Consulting on Austrian climate change adaptation policy and strategy

Which structural challenges do politicians and bureaucrats have to deal with when coordinating on and implementing climate change adaptation strategies on the ground? How do national and regional adaptation strategies interact and to what extent do their specific policies and remits influence each other? adelphi is working with the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU) and the Environment Agency Austria to get to the bottom of these questions. The project builds on the approach and results of a topically related previous project on the factors of success for climate change adaptation in Germany and six further OECD countries, but focuses more strongly on multi-level governance aspects. The forerunner project was funded by the German Environment Agency.   

The research project will assess the success of selected adaptation strategies from different administrative levels. The focus of the qualitative analysis will be on evaluating specific planning, coordination, and implementation processes. The results will be used to formulate policy recommendations for the effective coordination and implementation of adaptation strategies in Austria.

adelphi’s contribution is to analyse existing adaptation strategies at various levels of governance in Germany. This analysis will provide the basis for a comparison with existing policy approaches and strategies in Austria. Furthermore, adelphi is to support the preparation and execution of "FutureLabs", where the project’s recommendations will be introduced and discussed with Austrian and German political actors involved in climate change adaption.   

The project is being carried out with funds from the Austrian Climate Research Programme (ACRP).