A framework for analyzing climate change adaptations as actions

Developing generalized theories about adaptation to climate change requires common concepts to map different adaptation situations. The paper aims to contribute to this endeavor by presenting a novel framework that conceptualizes adaptations to climate change as actions. The framework is intended to systematically analyze the actor relations involved in adaptations and the barriers to their implementation. By combining established scientific action theories with terminology from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in an innovative way, it can be used to clarify the notion of adaptation used in adaptation assessments. The framework’s potential is illustrated by a case study on cooling water management in the river Rhine catchment and by the elucidation of some prominent concepts in adaptation research. We show that by framing adaptations as actions, the purpose of adaptations and how they tend to connect up in means-ends-chains becomes crucial. Actors can take different functional roles as exposure unit, operator and receptor of adaptation. A mismatch of these roles can lead to barriers to adaptation, of which we deduce four types: complex actor relations, missing operators, missing means and unemployed means. The case study yields a complex bundle of adaptations, and shows that the potential barriers involved are quite diverse. There is thus no blueprint solution. Although we identify entry points for adaptation, the analysis leads to a skeptical conclusion for adapting cooling water management in the whole Rhine catchment.

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Acknowledgements

Parts of this paper are a work of the Chameleon Research Group (www.climate-chameleon.de), funded by the German Ministry for Education and Research under grant 01UU0910 in the FONA program (social-ecological research). An earlier draft appeared in the Earth System Governance Working Papers series. We wish to thank Christoph Oberlack and anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions. Kathrin Lübbers supported the case study and prepared the map. The first ideas strongly benefitted from discussions with Diana Reckien and Carsten Walther, as well as the support of Jürgen Kropp at the Potsdam-Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

1. Department of Economics, Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, 26111, Oldenburg, Germany Klaus Eisenack & Rebecca Stecker

1. Klaus Eisenack