Unpacking the policy mix of adaptation to climate change in Brazil’s semiarid region: enabling instruments and coordination mechanisms

ABSTRACT

This study analyzes the patterns of coordination of a set of policy instruments promoted by Brazil’s National Adaptation Plan as a means of fostering climate adaptation in the rural areas of the country’s semiarid region. It combines institutional data and semi-structured interviews with policymakers to elucidate the process of implementation of these instruments, with a focus on the enabling factors and (missing) connections in the policy mix. Coordination gaps between the enabling instruments and climate adaptation instruments, caused by institutional and political factors, resulted in implementation issues and a policy mix inclined to promote social vulnerability goals rather than sustainable production and climate risk management. The analysis provides insights into the challenges of achieving a coherent policy framework. It also contributes to the policy mix literature by defining criteria for a typology of interactions between policy instruments and by unpacking the functional ties of instruments in the policy mix.

Key policy insights

• Policy coordination is a political rather than technical process.

• The policy mix includes climate adaptation instruments, enabling instruments, and complementary instruments, each of which play different functional roles. Both formal and informal mechanisms connect policy instruments.

• A policy mix analysis must be specific to both context and time. A network analysis of instrument interactions can provide methods and comparative outlooks that are more robust.

• Implementation gaps between the enabling instruments and climate adaptation instruments influence the resulting policy mix, which tends to promote achievement of social vulnerability goals rather than sustainable production and climate risk management.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Brazil
• semiarid
• policy mix
• climate adaptation
• enabling environment
• policy coordination

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, we would like to thank the interviewees who shared their time and perspectives with us. We would also like to thank Pedro Gama, Francislene Angelotti, Paola Cortez, and Embrapa Semiarido team who helped us during the first stages of the research project. In addition, we thank Daniel Henstra, Robert Biesbroek, Alexandra Lesnikowski, and the participants of the International Conference on Public Policy, held in Montreal in 2019, who provided insights that greatly assisted the reformulation of the first draft of the article. Finally, we thank the editors and reviewers who generously provided valuable comments that improved the quality of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID

Carolina Milhorance http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3290-8596

Eric Sabourin http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1171-2535

Jean-François Le Coq http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1084-1973

Priscylla Mendes http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7074-680X

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico); CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior); FAP-DF (Fundação de Apoio à Pesquisa do Distrito Federal) under the project INCT n° 16- 2014 ODISSEIA, and by the ANR (Agence Nationale de la Recherche), under project ARTIMIX ANR-17-CE03-0005.