This workshop tackles the emerging politics of climate adaptation. While commanding broad societal support, adaptation is poised to become increasingly politicised: recurrent disasters increase the salience of adaptation, driving public demand for protection over efforts to cut emissions; adaptation has a strong spatial dimension: who benefits from public intervention depends on environmental risk and vulnerabilities as much as individual characteristics, raising issues of environmental (in)justice. Whether these issues become political depends on whether and how citizens perceive them. This workshop aims to bring together empirical papers with a view to exploring options for a special issue or edited collection.
Adaptation has never been more salient: floods, heatwaves, droughts and wildfire are now common occurrences. Climate adaptation policies are mushrooming (Biesbroek and Delaney 2020). Existing research examines their ambition and feasibility (Reckien et al. 2014), and how to track adaptation progress (Amorim-Maia and Olazabal 2025). This research shares an implicit assumption: that adaptation is uncontroversial.
On the surface, adaptation commands broad societal support: support for adaptation grows as its benefits become clearer (Bechtel and Mannino 2021); and even climate sceptics support adaptation when they are at risk (Javeline et al. 2019) or have directly experienced extreme weather (Gazmararian and Milner 2026).
Yet adaptation is poised to become increasingly politicised. Recurrent disasters focus public attention on adaptation at the expense of mitigation; driving public demand for protection over efforts to cut emissions. Further, adaptation is strongly spatial and therefore excludable: who benefits from public intervention depends on objective risk in a location as much as social vulnerability (Jessen et al. 2025; Goodden et al. 2024), raising issues of environmental (in)justice. As demand for government support of adaptation grows while public spending capacity is limited, some locations will be prioritised over others; increasingly, individuals will have to bear private costs for adaptation. Whether these issues become political depends on whether and how citizens perceive them: do people support adaptation when they do not stand to benefit? How do perceived risks and vulnerabilities affect their preferences?
Amorim-Maia, Ana Terra, and Marta Olazabal. 2025. ‘Beyond Adjustment: A New Paradigm for Climate Change Adaptation in a Complex World’. Global Environmental Change 93: 103027.
Bechtel, Michael M., and Massimo Mannino. 2021. ‘Ready When the Big One Comes? Natural Disasters and Mass Support for Preparedness Investment’. Political Behavior 45 (August): 1045–70.
Biesbroek, Robbert, and Aogan Delaney. 2020. ‘Mapping the Evidence of Climate Change Adaptation Policy Instruments in Europe’. Environmental Research Letters 15 (8): 083005.
Gazmararian, Alexander F., and Helen V. Milner. 2026. ‘Experience and Self-Interest: Diverging Responses to Global Warming’. American Journal of Political Science (Early View).
George, Pallavi Rachel, and Vishal Gupta. 2024. ‘Environmental Identity and Perceived Salience of Policy Issues in Coastal Communities: A Moderated-Mediation Analysis’. Policy Sciences 57 (4): 787–822.
Goodden, Anna E., James J. Porter, and Francesca P. Vantaggiato. 2024. ‘Does Flood Risk Funding Protect the Most Vulnerable? A Case Study of England’. Environmental Science & Policy 157: 103781.
Javeline, Debra, Tracy Kijewski-Correa, and Angela Chesler. 2019. ‘Does It Matter If You “Believe” in Climate Change? Not for Coastal Home Vulnerability’. Climatic Change 155 (4): 511–32.
Jessen, Mette Juhl, Christian Fertner, and Ole Fryd. 2025. ‘Social Vulnerability in Regional Climate Adaptation Planning in Europe – Conceptions, Operationalisations and Shared Challenges’. Environmental Science & Policy 171 (September): 104161.
Reckien, D., J. Flacke, R. J. Dawson, et al. 2014. ‘Climate Change Response in Europe: What’s the Reality? Analysis of Adaptation and Mitigation Plans from 200 Urban Areas in 11 Countries’. Climatic Change 122 (1): 331–40.
Atteridge, Aaron, and Elise Remling. 2018. ‘Is Adaptation Reducing Vulnerability or Redistributing It?’ WIREs Climate Change 9 (1): e500. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.500.
1: How are the distributive consequences of adaptation perceived and politicised?
2: How do perceived and objective risks shape the politics of adaptation?
3: Does adaptation compete with mitigation for political salience and resources?
4: When is adaptation politicised and contested?
5: How do adaptation policies vary across countries?
1: Spatial dimensions of the politics of adaptation
2: How perceptions of individual risks and vulnerabilities affect support for adaptation
3: Whether exposure to extreme weather drives support for adaptation
4: Whether and how climate beliefs influence support for adaptation
5: The role of parties and institutions in adaptation policy-making
6: Adaptation within specific subsystems: planning, insurance, welfare policy
7: Justice, contestation and backlash around adaptation
8: Comparative studies of adaptation within and beyond Europe
