Conclusion: The development of adaptive capacity and adaptation measures in European countries

Abstract

This volume has related the development of adaptation policy and practice to a number of structural, context-based or procedural capacities; these include the extent of decentralisation, the type of planning systems, the institutionalization of environmental policy, and the occurrence of focusing events across multi-level governance systems. The case study material has consisted of nested case studies on national, regional and local levels in the UK, Finland, Sweden and Italy, supplemented by comparative cases viewed mainly within the context of the European Union. This chapter summarizes the results of the study with a focus on the parameters defined in the introduction and describes the significant variety in outcomes across the case study countries. Differences range from a comprehensive multi-level framework for adaptation in the centralised unitary UK state, to more limited approaches in Sweden and Finland, to the failure to thus far institutionalise adaptation policy in Italy. The case studies support identifying the parameters affecting adaptive capacity and the development of adaptation responses. However, no single factor in itself can readily explain the variety of responses to adaptation. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.