Editorial: The governance of adaptation to climate change as a multi-level, multi-sector and multi-actor challenge: a European comparative perspective

Abstract

There is increasing recognition of the need for society to adapt to the impacts of climate change, especially in the water sector. Adaptation to climatic impacts involves both infrastructural adjustments, such as reinforcing dykes or creating water storage capacity, and broader processes of societal change, such as adjusting land use planning, more efficient water use or agricultural transitions. Because of the many uncertainties surrounding climate change issues, actors are facing the challenge of developing and implementing adjustments and transitions, and of increasing the adaptive capacity of society to deal with unexpected future changes. Although climate ‘mitigation’ has traditionally received the bulk of European media and policy attention; since, a number of years, many European countries have been developing national adaptation strategies and concrete climate change adaptation policies to cope with the impacts of climate change (Biesbroek et al. 2010). More recently, the European Union has launched its strategy package on adaptation to climate change in April 2013. Different countries have taken different inroads into governing this relatively new policy issue over the past decade, so it seems timely and relevant to take stock and to assess what can be learned from comparing the different ways in which EU countries have approached the governance of adaptation to climate change. The aim of this special issue is not to ‘assess’ the current state of play for adaptation strategies and policies in Europe (e.g. by evaluating policies in terms of progress or outcomes). This has been addressed in other studies (Biesbroek et al. 2010; European Environment Agency 2014; Massey et al. 2014), and this special issue has a different ambition. Our interest is in the many facets of the governance of climate change adaptation, referring to the interactions and arrangements between public and/or private actors that are aimed at purposefully steering …