Magnus Benzie & Åsa Persson, 2019. "Governing borderless climate risks: moving beyond the territorial framing of adaptation," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 19(4), pages 369-393, October.
    9. Javier Gonzales-Iwanciw & Sylvia Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen & Art Dewulf, 2023. "How does the UNFCCC enable multi-level learning for the governance of adaptation?," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 23(1), pages 1-25, March.
    10. Christoph Clar & Reinhard Steurer, 2019. "Climate change adaptation at different levels of government: Characteristics and conditions of policy change," Natural Resources Forum, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(2), pages 121-131, May.
    11. Allison Bridges, 2016. "The role of institutions in sustainable urban governance," Natural Resources Forum, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 40(4), pages 169-179, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:wirecc:v:1:y:2010:i:2:p:212-231. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1002/(ISSN)1757-7799 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.