Filling the Governance Gaps: Coordination for Adaptation to Sea Level Rise

• In Event: Representation, Inequality and Geography in Environmental and Climate Governance

Abstract

Climate adaptation entails reducing the vulnerability and boosting the resilience of communities to the consequences of climate change. Adaptation strategies across different local communities often display ecological and political interdependencies: actions undertaken in one part of a socio-ecological system may affect another. Indeed, socio-ecological systems often feature collaborative partnerships having emergent character. What are the factors driving the emergence of these collaborative partnerships? The literature argues that mismatches between institutional and ecological scales are detrimental to socio-ecological systems. We argue that actors form collaborative partnerships in order to remedy the misfit between ecological interdependencies and the fragmentation of the governance system. We test this argument in the empirical case of adaptation to sea level rise in the San Francisco Bay Area. We rely on network analysis and on data collected through a survey of public entities and stakeholders carried out during summer 2018 and elite interviews carried out in 2016. Our findings suggest that jurisdictional overlap triggers collaborative partnerships, and that actors initiate collaborations to fill the gaps in the governance system.

Authors

• Francesca Pia Vantaggiato, University of California, Davis

• Mark N. Lubell, University of California, Davis