Introduction-Adaptation to climate change in Europe: Theoretical framework and study design

Abstract

As mitigation will not likely be sufficient to hinder climate change, adaptation to the consequences of climate change will be needed. The impacts of climate change will include such phenomena as increased flooding and sea level rise, which will in turn have significant effects on densely populated and infrastructurally-developed areas in advanced industrial states. Despite the potential for serious consequences, very little of the existing climate change adaptation literature has focused on adaptation in the EU or the industrialised world in general. This chapter and the volume at large address this gap. This chapter describes the governance system of public and private actors and bodies that set the context for adaptive capacity at local, regional, national and EU levels, and argues that adaptive capacity can largely be seen as related to the resource distribution and prioritisation processes within such systems. The chapter further outlines the comparative approach taken by the volume, including a common methodology for the presented multi-level studies. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.