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Impacts of climate change, manifested in different forms, are integrally linked with context-specific socio-economic, political, and environmental stressors. Dealing with climatic risks, in most parts, requires understanding these mundane location-specific stressors exacerbated by climate variability and change. In large part, the discussion about dealing with impending threats from climate change has relied on policy objectives hatched at the global and national levels. Despite the fact that these policy objectives are responsible for a wide range of actions at the local levels, they often struggle to incorporate the voices of local communities. With the goal of integrating bottom-up and top-down approaches in climate adaptation and connecting them to local development, the Local Adaptation Plans of Action (LAPA) initiative in Nepal makes a promising case. However, little is known about the institutional barriers and enablers of local adaptation initiatives and how they are affected by the political nature of climate adaptation. Using Nepal's LAPA as a case study and relying on a preliminary field visit, analysis of LAPA documents, and interviews with stakeholders, we reveal several obstacles local communities face that limit their ability to adapt. These obstacles include regular challenges such as insufficient financial resources and the lack of implementation support, to more specific ones such as less recognition of local knowledge and power differences among institutions and between local-level stakeholders having varying interests, power, and views. Our results show gender-based differences on a few key issues. By building on the local knowledge, enhancing local capacity, and by fostering interaction among different actors having unequal power relationships, local efforts such as LAPA can increase the ownership of adaptation policy objectives both at global and local levels. Most importantly, this paper reveals the struggle in linking identified options for dealing with climate change with everyday practices of managing risk and uncertainty.

Bangladesh is susceptible to climate change-related floods, cyclones, and drought. Coastal people suffer disproportionately from these effects, especially catastrophic disaster, because of their livelihoods, societal obligations and restrictions. Climate change adaptation requires the engagement of multiple actors in different sectors at various levels of governance. The diverse roles played by policy actors and their interactions shape the process of adaptation governance. However, governance for climate change adaptation has received little attention in Bangladesh from the intersectionality perspective. To close the research gap, the National Adaptation Program of Action (NAPA) 2009, the National Adaptation Plan of Bangladesh 2022, and the Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan 2009—these essential documents that are regularly revised—were subjected to a qualitative content analysis in this study. The main goal is to examine how intersectionality has been integrated into Bangladesh's adaptation governance. The study used conceptual keyword cluster analysis to group topics into thematic sections to show the link between sections A, B, and C. Section C included climate stressors and climate adaptation governance policies, especially in coastal areas. NAPA takes a thorough approach to tackling climate change and considering different aspects of vulnerability. Remarkably, none of the selected papers provided substantial information on how a person's multidimensional circumstances—such as gender, disability, age, ethnicity, and geography—contribute to their compound vulnerability and how to address these factors simultaneously. This research emphasizes the gaps in the existing literature, the relationship between policy and practice, and the implications for suggestions in the future about good governance in Bangladesh and other similar regions.

As climate impacts accelerate, climate change adaptation practitioners face the dual challenge of navigating evolving scientific theory and evidence while delivering urgent, context-specific action. On the one hand, adaptation research often overlooks the pragmatism, prioritisation, and negotiation required in practice, as well as persistent constraints related to resources, local capacity, and political will. On the other hand, adaptation policy and practice frequently underutilise existing research work that could support more informed decision-making. As a result, adaptation increasingly takes place as a form of complex, situated work, requiring practitioners to continuously navigate tensions between urgency and uncertainty, long-term futures and immediate needs, and technical expertise and relational engagement. To better understand what three decades of adaptation experience can offer in response to these challenges, we draw on 50 interviews with leading global adaptation experts, spanning science, policy, and practice. We asked a single generative question: if you could give one piece of advice to an adaptation practitioner, what would you tell them? Thematic analysis of the interviews yielded nine interrelated themes, ranging from grounding adaptation in the lived realities of communities to navigating the politics of adaptation, designing for scale and breaking institutional silos. Interviewees also highlighted the importance of practitioner qualities such as humility, patience, courage, and flexibility, pointing to the often invisible relational, emotional, and cognitive labour through which adaptation is enacted and sustained in practice. Taken together, these insights offer grounded, field-tested guidance for adaptation practitioners, while also advancing adaptation theory by foregrounding the central role of adaptation practice in balancing power dynamics, relationality, and systems thinking. In doing so, the paper highlights the often-overlooked and under-theorised affective dimensions of practice and reinforces the understanding of adaptation as a socio-political, systemic, and relational process.

The transboundary partnership encourages multi-stakeholder efforts to mobilize adaptation funding and services for adaptation governance. However, challenges exist in scope, equality, and transparency when engaging these stakeholders. Few studies have examined the detailed coordination among multi-stakeholders and the performance of their partnerships, creating an opportunity to understand how multi-stakeholders contribute to and manage efforts for future adaptation projects. This study focused on a transboundary action research project on climate adaptation, analyzing the partnership structure, stakeholder arrangements, coordination scenarios, and the role of the partnership within it. It included interviews with project personnel and focus group discussions with community members at the project sites. The results showed that the project emphasized collaboration while maintaining both vertical and horizontal coordination. The donor maintained vertical coordination for monitoring but collaborated on budget adjustments, funding, identifying challenges, and developing strategies to improve the partnership. Partners continued horizontal coordination by sharing responsibilities and taking leadership roles in synthesizing research reports. Additionally, this project facilitated community participation in piloting the adaptation intervention. Although this partnership aimed to establish collaboration, it remains far from effectively liaising with national-level governments to maximize the benefits of adaptation technology. Future research should expand this scope to promote sustainable development.

PurposeThe performance of large-scale projects is often challenged due to major environmental changes that occur during their life. However, literature has paid little attention to the governance adaptations required to respond effectively to these changes. This paper aims to study changes in the project environment over time, the corresponding governance adaptations and their impact on project performance.Design/methodology/approachTo ensure triangulation between two sources of evidence, we used both primary and secondary data sources and examined 14 projects through 2 studies, the first focused on seven documented, illustrative case projects and the second on interviews with senior and project managers involved in seven additional projects.FindingsWe found the key environmental changes that should trigger appropriate governance adaptations to be market evolutions, technological advancements and sociopolitical events. However, we also found that these necessary governance adaptations are not commonly implemented timely, sufficiently or effectively.Originality/valueThe paper distills the dynamics of large-scale projects in achieving project effectiveness and raises theoretical propositions on the combination of environmental changes and deficient governance adaptations that, over time, turns efficient projects into ineffective projects and discusses implications for theory and practice.

One of the measures of governance effectiveness of alliance is the extent of opportunism. Controlling partner opportunism is more challenging in cross-sectoral alliances such as public–private partnerships. Coupled with institutional voids, a vicious cycle of partner opportunism can get created, leading to the complete failure of cross-sectoral partnerships in emerging economies. Building on extant literature on inter-organizational governance, we examine how governance flexibility plays a critical role in controlling opportunism. We analyze a unique case of one of India's largest public health insurance programs designed and delivered through public–private partnerships. We demonstrate how governance flexibility enables alliance partners to control opportunism, considering contract incompleteness and poor contract enforceability in emerging economies. By mapping different types of opportunism and partner governance responses, we demonstrate the effect of power differences and institutional voids on governance flexibility. We present key research propositions on governance flexibility and argue that governance flexibility can considerably improve the effectiveness of public–private partnerships.

Although climate change adaptation (CCA) and spatial planning are relevant to promoting climate resilience, Italy shows a certain lack of studies focused on the coherence between national CCA objectives and sectoral plans. We aim to investigate such a research gap and propose and apply a logical framework approach (LFA)-based method to assess the coherence of sectoral plans adopted in Sardinia (Italy) with the missions of the Italian National Climate Change Adaptation Plan (NCCAP). We apply LFA to analytically scrutinize sectoral plans by reconstructing their strategic framework—including objectives and actions—and comparing them to the CCA objectives established by the NCCAP. The purpose is to provide the regional administrations with a methodological approach and tangible findings, suggesting the need for updating plans lacking CCA contents and contributing to the drafting or updating of the regional strategy for CCA. The method adopted in this study allowed us to identify plan objectives and actions that fully or partially integrate NCCAP objectives. Then, plans partially (or not at all) consistent with the NCCAP can be integrated with CCA contents. This is relevant to promoting climate resilience issues in plans that have clear effects in terms of spatial, landscape, and urban planning, according to different governance levels.

Successful adaptation often involves changes to the decision context to enable new ways of thinking and acting on climate change. Using 16 adaptation initiatives the authors were engaged with, we analysed how and why decision contexts changed to identify ways to improve adaptation as a process of collective deliberation and social learning. We used the scope of the adaptation issue and governance arrangements to classify initiatives into four types and scored changes in the decision context using three frameworks: (1) the values, rules and knowledge (VRK) perspective to identify changes to adaptation decision‐making; (2) the five dimensions of futures consciousness to identify the building of adaptation capabilities and (3) the social learning cycle to reveal evidence of reflexive learning. Initiatives using novel governance arrangements for discrete problems (‘problem governance’) or complex, systemic issues (‘systems governance’) scored highest for influences of VRK, futures consciousness and the social learning cycle on the decision context. Initiatives using existing management for discrete problems (‘problem management’) scored moderately for change in the decision context, while those using existing management for systemic issues (‘systems management’) scored low because change was often impeded by existing rules. All three frameworks influenced decision contexts in systems governance initiatives. Problem governance initiatives revealed interactions of VRK and futures consciousness but limited influence of VRK on the social learning cycle. Scope and governance arrangements differ with the adaptation issue and initiatives adapt over time: some small‐scale ones became more systemic, developed novel governance arrangements and changed the decision context. Our findings do not show that some adaptation initiatives are better or more transformative than others; just that their scope and appropriate governance arrangements are different. This questions the notion that successful adaptation requires building generic transformative adaptation approaches and capabilities. There is a diversity of arrangements that work. What is important is to align the approach to the adaptation problem. We suggest two directions for improving adaptation initiatives: first, by influencing how they can shift between problem and systems focus and between standard management and novel governance, and secondly, by using methods to diagnose and direct change in the decision context. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Few studies have examined transnational actors involved in global adaptation governance, despite their growing influence. This paper focuses on 100 Resilient Cities (100RC), a transnational municipal network (TMN) that has created governance instruments with potential for contributing to global adaptation governance. Despite their different nature from international actors (states and intergovernmental organizations), the distinct practices of TMNs and how they might influence global adaptation governance are uncertain. Vague claims suggest that TMNs are innovative, but what this innovation consists of remains unclear. Therefore, the research question here is: how do TMNs innovate in global adaptation governance? This paper strives to answer this question, by building an analytical framework to identify types and features of governance instruments, based on the literature on policy instruments, global environmental governance and global climate governance. It presents a case study of 100RC, based on an in-depth documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews. The results suggest that TMNs can be innovative, if they, like 100RC, create original governance instruments instead of using the existing tools of international or other transnational actors. While some of 100RC’s tools favour a more recent, soft and indirect approach, its considerable use of hard practices with significant obligation is particularly interesting considering the general characterization of TMNs as voluntary and soft. The governance practices of 100RC are thus not in stark contrast with those of international actors. Their diversity could provide inspiration for future action to improve the effectiveness of global climate adaptation governance, and the analytical framework developed here could be applied in further studies.