Barriers to transformation towards participatory adaptation decision-making: Lessons from the Cork flood defences dispute

This paper analyses the causes and consequences of public participation failures in flood hazards management and the important lessons they offer for climate change adaptation. Despite the potential for participatory adaptation decision-making, scholarship on adaptation has remained largely separate from the literature on participatory environmental governance. This paper brings these literatures into conversation by applying the concept of transformation to both adaptation outcomes and adaptation decision-making. Through an examination of a disputed flood relief scheme in Cork, Ireland this paper develops three main arguments. (1) It demonstrates the need for analytical approaches which recognise that what constitutes transformative adaptation will vary depending on the definitions of transformation that are used, the contexts in which these definitions are applied, and the perspectives of local stakeholders. (2) It argues that by producing an intractable conflict and damaging the reputation of the organisations responsible for hazards management, public participation failures create formidable new barriers to transformative adaptation outcomes. (3) It concludes that incremental changes to the decision-making process will prove insufficient to overcome these barriers. In order to facilitate more effective public participation in hazards management and climate change adaptation, much wider change in hazards management policy and resourcing will be required.