The ability of Nordic countries to adapt to climate change: assessing adaptive capacity at the regional level

Abstract

Adaptation to the impacts of climate change has become a concern in the Nordic countries. Regional responses to climate change impacts are considered to be crucial since they are likely to target specific vulnerabilities with concrete and feasible adaptation measures. The ability of the region to respond to climate change is determined to a large extent by its adaptive capacity that consists of economic, social and political capacity, as well as infrastructure and technological potential. This paper assesses the generic adaptive capacity of Nordic regions by using a set of indicators that reflect five determinants of adaptive capacity. The results of the assessments are presented in maps that illustrate that Nordic regions have high capacity but there are also significant differences between and within countries. Finally, this article also discusses arguments for and against the use of these kinds of assessments in policy-making, and the implications of this for the Nordic countries.

Keywords:

• adaptive capacity
• assessment
• Nordic countries
• regional
• climate change

Acknowledgements

The adaptive capacity index described here was part of the ESPON project 2013/1/4 “Climate change and territorial effects on regions and local economies” developed by the authors. The authors thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments in improving the manuscript.

Notes

Region here refers to the NUTS3 according to the Nomenclature of Units for Territorial Statistics.

Equity as the sixth determinant was left out of the analysis. Concerns of equity, however, are addressed in terms of the institutions by measuring gender participation in the democracy index. Equity is also considered in terms of the economic performance of regions by focusing on long-term unemployment and age dependency as the indicators.

The data for the indicator that measures the national adaptation strategies in Europe were obtained from Eric Massey, Department of Environmental Policy Analysis, Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

The weights that emerged out of the ESPON Climate Delphi are used in this study, rather than any specific Nordic weightings. It was beyond this particular paper to undertake a new Delphi exercise.