Enabling democratic shifts through climate adaptation: the climate adaptation democracy framework

What the paper says

Climate change adaptation has consequences for democratic life. Climate change, a defining political challenge of our time, is unfolding amid growing pressure on democratic societies. This is marked, for example, by social fragmentation, institutional instability and rising anti-science sentiment, which, in turn, make more difficult the aims of inclusive, equitable, and evidence-based climate policy. Whereas the social, cultural, economic and environmental consequences of climate change policy are recognized, the consequences of adaptation planning and action for political practice, and for democratic life in particular, are not yet systematically accounted for. Considerable work focuses on how democratic institutions frame and enable climate adaptation, including work on political economy and participatory processes. This paper flips the question to ask: how might climate adaptation policy and its delivery, support or hinder democratic practice? The aim is to open research and action for the intentional strengthening of democratic practice through adaptation. Building on a systematic literature review inspired by the PRISMA method we derive a novel evaluative framework to bring structure to this agenda. The Climate Adaptation Democracy (CAD) Framework. The review sits within a macro structure of established traditions of democratic thought – deliberative, procedural and radical traditions – that bound a consideration of democratic practice. Three design workshops with academic experts and policy partners then determined the range of themes, limits and high-level qualities of the Framework to maximize its generality. The resulting CAD Framework offers twelve ‘qualities’ of democratic practice. These are entry points to facilitate policy actor reflection. We offer three vehicles for the active consideration of the consequences of adaptation for local democratic practice: stocktake review, project deep dive, and pathway mapping. By suggesting methods for deployment in addition to establishing an analytical framework for evaluation, the aim is to establish the consequences of adaptation for democracy as a specific area of study and practice.