Conference Agenda

This panel presents the preliminary findings from the project RISKSEC2.0 Local climate change adaptation: from risk governance to securitisation strategies?, funded by the Research Council of Norway. The project studies international, national and local policies which promote climate change adaptation. Several of these policies are typical top-down, as, for instance, those from the United Nations. However, climate change impacts are manifested locally and adaptation actions need to be taken at local level with benefits for local communities. Without a proper understanding of the characteristics of local governance and society, climate change adaptation is doomed to fail, with consequent economic, environmental and human costs. Building on the literatures on risk governance and the International Relations securitisation theory, this project uncovers how climate change adaptation can be framed through a risk approach, with a focus on accommodating everyday risks, or through a securitisation approach, by which extraordinary measures and particular actors are required.

The findings of this panel focus on the local cases of the project, which are municipalities in Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands, through a comparative perspective. Despite of different socio-political contexts, these municipalities share a common challenge derived from climate change: water-related adaptation issues, such as precipitation-induced landslides, floods and sea level rise. In each paper, the researchers have explored the local pathways of climate change adaptation and to what degree they mirror national policy decisions. The papers address two broad questions: how do national (risk) governance frameworks influence local climate adaptation processes, especially in terms of securitisation? Secondly, how do local contextual factors influence the interpretation of such risk governance frameworks? Each case study will answer these questions following the project analytical framework in terms of three analytical categories: discourses, actors and digital tools.

Stavanger Municipality is located in the Rogaland County in southwestern Norway. Its geographical location makes this Municipality prone to various water-related hazards such as (fluvial) flooding, rapid and intense rainfall, and sea levels rising. Extreme weather events such as Per in January 2007, Vidar in January 2017 and Elsa in January 2020 showed how heavy precipitations, storms and hurricanes impacted the water system, sewage and other infrastructure such as paved roads and, at the same time raised several challenges to agriculture and forestry. The municipality has several plans that address how to work with and facilitate climate change adaptation (CCA) but has not yet provided a CCA strategy and plan. In this paper, the authors analyse how the municipality responds to climate risks via CCA measures and initiatives and provides an overview of the local pathways according to the three analytical categories (discourses, actors and tools) from the analytical framework of the project. The findings promote a more effective risk decision making and which climate change adaptation measures are most suitable for the local community.

Bergen is Norway's second largest city, but also the rainiest. Located on the west coast, it receives large and increasing amounts of precipitation. Climate adaptation, and in particular the consequences of both increased and more intense rainfall, have for a long time been on the local authorities’ agendas. The city’s professional community regarding adaptation, societal security and climate change are highly competent and experienced, and the city has even established a separate climate division to deal with issues of climate change. Nevertheless, climate change adaptation most characteristically needles through the standard organization of the municipality. In spite of, or perhaps because of, its awareness and experiences with climate risks, adaptation responsibilities and accountabilities are distributed across sectoral divides with considerable differentiation between technical, analytical, operational and planning tasks. Even in Bergen, an adaptation frontrunner heavily emphasizing the climate issue in general, climate change adaptation is embedded within the regular tiers of the municipal organization, as kinds of “business as usual”, in terms of sectors, policy themes and planning regimes. How can this be understood, and what are the consequences of such an approach?

While securitisation of climate change has attracted considerable attention in academia, there is less research on the securitization of climate adaptation. We study how securitisation discourses travel across governance levels in Sweden, and their impact on climate adaptation action and planning. More specifically, we juxtapose the national climate adaptation strategy against five municipal climate adaptation strategies. We look into three analytical categories – discourses, actors, and tools. Our findings show that climate adaptation is characterized by centralized policymaking and regulation whereas responsibilities and implementation are decentralized and at times rather fragmented. Following the principle of local self-government, municipalities have significant freedom to manage and implement actions toward climate adaptation. This allows securitisation discourses and practices to emerge at different levels of governance, and at times even differ between different administrative divisions and geographical areas.

Dordrecht is situated on an island in between rivers and is positioned close to the coast. Dordrecht is part of the safety region South Holland South, a network of municipalities and emergency services that together coordinate the control of incidents, disasters and crises. Because of its geographical position, Dordrecht is susceptible to flooding from the rivers and the sea in case of high-water levels. The probability of flooding is deemed low as Dordrecht is heavily protected by a system of dikes but much higher at beyond-the-dike areas. The impacts in case of a flood event are deemed severe to catastrophic in terms of casualties, costs and societal disruption, especially for vital infrastructures that are crucial for the physical and economic safety of the region. To deal with potential flooding, Dordrecht employs a combined model of safety strategies, referred to as multi-layered safety, including structural flood defence (first layer), spatial adaptation (second layer), and emergency response (third layer). After decades of full confidence in the first layer, focus is recently shifting to the second and third layer, which are yet less developed and face many and new challenges. Our study analyses securitisation of local CCA according to three categories: the local discourse around CCA, the responsible actors and their networks, and the policy and digital tools and resources employed by these actors. We conducted an elaborate analysis of policy documents as well as interviews with several local and regional CCA actors. Findings show that the issue of CCA is being perceived as a risk amplifier and is subsequently being integrated in existing policy sectors and tools, and accommodated by existing actors, rather than having CCA being dealt with as an issue in itself. Securitisation is primarily deployed in the form of riskification, most prominently in risk terminology, as well as (digital) tools, ad hoc and structural coalitions and the increased engagement of safety actors.