Policy Coordination for National Climate Change Adaptation in Europe: All Process, but Little Power

Approaches of a set of European Union (EU) Member States (Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom (England)) are examined in this study to pursue a more coordinated approach to climate change adaptation (CCA) policy.

This study specifically addresses the co-ordination approaches that the selected Member States (MS) use in order to develop and implement their national CCA policies in the immediate period following the publication of the EU’s 2013 Adaptation Strategy. The analysis demonstrates that while useful coordination processes have been established in the analyzed EU MS, they have difficulty in challenging existing institutional hierarchies and decision rules. Thus, longer-term opportunities for managing CCA conflicts and synergies among sectoral policies have to date been limited. Increasing interest seems to start in adaptation combining land use planning, flood risk management, and the use of nature-based solutions, which requires positive coordination to achieve its objectives of greater resilience to climate change.