Knowledge on what makes adaptation mainstreaming effective is scarce and fragmented. This paper takes stock of peer-reviewed empirical analyses of climate adaptation mainstreaming in order to assess current achievements and identify the critical factors that render mainstreaming effective.
The effectiveness of mainstreaming outputs and outcomes varies greatly across country groupings.
The results show that although in most cases adaptation policy outputs are identified, only in a minority of cases does this translate into policy outcomes. This “implementation gap” is most strongly seen in developing countries. However, when it comes to the effectiveness of outcomes, no difference across countries was found.
The authors conclude that more explicit definitions and unified frameworks for adaptation mainstreaming research are required to allow for future research syntheses and well-informed policy recommendations.
