Abstract
Climate change adaptation (CCA) to reduce or prevent negative climate change impacts and, in some cases, maximize potential benefits is a complex challenge demanding multi-level policy action. In federalist systems, sub-national governments are among key actors for enabling adaptation and their clear commitments can increase collaboration and innovation at the local level. Germany serves as a particularly insightful case for observing the variance among sub-national approaches due to its role as a “leader” in CCA at the national level. This paper provides the first systematic assessment of all sixteen state adaptation strategies in Germany and examines how German states are fostering adaptation, the extent to which their approaches vary, and which patterns have emerged. Based on a qualitative document analysis of over 30 documents, this assessment focuses on five indicators synthesized from literature climate policy analyses and on barriers and facilitating factors of adaptation. Results find that German state strategies are often non-committal sets of recommendations and identify three clusters displaying different degrees of institutionalization and guidance. While federalism allows for flexibility among state responses, the absence of federal mandates and policy standards allows some states to fall behind while others continue to develop their strategies to foster adaptation. These sixteen diverse approaches each have implications for adaptation governance at other levels.
Highlights
Climate mitigation and adaptation to climate change impacts are more urgently needed than ever, with extreme weather events becoming “the new normal” (Msuya, 2021)
In the large and growing field of climate policy research, scholars have studied the emergence of climate change adaptation (CCA) policies and strategies
The sub-national level of governance remains underrepresented in climate adaptation policy research (Vogel et al 2020; Biesbroek and Delaney 2020), especially considering the multi-level nature of the issue
Summary
Climate mitigation and adaptation to climate change impacts are more urgently needed than ever, with extreme weather events becoming “the new normal” (Msuya, 2021). Though there cannot be total protection from the impacts of climate change, which include extreme temperatures, torrential rains, and damaging storms, widespread and effective adaptation policies can help societies reduce their vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. 114‐118, 26129 Oldenburg, Germany (Adger et al 2005) Governments can be both initiators of policy innovations and enablers of broader society-driven measures, which gives them an “unparalleled capacity” to steer public governance and adaptation action Numerous studies compare and assess nationallevel approaches and strategies (Biesbroek et al 2010; Termeer et al 2012; Heidrich et al 2016; England et al 2018; Jurgilevich et al 2019) or the municipal level (De Gregorio Hurtado et al 2015; Aguiar et al 2018; Lesnikowski et al 2019; Olazabal et al 2019; Reckien et al 2019). The sub-national level of governance remains underrepresented in climate adaptation policy research (Vogel et al 2020; Biesbroek and Delaney 2020), especially considering the multi-level nature of the issue
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