Defining the planning and policy problem of climate change adaptation: A discursive analysis of multi-level governance frameworks

Abstract

This thesis is motivated by a concern that the political and social processes that serve to reproduce and exacerbate a given socio-ecological system’s susceptibility to the adverse consequences of climate change are underrepresented in adaptation research and practice. Previous research has highlighted that technological responses to the consequences of climate change, currently dominate practical adaptation responses worldwide. Such responses are primarily assumed to be constrained only by technical capacities and scientific unknowns. However, recent advances in adaptation scholarship stress the inherent social and political complexities of the issue, arguing that multiple human dimensions are embedded, and thus inseparable from, adaptation policy and planning problems.Meaningful, critical and reflexive analysis of the emerging field of adaptation research and practice is needed to better understand the full breadth and depth of constraints acting on climate change adaptation policy and planning issues and problems. This thesis addresses how the problem of climate change adaptation is framed and structured within multi-level policy and planning frameworks. A reflexive and critical lens is used to empirically investigate international, national and regional political responses to the impacts of climate change.First, a mixed-method, qualitative-quantitative methodology was developed to construct international and national climate change adaptation policy frames. Next, a multi-criteria framework was developed to analyse dominant diagnostic and causal sub-frames that serve to structure adaptation planning problem definitions, using Australian regional natural resource management (NRM) planning as a case study. Finally, expert semi-structured interviews were undertaken with key regional NRM practitioners to examine how the decision-context, which manifests at lower-level administrative scales where adaptation planning is operationalised, influenced and steered the direction of adaptation initiatives.The results show that technological frames of adaptation are systemic within multi-level climate change adaptation policy and planning frameworks. Top-down adaptation policy initiatives may establish a discursive opportunity structure for lower-level planning responses that constrains tangible regional and local adaptation planning decisions within technological-orientated frames of adaptation. At the regional NRM scale, the adaptation planning problem is structured within an environmental-deterministic master-frame and is underpinned by a techno-scientific planning rationality. However, there are supplementary moments within the adaptation planning documents where key socio-political dimensions of the issues are addressed. Yet, these moments remain at conceptual odds with the dominant narrative.Finally, analysis of the expert semi-structured interviews with key Australian NRM practitioners revealed key values, rules and knowledge interactions that manifest at the regional scale and shape the decision-context where adaptation initiatives are developed and implemented. The four common these emerged across expert interviews were related to: 1) political leadership and uncertainty; 2) dominant policy and planning discourses; 3) strategic coordination and action; and 4) climate change information delivery.The final chapter discusses the implicit and explicit implications of the conceptual, contextual and structural elements of multi-level climate change adaptation governance systems that are relevant to lower-level planning institutions, where tangible adaptation initiatives are developed and implemented. Overall, the findings suggest that lower-level planning institutions may be constrained by the top-down architecture of climate change adaptation governance that is formed at higher political levels. Further, significant challenges exist at lower-level operational scales that manifest from dominant historical—non-climate change related—sectorial policy frames and power interactions, within existing multi-level planning frameworks. The synergistic effect of these factors may bound lower-level climate change adaptation responses within a technocratic-orientated frame of adaptation planning, despite a demonstrated cross-cutting awareness of the social and political dimensions of the issue. Further critical reflection regarding these conceptual, context and structural elements of adaptation governance systems is needed if planning frameworks are to open-up planning and land-management trajectories to account for a range of plausible—yet radically different—average global warming futures and their respective impacts.