The governance of climate change adaptation: stormwater management policy and practice

Abstract

Urban flooding is a significant climate change risk for cities. Stormwater management (SWM) has emerged as a key policy response to reduce urban vulnerability to flood risk, and it offers an ideal case study for analyzing the governance of climate change adaptation. This article focuses on SWM policy in the Province of Ontario, Canada, with the broader objective of assessing the nature and dynamics of adaptation governance arrangements. The evolution of SWM policy is examined longitudinally to understand how the interaction of policy ideas, actors and institutions have mobilized adaptation principles. The results reveal that, despite consensus on key ideas among policy actors, the institutionalization of adaptation principles into SWM policy lags behind. This finding raises questions about the capacity of regional governments to strengthen local adaptation and underpins the need for further research on the interaction between evolving adaptation priorities and established policy regimes.

Keywords:

• climate change
• adaptation
• governance
• stormwater management

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Editor and anonymous Reviewers for their constructive comments, which greatly improved the paper. They are also grateful to the interviewees who generously shared their insights on climate change adaptation and stormwater management.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 The Ontario RAC had eleven partners: the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Clean Air Partnership, Ontario Centre for Climate Impacts and Adaptation Resources (OCCIAR), Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, Association for Canadian Educational Resources, Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, York University and Toronto Public Health.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (435-2016-0007).