‘It Takes More to Get a Ship to Change Course’: Barriers for Organizational Learning and Local Climate Adaptation in Sweden

Abstract

In working with local climate adaptation, questions are raised of how to increase the capacity for integrating climate considerations in planning and decision-making. As part of the institutional dimension of adaptive capacity, how to foster processes of learning and reflexivity among different administrative units and actors is particularly essential. The aim of this paper is to analyse how the call for systematic organizational learning is manifested in local climate adaptation in two Swedish municipalities, illustrating what forms of learning occur and what learning challenges are identified. Despite the distinct and often contrasting approaches to climate adaptation adopted in the two municipalities—reflecting a variety of learning approaches—there are striking similarities in terms of difficulties in moving beyond the specialized few and reaching general acceptability as well as in the inability to mediate tensions between local sector interests, values and priorities and thus bringing about reflexive learning through experience. The paper shows that the cross-cutting nature of climate change needs to be further acknowledged in practice, including to what extent learning takes place among a specialized few key actors or as part of a systematic and cross-sectoral organizational mainstreaming as well as to what extent learning ‘on paper’ is actually embraced as ‘learning in use’ in concrete working practices.

Keywords:

• Climate risks
• climate adaptation
• adaptive capacity
• organizational learning
• learning challenges

Acknowledgements

The author would particularly like to thank the interviewees in Coastby and Riverby for generously sharing their views, perspectives and experiences of working with risk management and climate adaptation, Sunniva E. Tøsse, Katarina Eckerberg, Annika E. Nilsson and Susan Owens for valuable comments on a draft version presented at the 9th NESS Research Conference ‘Knowledge, Learning and Action for Sustainability’, 10–12 June 2009 in London, Martin Karlsson for doing the map and the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions. The research was kindly funded by the Swedish Research Council FORMAS (Dnr 214-2006-146). The paper is dedicated in fond memory of Associate Professor Ann Skantze. Her strong advocay of insights and perspectives reflecting the promises and challenges of organizational learning for sustainable development in planning and decision-making practices is of lasting inspiration.