Proceso de elaboración

Society’s vulnerabilities to climate change are generally greater in coastal and riverine areas than in others, and these vulnerabilities are mainly related to extreme weather events rather than to gradual climate change (Parry et al., 2007a, p. 359). As such, preparing for extreme weather events through cli- mate change adaptation (hereafter referred to as “adaptation”) will be of great importance for coastal regions, particularly for coastal cities with their con- centrations of population and infrastructure (Birkmann et al., 2010).

Today, preparing for extreme weather events is a central task of the civil protection system. This system was established in developed countries during wartime as a supplement to the military defence system, and designed to protect the civilian population. However, with the end of the Cold War, the focus of civil protection in most western countries shifted from wartime to peacetime crises, with disasters caused by natural hazards as one of the major concerns (Quarantelli, 2000; Husabø, 2008). Along with this reorientation towards peacetime purposes, the civil protection system expanded its scope, from being almost exclusively reactive and operative in its approach to crisis management, to include proactive, strategic tasks. This proactive approach has gained a foothold to varying degrees within civil protection institutions in different countries and levels of government. An issue is to what extent the

Chapter 5 Integrating climate change adaptation into civil protection

current civil protection system can cope with climate change impacts, which would typically not be covered in a reactive system, and how such adaptation could take place.

At this point, we should explain our understanding of two central concepts whose use is not straightforward, namely vulnerability and natural hazards (our understanding of civil protection will be explained later in the methodol- ogy section). The vulnerability concept is encumbered with a multiplicity of interpretations (F¨ussel, 2007; Hinkel, 2011), and numerous disciplines use the concept and fill it with their own meanings. This is reflected by the different approaches to vulnerability in the natural hazards and climate change com- munities, where differences are visible in terms of process, scale, assessment approach and levels of uncertainty (Romieu et al., 2010). Intensive conceptual work has failed to resolve the terminological confusion in vulnerability research (Hinkel, 2011). The classification of different approaches to vulnerability given by K. O’Brien et al. (2007) is one example of such efforts. They identified two differing interpretations of climate change vulnerability, which they labelled ‘outcome’ and ‘contextual’ vulnerability, concepts that are closely related to the typology of ‘end-point’ and ‘starting-point’ vulnerability interpretations introduced by Kelly and Adger (2000) and further described by (F¨ussel, 2007). Our empirical study has similarities with both these interpretations. Includ- ing case studies that deal with institutional and socio-economic constraints on local responses, it bears features of the contextual/starting-point interpreta- tion. On the other hand, since we are considering sectoral sensitivities, and want to stress the importance of adaptation to future climate change as op- posed to current climate variability, this leans towards an outcome/end-point interpretation of vulnerability. The apparent paradox that our study does not fit either interpretation raises the question as to the relevance of these classifications.

The natural hazards research community provides an important body of literature with relevance to our study. However,we feel that natural hazards is a somewhat misleading concept as it draws attention away from the societal component (O’Keefe, Westgate, & Wisner, 1976; Hilhorst & Bankoff, 2004; G. O’Brien et al., 2006). Climate change relates to civil protection primarily because of changes in the frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events, such as flooding, storms, heat waves and heavy precipitation. Nevertheless, the more moderate and gradual climatic changes are of interest for civil pro- tection as only a small increase in winter temperatures in northern countries could lead to increasing freeze-thaw events that trigger rock slides. This re- flects the observation made by Romieu et al. (2010) that the term ‘hazard’ is seen as a gradual change or stress by the climate change community, and as

5.1 Introduction

a sudden shock by the natural hazards community. The implication is that gradual changes may easily be overlooked in a natural hazards context, even if they involve increased risk of abrupt and damaging incidents. According to G. O’Brien et al. (2006), the disaster policy response to climate change is dependent on factors such as readiness to accept the reality of climate change and the capacity and willingness to embed climate change risk assessment and management in development strategies. It is clear that these conditions have not been met, and G. O’Brien et al. (2006) call for a new approach that incor- porates risk management into work on climate change and introduces climate change into natural hazards and development planning. In a recent study of 10 EU member states that had adopted a National Adaptation Strategy (NAS), an important conclusion was that the overall strategy in implement- ing adaptation should be to integrate adaptation issues and concerns into all relevant policies areas (Swart et al., 2009; Biesbroek et al., 2010). Dovers and Hezri (2010) argue that adaptation could benefit from the highly relevant body of literature on environmental policy integration which is largely ignored in adaptation debates.

All the contributions listed above can be read as arguments for integrat- ing adaptation policies into civil protection. Our aim is to explore if any such integration, or ‘mainstreaming’, is taking place in this particular sector, and to identify requirements for successful policy integration. In so doing, we draw on a tradition that emerged more than three decades ago: as our point of departure, we use Underdal (1980) his general definition that “a pol- icy is integrated to the extent that it recognises its consequences as decision premises, aggregates them into an overall evaluation, and penetrates all pol- icy levels and all government agencies involved in its execution” (Underdal, 1980, p.162). Further, we draw on Lafferty and Hovden (2003) and their approach to policy integration in the environmental policy field. The same works inspired Mickwitz et al. (2009) when they introduced climate policy integration as a concept in their evaluation of the incorporation of the aims of climate change mitigation and adaptation into both environmental and non- environmental policy sectors in six European countries. Another report from the same PEER project by Swart et al. (2009) studied policy integration from a top-down perspective in a pure adaptation context. Policy integration has both horizontal and vertical dimensions (Underdal, 1980; Lafferty & Hovden, 2003). The former can be addressed by studying a single sector, namely civil protection, which is not primarily occupied with adaptation policy; the latter through multilevel analysis.

In examining how civil protection systems in Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands are handling recent extreme weather events at different gover-

Chapter 5 Integrating climate change adaptation into civil protection

nance levels, we posed the following research question to guide the work: RQ4 To what extent and in what ways is adaptation integrated into civil pro-

tection, what factors explain the observed levels of integration and the differences between these countries, and how can adaptation be better integrated into civil protection?

This question is addressed through the following three sub-questions:

1. To what extent and in what ways is adaptation integrated into civil pro- tection?

2. What might explain the observed levels of adaptation policy integration into civil protection, and the differences observed in this respect between countries?

3. How might adaptation be better integrated into civil protection?

Below, we first outline the discourses on policy integration as they relate to adaptation and civil protection before presenting the methodology applied in our study. We then introduce the results by discussing national policy dis- courses on adaptation and civil protection in Norway, Sweden and the Nether- lands and the findings of the case studies based on Bergen, Malm¨o and Rot- terdam. Following this, we compare our findings and draw conclusions. We conclude the chapter by discussing the problems and prospects of integrating adaptation into civil protection.