Governance of Climate Adaptation

Welcome to the course on the governance of climate change adaptation. This course explores how governance systems shape the ways in which societies respond to climate change, and how you, as a future water professional, can contribute to informed and effective decision-making. You bring valuable knowledge about water systems, including water quantity, quality, and their interconnections. A key question is how and where this expertise can be meaningfully integrated into decision-making processes that involve multiple actors, sectors, and levels of governance. Because governance systems are often fragmented, the way decisions are made varies across contexts, challenges, and actor networks.

The course focuses on four key domains of climate change adaptation: water safety, freshwater availability, spatial adaptation, and climate adaptation in relation to health. Each domain involves specific challenges, stakeholders, and policy approaches, ranging from flood risk governance and drought management to urban climate resilience and the health impacts of climate change. Together, these domains illustrate the complexity of adaptation governance and highlight the importance of context-sensitive, interdisciplinary approaches. By engaging with these domains, you will develop a deeper understanding of how governance structures - including legal frameworks - policies, and practices influence adaptation outcomes, and how you can contribute to more robust and inclusive strategies.

At the end of the course, you will:
1. Possess a basic understanding of key concepts related to the governance of climate change adaptation: policy, policy problem, governance, governance of climate change adaptation, governance challenges.
2. Have gained a solid overview of the similarities and differences between different adaptation domains from a governance and legal perspective: securing freshwater availability, improving flood resilience, and reduce urban heat stress.
3. Are familiar with some prominent theories and frameworks useful for the analysis, evaluation and design of governance approaches for CCA.
4. Have gained experience in producing a written policy design that is based on a thorough analysis and evaluation of a geographically confined climate change adaptation challenge using some of the aforementioned theories and frameworks.
5. Can translate the policy design into actionable recommendations.