Climate Change Adaptation and the Diffusion of Innovative Policies

Abstract

Given current trends, adaptation to some level of climate change is unavoidable. Adaptation policies and their implementation will often be developed locally and regionally, including in municipalities, cities, and sub-national regions, with contributions from other levels, such as the UN, the EU or national governments. Given the growing urgency of this endeavour, this panel will focus on how innovative policies centring on climate change adaptation emerge and how they diffuse. Especially the drivers and mechanisms of adaptation policy diffusion remain underexplored, even though diffusion has been touted as a particularly effective way of achieving climate change adaptation at scale. In order to address this gap, this panel will consider the conceptual and empirical nature of innovative adaptation policies, as well as the specific motivations and mechanisms of their diffusion and the context dependency of relevant drivers. It specifically focuses on actors and institutions, including their embeddedness in multi-level contexts, given that national adaptation policies are actively being implemented, while specific needs emerge at the local and regional levels. The papers in this panel include perspectives on the nature and spread of innovative policies in climate change adaptation at national, city, as well as at the municipal and regional levels. They also recognise that policy diffusion may both enhance and impair adaptation. In each case, the papers unpack how innovative policies developed in their specific contexts, how they diffuse, and how diffusion mechanisms may be harnessed to improve adaptation.

Title	Details
Interplay of National, Regional and Local Actions and Actors in Diffusing Adaptation to Climate Change	View Paper Details
Innovation and Governance for Policy Approaches for the Delivery of Nature-Based Solutions in Urban Municipalities	View Paper Details
Negative Diffusion? The Spread of Seawalls to Adapt to Coastal Erosion and Flooding Along Island Coasts	View Paper Details
Policy Diffusion and Upscaling of Climate Policies in German Cities	View Paper Details
The Diffusion of Climate Adaptation Policies: Motivations, Mechanisms, and Impacts	View Paper Details