Explaining International Organizations’ Engagement with Climate Change Adaptation

Why do IOs, traditionally protective of their mandates and typically carry out non-climate related activities, expand their issue areas and engage with climate adaptation? What explains the dramatic growth in adaptation engagement of IOs over recent decades? This study argues that variation in adaptation engagement across IOs is explained by the connectivity among role of IOs, and thus diffusion of the climate adaptation norms among IO bureaucracies. Defining connectivity types, as informal and formal connectivity, this study finds that it is the preceding adaptation engagement of the same issue areas and world region IOs which facilitate further engagement of others. In contrast, this study only finds limited support to the common explanatory factors in existing research, which suggests that democratic IO member states advocate for climate adaptation internationally, IO resources and external shocks, mostly natural disasters initiate further international response to adaptation. This article by being the first large-N study IO engagement with adaptation displays the connectivity and diffusion link across IO bureaucracies, by drawing from diffusion literature and contributing to the literatures on global environmental governance and climate change adaptation.