Governing Local Risk Societies – How to Ensure Coordination and Durability in Local Adaptation Work?

In recent year, it has been acknowledged that climate change adaptation has to b mainstreamed into existing policy domains in order to achieve cooperation across sectors, coherence and durable and long-term strategies and measures (Rauken et al 2015, Hanssen et al 2013, Rydell et al. 2010). In Norway, local government has the main responsibility for climate change adaptation, while regional and national level have a facilitating and controlling role. Local government has a wide room of maneuver for how they define the need and operationalization of adapting to future climate changes (St.meld. 33 (2012-2013). Thus, in this paper we study local climate change adaptation, by analyzing a nation-wide survey to all municipalities. Here we ask if climate change adaptation has been mainstreamed into existing policy domains, ensuring coordination, comprehensiveness and durability. This is operationalized by, firstly, asking the municipalities if climate change adaptation has been mainstreamed into the local planning hierarchy (all the plan-types of the municipalities). Secondly, the municipalities are asked if they work cross-sectoral (whether or not they have established cross-sector groups/networks, have a coordinator etc). Thirdly, it is operationalized by the extent the political leadership, ensuring an overall political direction to the work, is perceived to embrace this cross-sectoral policy field. Lastly, we analyze the variation between municipalities, more specifically how size, affluence, vulnerability to natural hazards, experienced with natural hazards and political affiliation can explain the variations we find.