Special issue: Exploring global and transnational governance of climate change adaptation

This special issue of the journal International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics explores the need for more global and transnational governance of climate adaptation required, and how far the need is being met. The special issue is introduced and edited by SEI Research Director Åsa Persson and Research Fellow Adis Dzebo.

The impacts of climate change are not limited by national borders. Shared resources such as rivers, lakes and fisheries, as well as global commodity markets and supply chains, are among the factors that can turn local climate impacts into transnational problems. Yet adaptation policy rarely takes this into account.

The special issue offers conceptual approaches and empirical research to improve understanding the need for global and transnational adaptation governance, what forms it can take, and how effective it has been to date. In addition, it contributes to the policy agenda by proposing a simple typology for understanding adaptation as a “global challenge”, as defined in the Paris Agreement, and identifies future research needs.

The special issue contains six articles. Two are authored by SEI researchers:

• Governing borderless climate risks: Moving beyond the territorial framing of adaptation, by Magnus Benzie and Åsa Persson
• Effective governance of transnational adaptation initiatives, by Adis Dzebo.

The others are:

• Strategic cooperation for transnational adaptation: Lessons from the economics of climate change mitigation, by Matteao Roggero, Leonard Kähler and Achim Hagen
• Building a regional adaptation strategy for Amazon countries, by Maria Antonia Tigre
• Does orchestration in the Global Climate Action Agenda effectively prioritize and mobilize transnational climate adaptation action? by Sander Chan and Wanja Amling
• Transnational municipal networks: Harbingers of innovation for global adaptation governance? By Marielle Papin

The articles in the special issue were originally presented at the research workshop The Emerging Complexity of Climate Adaptation Governance in a Globalising World, Stockholm 22–24 May 2017.