Addressing the Challenges of Adaptation to Climate Change Policy: Integrating Public Administration and Public Policy Studies

Abstract

With growing attention on formulating the “right” policies and programs to address climate change, the contribution that policy work will make in fostering adaptive capacity needs to be examined. Policy capacity is crucial to policy formulation and should be at the heart of climate mainstreaming. There are six hypotheses about the nature of climate-based policy work based on a survey conducted of Canadian federal and provincial government employees in the forestry, finance, infrastructure, and transportation sectors. To measure the simultaneous effects on perceived policy capacity, an Ordinary Least Squares regression was conducted. Among the key findings was that the increased demand for climate change science within an organization resulted in a decreased perception of policy capacity. Policy work was largely focused on procedure activities rather than on evaluation. The model found that networking was critically important for perceived policy capacity. Effective policy formulation will involve the participation of others normally not associated with traditional policy work. Evidence-based policy work illustrates that policy success can be achieved by improving the amount and type of information processed in public policy formulation.

Keywords:

• adaptation
• policy capacity
• Canada
• policy formulation
• mainstreaming

Notes

¹ A 453-page report, From Impacts to Adaptation: Canada in a Changing Climate, was released by Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) in 2008 (Lemmen et al., 2008).

² The data were weighted using the iterative proportional fitting or raking method.

³ The internal consistency of the factored variables was estimated using reliability analysis and Cronbach’s α (alpha) statistic.

⁴ Nearly all of those identifying with environment, climate change, NRM, and water resource came from forestry based departments.