Defining response capacity to enhance climate change policy

Climate change adaptation and mitigation decisions made by governments are usually taken in different policy domains. At the individual level however, adaptation and mitigation activities are undertaken together as part of the management of risk and resources. This report proposes a useful starting point to develop a national climate policy is to understand what societal response might mean in practice. The study argues that responses at the national policy level appear as a trade-off between investment in the development and diffusion of new technology, and investment in encouraging and enabling society to change its behaviour and or adopt the new technology. The preference for a policy response that focuses more on technological innovation rather than one that focuses on changing social behaviour will be influenced by the capacity of different societies to change their greenhouse gas emissions; by perceived vulnerability to climate impacts; and by capacity to modify social behaviour and physical environment.

The paper has the following implications for developing country policy makers:

• policy makers should consider who is responsible for making climate response decisions and when actions should be taken
• the divergence between the parties responsible for adaptation and mitigation poses a problem for policy integration and sustainable climate change responses. As an alternative, the authors consider the two fundamental elements of both adaptation and mitigation, i.e. technological innovation and building social response capacity, and recommend that these actions become the focus of government policy
• dynamic institutional structures, which have the capacity to be reflexive and adapt in response to new information, are more likely to facilitate change and development in a society than inflexible rigid institutions
• alternative integrative approaches to climate change policy include efforts to encourage social change, adopt new technology, and embrace the future changes associated with climate change.
  

The following are the related research priorities for CDKN:

• how can current and future institutions, at both community and government levels, be made more flexible in the face of climate change?
• what are the implications of social arrangements on adaptation and adaptive capacity? How can national climate strategies incorporate measures to address the obstacles they pose?
• how can adaptive management be incorporated into local governance institutions?