Assessment of climate adaptation documents in atlantic countries for the management of coastal and extreme climate risks

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Populations in coastal zones are more susceptible to risks caused by extreme climate events. Therefore, climate planning is becoming an important tool to adapt these areas to the consequences of climate disasters. This article proposes an assessment of coastal risks and climate adaptation instruments developed by thirty countries in the Atlantic Area region. Climate adaptation strategies, plans and related documents were analyzed in order to understand whether the national planning framework can lead to an efficient management of extreme climate events. The contents of the documents were evaluated by thirty-two indicators within the awareness, analysis, and actions dimensions. Correlation and regression analyses were conducted to verify the influence of independent variables on their content. Results indicate that the documents resulted in medium overall quality to manage the risks of extreme events. Most indicators presented a good performance with a medium to high grade of breadth and depth scores. Based on Cronbach’s alpha, this study reliability reached a high level. The regression analysis demonstrated that 20% of variance in content of documents could be explained by independent variables, suggesting a weak relationship. In order to improve the climate change and disaster preparedness and response managements, we recommend an inclusion of new indicators and contextual variables to investigate the quality of planning documents.