Anticipatory planning: Finding balance in climate change adaptation governance

Highlights

• Anticipatory planning can be effective when facing increasing climate change impacts.

• Mainstreaming adaptation in policy can help balance economic needs with climate action.

• Multi-level governance can accelerate progressive adaptation through enhanced collaboration.

• Institutional barriers at the regional level can hinder effective local adaptation planning.

Abstract

As climate change progresses, local governments are being forced to find ways to adapt to worsening environmental, economic, and infrastructure impacts. The city of Fredericton, New Brunswick has a long history of river and overland flooding; however, more recent changes in local weather patterns have led to an increase in flood risk in the area. For more than a decade, decision-makers in Fredericton have worked to mainstream adaptation action within municipal policy in order to address the growing flood risk. Through anticipatory spatial planning and incremental infrastructure upgrades, the city aim's to proactively mitigate the impacts of climate change on day-to-day life. Framed through evolutionary governance, this article investigates the relationships between actors and institutions, as well as power and knowledge in order to uncover long-standing path dependencies that hinder comprehensive climate change adaptation action. While Fredericton can be considered a success story in many ways, this research reveals flawed multi-level governance structures and economic development goals as major barriers to effective adaptation in practice. As climate impacts worsen, balancing economic and political interests with adaptation action will require new approaches to adaptation governance.

Introduction

Climate change is inarguably a global issue, yet the effects are felt most acutely on a local scale, with local governments often best suited to assess local vulnerabilities (Measham et al., 2011; Nordgren et al., 2016; Dale et al., 2020). Decisions about land use, infrastructure, hazard mitigation, emergency preparedness and water resources are often made at the municipal level, which puts local governments in a position to integrate climate and adaptation considerations into planning and management activities (Nordgren et al., 2016). Additionally, municipal governments operate at the scale that is most responsive and accessible to citizens, which can strengthen governance and public buy-in for adaptation action (Dale et al., 2020). Regardless of the opportunity found in local adaptation action, it can be challenging for local governments to prioritize proactive adaptation in planning and policy—especially when balancing a multitude of economic, social and political interests.

Complementary and collaborative action at all levels of government can aid local adaptation efforts (IPCC, 2014; Oulahen et al., 2018), and drivers of climate innovation have been found to include leadership at multiple levels of governance (Dale et al., 2020). This suggests that multi-level governance presents an opportunity for effective adaptation action. Indeed, multi-level governance action can help sustain innovation in local climate adaptation while expediting the scale and size of change in current development pathways (Dale et al., 2020; Zen et al., 2019). More specifically, regional governments can accelerate adaptation innovation through proactive legislation, financial incentives and resources, policy instruments, and continuous measurement and reporting (Dale et al., 2020). Despite opportunities presented through multi-level governance, however, inadequate collaboration, lack of local autonomy, and misalignment of policies between different levels of government can be a significant barrier to implementing successful long-term adaptation planning (Williams et al., 2020; Oulahen et al., 2018).

A further barrier to comprehensive adaptation action is a lack of mainstreaming within local policy (e.g. Vogel et al., 2020; Birchall, 2020). Due to the high variability of climate change impacts, proactive adaptation policies designed to reduce the vulnerability of communities, are crucial for increasing local resilience (e.g. Vogel et al., 2020; Oulahen et al., 2018; Birchall and Bonnett, 2020b). However, literature suggests that when an agenda for adaptation does exist, it is often peripheral and marginalized, which can put it in competition with other economic, political and social activities (Kithiia and Dowling, 2010; Carter et al., 2015).

Despite the challenges, mainstreaming climate change adaptation can help local governments balance environmental concerns with economic and political interests (Runhaar et al., 2018). Integrating climate change adaptation within long-term strategic and spatial planning carries many benefits, including increased policy efficiency through capitalizing on synergistic actions and goals (Tanner et al., 2019; Grafakos et al., 2019; Giordano, 2012). For example, the greening of urban spaces reduces flood risk while also contributing to quality of life and improving biodiversity (Runhaar et al., 2018). Embedding adaptation goals in sectoral plans and policies can also be more efficient from an administrative and budgetary perspective (Runhaar et al., 2018).

While many avenues of scholarship focus on factors that constrain local adaptation, it is less common to see instances of anticipatory and integrated adaptation planning done well. This paper seeks to add to the discussion by investigating the response to flooding in Fredericton, and how the relationship between the municipal and provincial governments influence the city's climate change narrative. Given that many other big-river-adjacent cities face similar climate challenges, findings from this research may provide communities with knowledge of the benefits of an integrated and anticipatory approach to adaptation planning as well as an understanding of the effects of multi-level, nuanced government interplay and power imbalance. It's our hope that this research can help other communities uncover avenues for balancing economic, social and political interests with environmental ones—ultimately increasing their resilience to climate change hazards.