Integrating climate change adaptation knowledge in sectoral policies - Evidence from five European countries

The number of countries in Europe that attempt to address the challenges of climate change through the development of national adaptation strategies and plans is growing continuously. Similarly, an increase is observed in the demand for the provision of relevant knowledge. This includes scientific and technical information that would allow for a better understanding of climate change, its impacts and the possible ways to adapt to them, and ultimately support a better-informed decision-making (Objective 2 of the EU Strategy on adaptation to climate change (2013)). The influence that scientific knowledge may have on policy decisions has been for a long time a topic of debate in many different policy fields. A nexus of opinions has been articulated in the literature. This places to one end scholars who argue for the potential of knowledge to improve policy-making, assuming a direct and linear use of the existing adaptation information, while at the other end are those scholars who challenge this assumption and support that knowledge has only little effect on policy decision-making. Robust scientific evidence undoubtedly provides the knowledge base required for the development and implementation of sound policies. Furthermore, knowledge management may facilitate an early identification of knowledge gaps and conflicts among policy goals in different but relevant fields. There is, however, a range of factors as well as their complex interlinkages, that determine whether or not knowledge can be found, collected and finally used by policy and decision-makers. For example, knowledge use might be limited due to the incompatibility of policy objectives, time constraints, uncertainty, decision-maker profiles, organizational structure, mismatches between the type of knowledge produced and the one needed by policy actors. In this paper we explore the progress that has been achieved in the production and use of adaptation knowledge, the ways in which it has been communicated to policy actors and finally the extent to which it has been used in support of the sectoral policies’ implementation. For this purpose we used content analysis of key policy documents and a set of semi-structured interviews with policy actors. We focused our research on three sectors: agriculture, water management and health, and five European countries: Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy and the UK. The three sectors were selected due to the significant impacts that have experienced as a result of climate change, and thus the high possibility that they will need to consider adaptation in their own policies. The selected countries aimed at providing a good representation of different political contexts, levels of experience in the field of adaptation policy, geographical spread across Northern and Southern Europe; and diversity of climate change impacts and climate change vulnerability within the EU region. After the presentation of the findings linked to main research questions, the paper proceeds with a discussion of the knowledge gaps identified and other barriers that might constrain knowledge integration in sectoral policies. The paper concludes with set of recommendations regarding areas on which attention should be placed, if knowledge integration in sectoral policies is to be improved.