ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the issue of adaptive governance in climate change policy. Following Young et al. (2006), we pose that adaptation refers to the process of structural change in response to structural circumstances. Effective adaptation results in ‘adaptedness’, meaning that a certain dynamic structure is effective in dealing with its current external environment. Adaptability is about the capacity to adapt to future changes in the environment of a particular system. Governance is not a new term, but its popularity has undoubtedly grown in the last decade (Jordan et al. 2005). The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘to govern’ as to guide, direct or steer society. Political scientists used to treat governance as a synonym for government (Stoker 1998), but recently the majority considers them to be analytically distinct terms. Here we use the term ‘governance’ in the broad sense (Pierre and Peters 2000: 1). So we define
governance as “the totality of interactions, in which public as well as private actors participate, aimed at solving societal problems or creating societal opportunities; attending to the institutions as contexts for these governing interactions; and establishing a normative foundation for all those activities” (Kooiman 20031). Given this definition, adaptive governance refers to the totality of interactions, by private and public actors, to achieve adaptation and to enhance adaptability.
