The path towards adaptation strategy

Adapting today to avoid being overwhelmed by the consequences of climate change: this is the underlying principal of the German Adaptation Strategy. Its enactment in 2008 was a milestone in German climate policy. Together with adelphi, two researchers from the University of Oldenburg investigated the political path towards the strategy.

More than 20 experts from federal and state institutions, the research community and civil society were interviewed by Rebecca Stecker and Klaus Eisenack from the Chameleon Research Group at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, and adelphi’s specialist in adaptation, Till Mohns. The result was the joint article entitled “Adaptation to Climate Change – Agenda Setting and Policy Integration in Germany”, which was published in the “Environmental Policy and Environment Law Journal” (2/2012). In the article, the three authors explore the period from the early 1990s to the creation of the Action Plan for Adaptation by the Federal Government in 2011 in order to provide an extensive analysis of agenda setting within the political and administrative system. In tracing the path to an action plan, the work identifies the most important steps in agenda setting and policy integration for adaptation as: the Federal Climate Protection Programme in 2005, the founding of the Competence Centre on Climate Impacts and Adaptation in 2006, the Düsseldorf Declaration in 2007 and the German Adaptation Strategy in 2008.

www.adelphi.de/files/upl… (available in German only)