CRPR Discussion series

The many faces of adaptation policy: Analysis of Finland’s second generation national adaptation policy and drivers for its evolution
Kirsi Mäkinen and Mikael Hildén (Finnish Environment Institute), kirsi.makinen@ymparisto.fi
A decade since Finland adopted its first National Strategy for Adaptation to Climate Change (NAS) in 2005, a number of adaptation policies have been initiated in Europe at the EU and national levels. Following a comprehensive evaluation of its NAS, Finland adopted a new National Climate Change Adaptation Plan 2022 in November 2014. By looking at the Finnish experience in adaptation policy implementation and revision, this paper seeks to gain insights into factors that shape the evolution of adaptation policy. We address three main questions. Firstly, how has adaptation and its overall framing in national policy changed from 2005 to 2014? Secondly, how and why do sectors differ in their implementation of adaptation and what does this tell us about the driving forces behind adaptation policy development? Finally, we look at what future role is there for adaptation policy in integration and implementation of climate change adaptation? The study is based on analysis of key policy documents supplemented by interviews of sectoral policymakers involved in national adaptation policy. Our preliminary findings indicate that national adaptation policy in Finland is primarily originated and driven by civil service actors, while extreme weather events have also played a role in shaping adaptation policy. Between sectors, interesting differences arise in the level of implementation and with respect to multilevel action across local, regional and national levels of administration. Such differences can be explained by historical and current events and practice. In times of prevailing calls for “leaner” government, flexible regulations and measures may seem a more likely direction for future adaptation policy than normative regulation. With this likely direction in overall adaptation policy (of which the proposed Climate Act, currently under debate in Parliament, is indicative), differences in sectoral progress in adaptation may continue to widen until extreme events or other external pressures become so strong that adaptation becomes more visible on the political agenda as a matter of increasing concern for both politicians and interest groups.

Understanding Climate Policy Integration
Anne Jensen and Helle Ørsted Nielsen (Department of Environmental Sciences,  Aarhus University)
Across the EU, member states, cities and regions are addressing the challenge of managing impacts of climate change which has implied adoption of national strategies in a number of countries.  Among policy makers as well as in academia, there is growing concern for how to successfully implement adaptation policy and address issues that involve a wide range of actors and areas of society and which involve uncertainty in scale of impacts and effect of instruments. Advancing the adaptation policy objectives, the sectoral organisation of public policy has shown to halter development of climate adaptation actions (Adele and Russel, 2013); in other sectors adaptation objectives may be overshadowed or opposed by sectoral policy objectives, reflecting opposing interests or relatively lower positions on policy agendas. Concomitantly, policies and policy actions at one level are influenced by policies and policy actions at other levels of policy making, from European to local/city level (Mickwitz et al, 2009). Thus, the coordination of climate adaptation objectives with policy issues and objectives across sectors and across levels of policy making emerges as crucial, and integration of climate policy objectives appear as vital for effective climate adaptation. In this presentation we examine the links between national and local climate adaptation policies, specifically how the national strategy has framed policy action in local government. In doing so, we focus on institutional drivers and barriers for integration of adaptation objectives and activities across policy sectors at the local level.