The role of adaptive governance in climate mitigation and adaptation: a local perspective

Through reanalysis of two case studies on climate change mitigation and adaptation in Norway, we focus on weaknesses and opportunities of adaptive governance to address climate change in a local setting. The wickedness of climate change pertains to the disagreements of how it can be addressed, the complexity of solutions and the knowledge gap about the impacts of interventions. We investigate three central aspects of adaptive governance in the context of climate change: collaboration and shared decision making; flexibility; and context sensitivity. Five factors are identified as salient for successful adaptive governance: sufficient time, inclusion of different knowledges, aligned policy goals and measures, sufficient human and financial resources, and attention to the power hierarchies in negotiation processes. The local government, with context specific knowledge and expertise, is critical for adaptive governance of climate change to be transformative in terms of enabling changes in the way we collectively make decisions.