New Levels of Climate Adaptation Policy: Analyzing the Institutional Interplay in the Baltic Sea Region

International policy development and expected climate change impacts such as flooding, landslides, and the extinction of sensitive species have forced countries around the Baltic Sea to begin working on national climate adaptation policies. Simultaneously, the EU is building both a central and a mac...

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Published inSustainability Vol. 5; no. 1; pp. 256 - 275
Main Authors Glaas, Erik, Juhola, Sirkku
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.01.2013
Subjects
Biodiversity
Climate change
Endangered & extinct species
Environmental policy
Institutionalization
Landslides & mudslides
Sustainability
Trends
Sweden
Baltic Sea
Finland
ANE, Sweden
ANE, Finland
ANE, Baltic Sea
EU
adaptation
Baltic Sea Region
institutional interplay
climate change
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Summary:International policy development and expected climate change impacts such as flooding, landslides, and the extinction of sensitive species have forced countries around the Baltic Sea to begin working on national climate adaptation policies. Simultaneously, the EU is building both a central and a macro-regional Baltic Sea-wide adaptation strategy to support national policy developments. However, it yet remains unclear how these EU strategies will complement each other or national policies. This article analyzes the constraints and opportunities presented by this new institutional interplay and discusses the potential of the forthcoming EU strategies to support national policy. It does so by mapping how adaptation is institutionalized in two case countries, Sweden and Finland, and is organized in the two EU approaches. The vertical institutional interplay between scales is analyzed in terms of three factors: competence, capacity, and compatibility. Results indicate institutional constraints related to: risks of policy complexity for sub-national actors, an unclear relationship between the two EU approaches, an overly general approach to targeting contextualized climate change vulnerabilities, and a general lack of strategies to steer adaptation. However, there are also opportunities linked to an anticipated increased commitment to the national management of adaptation, especially related to biodiversity issues.
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ISSN:2071-1050
2071-1050
DOI:10.3390/su5010256