Planning for Climate Change Adaptation in a Multi-level Context: The Gothenburg Metropolitan Area

Abstract

Individual local governments are key players in Sweden's strategy for climate adaptation but their authority does not match the scale of climate change and its impacts. Competences are divided among local, regional and national authorities. Climate adaptation thus requires cooperation, particularly in metropolitan regions. This raises issues of coordination, legitimacy and effectiveness of adaptation measures recommended in local Master Plans. The focus here is on how the 13 municipalities in the Gothenburg Metropolitan Area—expected to be the part of Sweden most affected by impacts of climate change—address and act upon issues of climate change adaptation within the framework of Sweden's Planning and Building Act, which places responsibility for the “common interest” of climate adaptation with local governments. Analysing municipal Master Plans, as well as the comments on these plans from the regional County Administrative Board and from Göteborg Region Association of Local Authorities, the inter-municipal association charged with infrastructural planning, I identify patterns in terms of coordination, legitimacy and effectiveness of planning for climate change adaptation. Results are discussed in relation to propositions from recent research on planning for climate adaptation in multi-level contexts.

Keywords:

• climate change adaptation
• multi-level context
• local master planning
• coordination
• legitimacy
• effectiveness

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Sverker C. Jagers, Hege Westskog and Sjur Kasa for support and encouragement, and two EPS reviewers for extremely valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper. And thanks to Karin Andersson for helping me out with graphics.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

Swedish Research Council: Fair and Feasible Climate Change Adaptation (FAIR-AD). Dept. of Political Science, Gothenburg University. Norwegian Research Council 220575/H20: Climate emission and energy use planning at the local level: Top-down directives and bottom-up responses. CICERO Center for Climate Research.