1. Introduction

1.1. The climate change challenge

The impacts of climate change are being felt across the globe, with many impacts experienced earlier and more severely than expected (IPCC, 2022). In Europe as well as in the Nordic countries, the past years have seen several instances of both extreme heat and extreme rainfall, which in many cases exceed the capacity of existing physical and political infrastructures to respond. The imperative to prepare for and adapt to these changes is becoming increasingly clear.

Adaptation has been defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects in ways that seek to moderate or avoid harm or exploit beneficial opportunities (IPCC, 2022). However, climate change adaptation is not just about adapting to an increasingly challenging climate. In its 2012 special report on managing the risks of extreme events and disasters to advance climate change adaptation, the IPCC states that “some strategies for effectively managing risks and adapting to climate change involve adjustments to current activities. Others require transformation or fundamental change” (IPCC, 2012, p. 4). The report defines transformation in the context of climate change adaptation as “the altering of fundamental attributes of a system (including value systems; regulatory, legislative, or bureaucratic regimes; financial institutions; and technological or biological systems)” (Ibid.). In more recent years, adaptation has also been increasingly linked to efforts to protect biodiversity and ensuring just energy transitions, especially through the work of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). In this perspective, climate change adaptation must also be concerned with how to adapt in ways that helps prevent further climate change and helps to address the need for social transformations toward more inclusive and equitable societies (IPBES, 2019).

1.2. Climate change adaptation in the Nordic countries

The Nordic countries have in many respects been considered as front-runners on climate policy (Christensen, 1996; Witoszek and Midttun, 2018). However, according to a 33-country survey conducted by the European Environment Agency (2020), this is not always the case in all Nordic countries when it comes to climate change adaptation. Several studies and evaluations conducted in the different Nordic countries in recent years have concluded that climate change adaptation is happening too slowly, is often aimed at the climate of today as opposed to the climate of tomorrow and lacks the appropriate knowledgebase to estimate how climate change will affect society and which measures are most effective in preventing unacceptable forms and levels of damage (e.g., Vindegg et al., 2022; Riksrevisionen, 2022).

The Nordic countries share many of the same climate change-related challenges and can also benefit from similar approaches to finding solutions, including ways of adapting successfully to climate change (Berninger et al., 2022). With most of the Nordic countries having completed their first adaptation planning cycle, and some in the process of completing their second cycle, now is a pertinent time to investigate organizational set-ups, lessons learned, challenges and future possibilities. Thus far, there has been little coordinated effort to compare adaptation within the Nordic region.

The Nordic countries are uniquely positioned to take the lead in developing integrated and sustainable approaches for how to tackle climate change in ways that are equitable and just. Situated within some of the oldest and strongest democracies in the world, the Nordic countries can not only respond to the challenge of climate change but realize the potential for sustainable societal development, including by adopting a more transformative approach to meeting the climate change challenge. The realization of this potential will depend on how the Nordic countries structure and coordinate their adaptation efforts in the years to come. Research suggests that coordinated and integrated approaches to adaptation will be key for such efforts to generate effective and sustainable results (O’Brien et al., 2022).

1.3. Methods and analytical approach

Data and methods

The report is based on document analysis and informant interviews. The document analysis has primarily drawn on national policy documents, such as strategies, government white papers and action plans, covering both cross-sector and sector documents, as well as internal and external progress reports and evaluations. The analysis has been complemented with research literature in the form of project reports and journal articles.

Informant interviews have been conducted for each country to complement and add nuance to the document analysis. Interviews have also informed the evaluation of best practices and challenges within the current adaptation policy landscape. A total of 16 informants from both the national and sub-national level have been interviewed, with 3—4 informants interviewed in each country. The interviewees are kept anonymous.

Analytical approach

The tender called for a comparative analysis of the adaptation policy landscape, including legislative framework, policy instruments and analytical approaches as well as financing mechanisms. We have approached our mapping and comparative analysis through five interrelated themes with guiding questions for each of the themes.

1. Governance structure

What is the timeline of national adaptation policy development?
What does the organizational set-up for climate change adaptation nationally look like currently, and what is the assigned policy ownership nationally?
How is responsibility for adaptation assigned across national, regional, and local levels?
How is coordination structured across government departments and between national, regional, and local entities?
What responsibilities and risk ownership are assigned to public sector entities, private sector entities, civil society, and individual citizens?

2. Themes

What themes are prioritized in adaptation efforts? E.g., damages from natural hazards on physical infrastructure, health-related challenges, impact on biodiversity, impact on primary production, food security, trade, etc.
What type of climate risk receives most consideration? E.g., trans-boundary climate risks, local physical climate risks.

3. Policy instruments

What governance structures and policy frameworks guide work on adaptation nationally?
What additional strategies and plans structure and guide work on adaptation regionally and/or locally?
What visions, goals and principles are central to these strategies and plans?
What laws and legislations govern these strategies and plans?
What systems are in place for monitoring, reporting and evaluating (MRE) the adaptation efforts nationally?
What is the relationship between MRE across different levels of governance?
What systems exist for guidance, information sharing and support across scales (national, regional, local)?
What type of economic measures exist to incentivise adaptation efforts across scales (national, regional, local) and sectors? These can be divided into three main categories: positive (e.g., subsidy schemes), negative (e.g., taxes) and neutral (e.g., insurance).

4. Knowledge generation

What themes, societal areas and sectors are most commonly included in national, regional and local risk assessments?
What evaluations have been made to assess the socio-economic impacts of climate change and the costs and benefits of adaptation measures?
What evaluations have been made as to transboundary climate risks?

5. Integration

As an additional analytical lens, we pay careful attention to the degree of integration. We understand integration in three distinct ways:

Integration of adaptation within the existing work of public authorities (i.e., mainstreaming)
Degree of collaboration and coordination between public bodies on adaptation-related questions
Degree of alignment between climate change adaptation work and other closely related policy areas, such as GHG-mitigation, disaster risk management and reduction, energy transition, biodiversity protection, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

This final focus is derived from the growing recognition that climate change adaptation efforts are more likely to succeed in building resilient and adaptive societies if they are understood and worked with in an integrated way that accounts for both possible synergies and areas of conflict.

Evaluation

In accordance with the tender, the mapping of the above themes leads to a comparative identification of best practices and key progress factors for national climate change adaptation. Due to the lack of official evaluation criteria and indicators in the Nordic countries, we have taken a pragmatic approach and based our assessment of best practices and key challenges on the evaluation work done in each country (e.g., evaluation reports) and the perspectives of the expert informants interviewed. While best practices and key challenges differ somewhat between countries, most of the issues identified are present across the countries, making it possible to synthesize key issues for the Nordic region.

We have focused our evaluation on the degree to which the national policy landscapes supports the progress of adaptation. We have understood progress to imply enhancing the effectiveness, timeliness, and sustainability of adaptation efforts. This is evaluated through three cross-cutting themes:

Type and content of current policies, systems, and tools
Division of responsibility and degree and format of coordination and collaboration
Degree of integration of adaptation within sectors and across societal challenges

To bring these differing perspectives together in an analysis of potentials for further developing and enhancing adaptation across the Nordic countries, we have framed the last chapter of the report within the notion of transformational adaptation and structured the potentials according to four aspirational goals for adaptation: smarter adaptation, more systemic adaptation, faster adaptation, and more internationally oriented adaptation. While the notion of transformational adaptation is largely derived from the IPCC (2022), the four aspirational goals are drawn from the EU adaptation strategy (European Commission, 2021) as well as scientific literature on the potential and need for adaptation to align with sustainable development (e.g., Eriksen et al., 2015; O’Brien, 2012).

The EU adaptation strategy has been identified as a relevant document in this regard due to its aspirational character and the EUs position as a leader on adaptation in a European context. Thus, while not all Nordic countries are EU member states, all report on their adaptation efforts as members of the European Environment Agency (EEA), and they are thereby already guided by the structures and priorities of the EU. Both Iceland and Norway are fully integrated in the EU Emission Trading Scheme, while other parts of the climate policy area are not implemented in the agreement. Norway, Iceland, and the EU have formally agreed to cooperate on reducing greenhouse gases according to their national determined contributions under the Paris Agreement. Additionally, with increased awareness of the transboundary nature of climate change, an international outlook on adaptation is likely to increase in coming years, further emphasizing the relevance of the EU perspective.

The suggestions for the way forward for adaptation in the Nordic countries presented in the final chapter of the report have formed the basis for a set of policy recommendations, also published by the Nordic Council of Ministers (https://pub.norden.org/nord2023-014).

Limitations

As the process of evaluating climate change adaptation efforts within the Nordic countries is still in an early phase, there is little information available about strengths and weaknesses of various approaches and policies. In some cases, we therefore rely on the perspectives and experiences of our interviewees, who are policy experts within the adaptation field. When possible, we add nuance and back-up interview data with written sources.

While some of the themes of the report are described in great detail within national policy documents and plans, others are less so. In those cases where a theme is neither addressed in key documents nor raised by the interviewees, we have considered it to be an issue that has received little to no attention within the national context. This is especially the case with economic measures for adaptation, which are largely lacking in the Nordic countries.

1. Intro­duction