Adaptive Policymaking Research Articles

The politics of renewable energy policies: The case of feed-in tariffs in Ontario, Canada

Designing and implementing a renewable energy policy involves political decisions and actors. Yet most research on renewable energy policies comparatively evaluates instruments from an economic or technical perspective. This paper presents a case study of Ontario’s feed-in tariff policies between 1997 and 2012 to analyze how the political process affects renewable energy policy design and implementation. Ontario’s policy, although initially successful, has met with increasing resistance over time. The case reveals key political tensions that arise during implementation. First, high-level support for a policy does not necessarily translate into widespread public support, particularly for local deployment. Second, the government often struggles under asymmetric information during price setting, which may weaken the policy’s legitimacy with the public due to higher costs. Third, there is an unacknowledged tension that governments must navigate between policy stability, to spur investment, and adaptive policymaking, to improve policy design. Fourth, when multiple jurisdictions pursue the same policies simultaneously, international political conflict over jobs and innovation may occur. These implementation tensions result from political choices during policy design and present underappreciated challenges to transforming the electricity system. Governments need to critically recognize the political dimension of renewable energy policies to secure sustained political support.

Adaptive Robust Design under deep uncertainty

Developing strategies, or policies, that automatically adapt to changing conditions is called adaptive decision-making, respectively adaptive policy-making. In this paper, we propose an iterative computational model-based approach to support adaptive decision-making under deep uncertainty. This approach combines an adaptive policy-making framework with a computational approach to generate and explore thousands of plausible scenarios using simulation models, data mining techniques, and robust optimization. The proposed approach, which is very useful for Future-Oriented Technology Analysis (FTA) studies, is illustrated on a policy-making case related to energy transitions. This case demonstrates how the performance of a policy can be improved iteratively by exploring its performance across thousands of plausible scenarios, identifying problematic subsets that require improvement, identifying adaptive high leverage actions with which the adaptive policy needs to be extended until a satisfying dynamic adaptive policy is found for the entire ensemble of plausible scenarios. The approach is not only appropriate for energy transitions; it is also appropriate for any long-term structural and systematic transformation characterized by dynamic complexity and deep uncertainty.

Taming global flood disasters. Lessons learned from Dutch experience

There is a growing international recognition that flood risk management in optima forma should be a programmed and flexible process of continuously improving management practices by active learning about the outcome of earlier and ongoing interventions and drivers of change. In the Netherlands, such a long-term, adaptive flood risk management strategy is now being implemented. This so-called second Delta Programme aims to identify and exploit opportunities and capitalize on short-term benefits and opportunistic synergies that arise from change and will require adaptive policymaking. It also requires the financial and institutional means to operate in a long-lasting way, which at the very least, means engaging stakeholders, gathering and disseminating results and adaptation of future plans. Transferring the Dutch approach to other countries is a major challenge that calls for fundamental changes in institutional arrangements at various levels and thus requires customized programmes for strategic institutional change. Recent examples of transfer will provide important lessons of how institutional change can successfully occur and will contribute insights for other countries that attempting to reform their flood risk management strategies. Continuous monitoring and evaluation and sharing international experiences will become crucial for the effective delivery and wider uptake of these new strategies around the globe.

The Governance of Climate Change Adaptation in 10 OECD Countries: Challenges and Approaches

Although the public governance of climate change adaptation gained increasing attention among both policy-makers and researchers in recent years, it is still largely unclear how governments aim to develop and implement adaptation policies. This paper takes stock of respective institutional innovations at the national level in 10 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. It first introduces four challenges that are key in the context of climate adaptation policy-making, that is, (i) how to better integrate adaptation policies horizontally across policy sectors and (ii) vertically across jurisdictional levels, (iii) how to integrate knowledge, and (iv) how to involve non-state stakeholders in adaptation policy-making. Based on a desk research and semi-structured interviews, this paper then highlights a variety of institutional innovations (here referred to as governance approaches) that the selected governments employ to address these four challenges. Overall, it is shown that most of these approaches are restricted to soft, voluntary ways of coordination and steering that often address more than one of the four challenges at a time and that national adaptation strategies usually mark the centrepiece of adaptation governance around which other governance approaches emerge.

Knowledge and information needs of adaptation policy-makers: a European study

Across Europe, national governments have started to strategically plan adaptation to climate change. Making adaptation decisions is difficult in the light of uncertainties and the complexity of adaptation problems. Already large amounts of research results on climate impacts and adaptive measures are available, and more are produced and need to be mediated across the boundary between science and policy. Both researchers and policy-makers have started to intensify efforts to coproduce knowledge that is valuable to both communities, particularly in the context of climate change adaptation. In this paper, we present results from a study of adaptation governance and information needs, comparing eight European countries. We identify sources and means for the retrieval of information as well as gaps and problems with the knowledge provided by scientists and analyzed whether these appear to be contingent on the point in the policy-making cycle where countries are. We find that in this early phase of adaptation planning, the quality of the definition of needs, the way uncertainty is dealt with, and the quality of science–policy interaction are indeed contingent on the stage of adaptation planning, while information needs and sources are not. We conclude that a well-developed science–policy interface is of key importance for effective decision-making for adaptation.

Migratory Issues in Climate Adaptation Policies: A New Conceptualisation of Population Displacements?

The issue of climate change has shed a new light on the migration/development nexus and led to reflection on the link between population displacement and adaptation to environmental degradation. This article examines how the rethinking of population displacements through the climate prism – mainly happening in western countries – impacts climate adaptation and migratory policy-making in least developed countries. It primarily questions the foundations of a widespread approach which tends to address climate-related migration as a new kind of displacement, disconnected from economic, political or social factors and that should be addressed at the global level by specific legal responses and new international settings. Through a reflection on the causes and impacts of climate-related migration, it insists on the complexity of the linkage between population displacements and adaptation. It secondly draws the first conclusions of a case study lead in Mali. While investigating a topic recently put on the agenda of LDCs (climate change) and a renewed conceptualisation of migration issues, this national lens shows that national political responses actually reflect usual donors' and recipients' strategies and dynamics in aid-dependent countries. Despite a lack of reliable data, policy documents relay the common assumption linking climate to migration. This might be explained by external influence on agenda-setting and policy formulation but also by an instrumentalization of these topics by national actors. Furthermore, an analysis of the national framework unveils a poor articulation of migration and climate issue on the field and the weight of a national network of experts.

Evaluating Adaptive Policymaking using expert opinions

Adaptive Policymaking (APM) is a policymaking approach for dealing involving policy problems with deep uncertainty. Two barriers to getting APM used are that (1) there are few actual examples of adaptive policies developed by policymakers or domain experts, and (2) APM has rarely been used in a real-world policy setting. More specifically, there are questions that remain about the costs and benefits of APM, and the efficacy and performance of adaptive policies compared to traditional static policies. This paper addresses these questions and barriers by reporting on a workshop with experts that was aimed at developing an adaptive policy for the implementation of ISA in the Netherlands. We report on their evaluation of both the process of developing the policy and their assessment of the efficacy of the developed policy compared to that of the current policy under consideration by the Dutch national government. The experts indicated that APM increases the chances of reaching policy goals and makes better use of decision support information that is gathered during the policy analysis process. However, they also indicated that, despite these potential benefits of APM, it may be hard to implement adaptive policies due to institutional issues.

Resolving the Adaptation Paradox: Exploring the Potential for Deliberative Adaptation Policy-Making in Bangladesh

Climate change adaptation presents a paradox: climate change is a global risk, yet vulnerability is locally experienced. Effective adaptation therefore depends on understanding the local context of vulnerability, which requires deliberative and participatory approaches to adaptation policy-making. But, how can local inclusiveness be achieved in the context of global environmental risk, and what sorts of institutions are needed? This article examines one avenue for the participation of vulnerable groups in adaptation policy-making: National Adaptation Programmes of Actions (NAPAs). Drawing on the case study of Bangladesh, this article shows that the “adaptation paradox” creates a tension between local and global definitions of climate change risk, affecting the legitimacy of participatory processes under the NAPA. I propose that early analysis and engagement of existing local institutional frameworks as a starting point for national adaptation planning is one possible entry point for meaningful local deliberation in global climate change policy-making processes.

Implications of an uncertain future for port planning

The evolving function of a port, and many logistical, technological, and economic uncertainties under which it must operate, make the planning and design of these complex socio-technical infrastructures very challenging. A Master Plan of a port is the instrument by which the port's (expansion) strategy in the marketplace is defined. Therefore, a Port Master Plan needs to be dynamic and responsive to all external developments during its lifetime. The existing Master Planning approach is static and as a result it is poorly equipped to deal with many uncertainties in the port and shipping industry. A new approach is required. This article proposes an adaptive approach to planning that combines elements of Assumption-Based Planning (ABP), developed in the early 1990s, and Adaptive Policymaking (APM), developed in 2001. It identifies in a structured way the uncertainty in an existing plan, and subsequently improves its robustness and adaptability through taking actions either in the planning stage or by preparing actions in advance that can be taken as the uncertainties resolve themselves. The article illustrates this approach by applying it to the current plan for Maasvlakte 2, the ongoing port expansion of Rotterdam in The Netherlands. The value of this proactive and dynamic approach lies in its manner of dealing with uncertainties. It leads planners to recognize vulnerabilities in a plan and incorporate strategies for dealing with them, adapting to new developments, and building in capacity for taking advantage of new opportunities. The objective of using this adaptive approach is to realize a Master Plan robust across many futures, so that the port can meet the requirements of its stakeholders during its entire lifetime.

Beyond Harmonization: ICT Policymaking in Regional Economic Communities

Regional economic communities, which are growing in numbers and size, play an increasingly important role in information and communication technology (ICT) policymaking. As seen through the lens of complex adaptive systems theory, such systems should strive to generate adaptive policies through adaptive policymaking processes that position them to respond to rapid technological change. To date, however, regional policymaking has been overly concerned with policy harmonization as an outcome, possibly to the detriment of other important goals. Despite this bias, upon closer examination, one finds that regional communities do foster adaptivity through their roles in the formation of epistemic communities, capacity building, and resource pooling. These activities contribute to variation, interaction, and selection, all key processes for adaptation. It is this degree of adaptivity, and its required balance between policy harmonization and competition, that should be the basis for analyzing the effectiveness of regional policymaking.

Adaptive policy approach to implementing intelligent speed adaptation

Intelligent speed adaptation (ISA) has the potential to improve road traffic safety significantly. Large-scale implementation of ISA, however, is hampered by large uncertainties, such as the level of compliance (LC), reliability of the technology, unexpected costs and so on. We suggest an adaptive policymaking approach for implementing ISA. We propose five steps: (1) specify the policy problem, (2) assemble a basic policy, (3) specify the rest of the policy, (4) learn from real world experience with the basic policy and (5) adjust the implemented policy. We demonstrate, as a proof of concept, how to design a basic ISA policy and how to gain knowledge over time about the behaviour of the system in order to resolve some of the uncertainties and improve the policy. By monitoring the percentage of speeding drivers to detect changes in the LC, the policy can be adapted to unfolding events. Hence, by using the adaptive approach, policymakers can proceed with implementing ISA despite the large uncertainties.

Complex Adaptive Systems, Chaos, and Contemporary Policymaking

Complex Adaptive Systems, Chaos, and Contemporary Policymaking