Research project RiskSec2.0: Climate Change Adaptation from Risk Governance to Security
Climate change adaptation has become one of the world's top priorities, currently being handled by an array of local, national and international actors.
This project studies those actors and their settings carefully to understand the kind of 'logics' used to pursue climate change adaptation. While some implementation efforts resemble 'normal politics', many others reflect 'risk management' and still others 'securitization'. This project untangles the many ways that climate change adaptation is taking place, in different national and international settings, and explains how those processes shape outcomes for effectiveness and democracy.
Project description
Few issues have risen up the public agenda as quickly as climate change adaptation. Many initiatives to tackle this issue, involving the reduction of risks posed by the effects of climatic change, take a top-down approach. Yet climate change impacts are manifested locally and adaptation actions need to be taken at local level with benefits for local communities. Without a proper understanding of the characteristics of local governance and society, climate change adaptation is doomed to fail, with consequent economic, environmental and human costs. Building on the literatures on risk governance and securitisation, this project uncovers how climate change adaptation, as a multilevel endeavour, can be framed through risk governance thinking, with a focus on accommodating everyday risks, or through securitisation dynamics, by which extraordinary measures and particular actors are required. While the securitisation of climate change is well-documented at national and international levels, the way securitisation affects local level governance and adaptation is much less known. There is the need to unpack how adaptation understood in a multilevel governance context, which actors intervene, which kind of solutions are implemented, including digital, and the extent to which the local level accepts, pushes back or rejects securitisation trends. The project will reveal opportunities for complementary between international, national and local adaptation efforts, by pinpointing positive (shared understandings and coherent action) and negative (conflicting perspectives and local disempowerment) dynamics. Knowledge-based policy results will inform more effective risk decision making at all levels of governance and will offer a nuanced picture of what kinds of transformational changes in climate change adaptation are most suitable for local communities. Local cases will be investigated in Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands.
Project members
Project managers
Mark Rhinard
Professor
Members
Mark Rhinard
Professor