New research project on the role of companies in climate adaptation

Maria-Therese Gustafsson

Lisa Dellmuth

Maria-Therese Gustafsson, associate professor at the Department of Political Science and principal applicant for the project, and Lisa Dellmuth, professor at the Department of Economic History and International Relations, have been granted twelve million from Formas.

The research project will analyze different types of interactions between private and public actors in the governance of climate adaptation, with a focus on its consequences for democratic and effective ways of managing climate risks. Empirically, the project focuses on Brazil, Germany, Sweden and South Africa. The project will finance two doctoral positions.

Read more about Maria-Therese Gustafsson's research.
Read more about Lisa Dellmuth´s research.

How public-private sector interactions can promote just, democratic and effective climate adaptation

Contemporary societies are being confronted by increasingly frequent and severe climate-related risks, such as extreme weather events and water scarcity. As the effects of climate change have become more pressing, private companies in different sectors, such as mineral extraction, infrastructure, and large-scale agriculture, have increasingly started to adapt to such risks. Private company’ responses to climate change have often been driven by a profit-maximizing logic, and paid little attention to how such adaptation practices – or lack of adaptation – may affect climate-vulnerable groups in sites of production.

This project investigates emerging interactions between public and private actors in the area of climate adaptation. There is a growing recognition that adaptation to cross-cutting and complex climate risks requires interactions between public and private actors, as well as stringent regulations that require companies to take societal interests into account when addressing climate risks. Previous research has largely focused on adaptation carried out by public actors, and there is little knowledge about public-private interactions in the area of adaptation, and their consequences for governing climate risks in a socially just and democratic manner.

The principal research questions are:

1. How do practitioners in the public and private sector understand climate risks in their respective issue area, and why are some of them more motivated to enhance public-private sector interactions in adaptation than others?
2. How do public-private interactions in adaptation vary in terms of the degree of coordination and in terms of their quality, and in what public and private adaptation governance landscape do these interactions emerge?
3. Why are some forms of public-private interactions in adaptation more democratic and socially just than others?
4. To what extent can emerging supply chain regulations contribute to govern climate risks in just and democratic manner?  

Specifically, the project focuses on public-private interactions in four countries (Brazil, Germany, South Africa, Sweden) and three issue areas that are extremely climate-vulnerable: large-scale agriculture, land transport infrastructure; and mining.

The project employs an ambitious mixed methods approach combining quantitative and qualitative methods. Novel empirical findings will be generated through survey methods, interviews, and ethnographic field studies.
The project makes three central contributions to ongoing scholarly and policy debates. First, it will provide for the first comprehensive and comparative assessment of practitioners’ knowledge and motivation to enhance public-private interactions in adaptation governance. Second, it will offer a fine-grained mapping of existing public-private interactions governing adaptation across issue areas and in different parts of the world. Third, it will contribute with important policy-relevant knowledge about existing governance gaps, and how to enhance corporate accountability in the area of climate adaptation.