Public participation, engagement, and climate change adaptation: A review of the research literature

Stephan Hügel; Anna R. Davies

doi:10.1002/wcc.645

journal article Open Access Mar 27, 2020

Public participation, engagement, and climate change adaptation: A review of the research literature

Stephan Hügel

Anna R. Davies

WIREs Climate Change Vol. 11 No. 4 · Wiley

View at Publisher Save 10.1002/wcc.645

Abstract

AbstractThere is a clear need for a state‐of‐the‐art review of how public participation in climate change adaptation is being considered in research across academic communities: The Rio Declaration developed in 1992 at the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) included explicit goals of citizen participation and engagement in climate actions (Principle 10). Nation states were given special responsibility to facilitate these by ensuring access to information and opportunities to participate in decision‐making processes. Since then the need for public participation has featured prominently in calls to climate action. Using text analysis to produce a corpus of abstracts drawn from Web of Science, a review of literature incorporating public participation and citizen engagement in climate change adaptation since 1992 reveals lexical, temporal, and spatial distribution dynamics of research on the topic. An exponential rise in research effort since the year 2000 is demonstrated, with the focus of research action on three substantial themes—risk, flood risk, and risk assessment, perception, and communication. These are critically reviewed and three substantive issues are considered: the paradox of participation, the challenge of governance transformation, and the need to incorporate psycho‐social and behavioral adaptation to climate change in policy processes. Gaps in current research include a lack of common understanding of public participation for climate adaptation across disciplines; incomplete articulation of processes involving public participation and citizen engagement; and a paucity of empirical research examining how understanding and usage of influential concepts of risk, vulnerability and adaptive capacity varies among different disciplines and stakeholders. Finally, a provisional research agenda for attending to these gaps is described.This article is categorized under:
Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change > Institutions for Adaptation
Policy and Governance > Governing Climate Change in Communities, Cities, and Regions

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Details

Published: Mar 27, 2020
Vol/Issue: 11(4)
License: View

Authors

S

Stephan Hügel

Department of Geography Trinity College Dublin Dublin 2 Ireland

A

Anna R. Davies

Department of Geography Trinity College Dublin Dublin 2 Ireland

Funding

Horizon 2020 Framework Programme Award: 713567

Science Foundation Ireland Award: 13/RC/2077

Cite This Article

Stephan Hügel, Anna R. Davies (2020). Public participation, engagement, and climate change adaptation: A review of the research literature. WIREs Climate Change, 11(4). https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.645

Public participation, engagement, and climate change adaptation: A review of the research literature

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