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Department of Geography and Environmental Science

20 April 2023

A polycentric institutional approach

Dr Emily Boyd and Bo KjellénThe Governance of Adaptation: An International Symposium, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, March 22-23, 2012

Enabling adaptation to climate change:

Outline

• Key message

• Conceptual basis

• Key premise of polycentricism

• Example of adaptation

• Lessons and limitation for science-policy

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Key message

• Climate change is fast a becoming an issue of societal transformation (the ‘big transformation’)…yet we still are relatively bad at knowing how to manage for resilience and enable local adaptation in the face of global change

• For example, how to create global institutions (rules, norms, procedures) that facilitate change in ways that are democratic, legitimate and that lead to desirable change across multiple actors and levels?

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Conceptual basis

• Past emissions – respond to large-scale changes now; need to adapt

• Polycentric institutions –how to manage adaptation?

• Democratisation -what choice do ‘we’ have in social transformation

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Origin & meaning of polycentrism

• Ostrom et al. (1961)

• Ostrom (1990)

• Ostrom (2009)

• Ostrom (2010)

• Self-organising

• Central decision making

• Experimental

• Learning

• Diverse

• Robust

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Application - Polycentric ‘order’

• Context of planetary boundaries

• Features of polycentricity

• Weak - strong polycentricity

• Partnership on Climate Change, Fisheries and Aquaculture

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Galaz et al. 2011. Ecological Economics

The key premise of polycentricity

• What is novel here?

– Application of polycentricity to understand the ‘enabling’ conditions of UN climate adaptation policy

• How to enable adaptation through existing institutions?

– Lessons to be learned for developing broader analytical frameworks (beyond institutions… mechanisms and procedural aspects of transformations)

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Polycentrism as ‘enabling’?

1. Entry points for interrogating the nation state as central point through which international cc work takes place

2. The scalar nature of adaptation – not fixed

mediated through UN, nation state and localised through projects and programmes

e.g. over 45 National Adaptation Progammes of Action and 4000 CDMs

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Applying polycentrism to adaptation in practice

1. UNFCCC policy and international financing (e.g. embedded in Convention in art. 4.4 and supported by art. 4.7, Kyoto Protocol art. 10)

2. UNFCCC > 45 NAPAs (Nepal - Ayers 2010)

3. Local Adaptation Plans of Action (LAPAs) – local experiments

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Lessons and limitations• Polycentrism in its analysis

includes scope for understanding ‘how to’ questions and is largely instrumental.

• BUT responses to ‘wicked’ problems are often authoritative (government, expert led), competitive (market driven) – less real stakeholder driven processes (other than Nepal example)

• In practice – ‘Paradox of Adaptation’ (Ayers 2011): Missing/weak links between levels / scales of engagement classic risk tradeoff problems (see Forsyth; Jasanoff, others)

• What if we need to understand ‘mechanistic’ details or ‘normative’ and deliberative procedural aspects of adaptation more deeply (democratisation?)

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Ways to explore deeper… (1) New mechanistic insights into adaptation (Juhola, Boyd in prep)

•E.g. how legislation or different regulatory mechanisms on adaptation are institutionalised in the UK Climate Risk Assessment

(2) Novel deliberative procedural challenges in ‘locking’ adaptation science (risk, vulnerability or resilience) into policy or legislation (Boyd and Juhola in prep)

•E.g. how the dual processes of adaptation science feature in national strategy or legislation, and how that affects action? UK CCRA, Sweden’s vulnerability assessment and Finland’s National Adaptation Strategy

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Conclusion

• Polycentrism provides a valuable framework for exploring the governance of adaptation. In particular in exploring enabling features of adaptation policy frameworks from international, national and local levels.

• There is scope to go beyond polycentrism by linking into broader literatures and by enhancing our understandings of ‘mechanistic’ details or ‘normative’ and ‘deliberative’ procedural aspects of adaptation more deeply

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Thank you!

emily.boyd@reading.ac.uk

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