As the impacts of climate change become more severe, coastal communities are required to prepare plans for adaptation to the invasive environmental changes. A well-prepared adaptation plan can effectively reduce the overall risks of coastal communities. However, a plan is not the final solution for the climate change on coastal communities. How to take the plan into action and implement it in the local communities and find the opportunities for the enhanced preparedness and development of coastal communities is the primary consideration of this thesis research. Many organizations are engaged in developing adaptation tools and guidebooks. For completing their adaptation plans, communities need to develop clear, operational, action plans, and discover the opportunities to enhance the sustainability of coastal communities. To make coastal communities more sustainable in the face of the changing climate, the public’s attention and community participation is critical. The purpose of this study is to develop an adaptation framework and action plan process system for coastal communities and at the same time, provide the general public with an enhanced opportunity to contribute their understanding about what is being done for their costal community around them and how to react when an event happens. The research is applied to the coastal communities of Richmond County, Cape Breton, Canada as a case study. The result of the work develops an adaptation “Action Plan” website for Richmond County. The website features the development, application, and simulation of a mobile communication “Action plan” application designed and implemented with the action website along to provide coastal community with communication options that exploit the local community network and enhance the community’s capacity for climate change adaptation. The emergency response community mobile app and the accompanying website are models for other communities especially those that from the coastal communities in Canada and the Caribbean as part of the C-Change ICURA project to which this research is affiliated.

Urban populations worldwide are expanding rapidly and consequently a large number of people are becoming exposed to hazards inherent in cites. Phenomena such as the urban heat island can exacerbate the effects of heatwaves, and land surface sealing can lead to flash flooding. Cities are also the sites of enhanced air and water pollution from non-point sources such as concentrated motor vehicle use. Climate change predictions for the UK include increased winter precipitation and an increase in frequency of summer heatwaves. This will put further pressure on urban residents and infrastructure. Roof greening can be used within climate change adaptation schemes because green roofs have a range of environmental benefits which can help urban infrastructure become more sustainable. This thesis empirically quantifies several of these benefits, and the processes influencing them, by monitoring real green roofs in Manchester. A number of novel discoveries were made. Green roofs act as passive filters of airborne particulate matter. 0.21 tonnes of PM10 (2.3% of the inputs) could be removed from Manchester city centre in a maximum extensive green roof scenario. Species and site differences in particle capture were exhibited and related to morphology and proximity to sources respectively. An intensive green roof was able to lower the monthly median overlying air temperature at 300 mm by up to 1.06 oC. A combination of drought and mismanagement caused damage to the vegetation on one of the green roofs, with a subsequent reduction in the cooling effect. Daytime air temperatures were higher than over an adjacent bare roof for a larger proportion of the day than over the undamaged roof, and lower cooling was observed at night. A site-specific methodology was devised to monitor the rainwater runoff from an intensive green roof and an adjacent bare roof. Average runoff retention of 65.7% was observed on the green roof, compared to 33.6% on the bare roof. Season and rainfall amount had significant impacts on retention, however, many other explanatory variables such as Antecedent Dry Weather Period (ADWP) and peak rainfall intensity had no demonstrable, significant impact. Intensive roof construction on 10% of the rooftops in Manchester city centre would increase annual rainfall retention by 2.3%. The runoff was characterised with regards to heavy metals and nutrients. Nutrient levels were found to be not a significant problem for water quality, however, Environmental Quality Standards (EQS) values for protection of freshwater were exceeded for concentrations of Cu, Pb and Zn. High metal concentrations within the sediments may be acting as sources of pollution, particularly in the case of Pb. The age of the green roof means that past atmospheric deposition of Pb could be contributing to the runoff quality. The multi-benefit aspect of green roofs is discussed in the light of the results of this thesis and recommendations made for policy makers and the green roof construction industry.

This thesis focuses on exploring the concept of managed realignment as a potential climate change adaptation strategy in Sweden. The empirics is based on the qualitative case study research within three Swedish municipalities of Trelleborg, Halmstad and Karlstad. The concept of territorial governance was used as the analysis framework for the empirical data. The aim of this thesis is to contribute to further research on managed realignment in Sweden, point out on current constraints and potentials of managed realignment within Swedish context and the current needs for making it a potential climate adaptation strategy in Sweden.

Social-ecological change has driven smallholder farmers throughout the world to employ a diverse array of adaptation strategies. Social, economic, and cultural factors along with environmental changes have been widely studied as determinants of adaptation decision-making. Increasingly, scholars are also examining the role of values in these decisions. Many have posited that adaptation to social-ecological change will necessitate tradeoffs of these values; however, little empirical work has been done to identify and examine these tradeoffs. In response to this gap, we first identify how farmers and fishers adapted to multiple social-ecological stressors in northwestern Pakistan. Second, we investigate how social-ecological factors, perceived changes, and perceived costs influence adaptation decision-making and adaptive capacity. Third, we examine the role of and tradeoffs between values in adaptation decision-making. Based on our findings, we posit that in addition to the identification of values, it is also necessary to examine values as they relate to one another, change over time, and are embedded in multi-scalar processes. This will allow us to more fully understand the factors that influence adaptation decisions and support more equitable strategies that align with stakeholders’ diverse values.

In this thesis, I conduct a global event-data study investigating the relationship between exposure to natural hazards and climate change adaptation. Exposure to natural hazards has previously been linked to actions aimed at reducing risks related to future natural hazards. With climate change, and predicted increase in hazard frequency and intensity, a feasible approach to risk mitigation is climate change adaptation, which can thus be considered a disaster risk reduction strategy. I investigate the effects of disaster frequency and severity on the amount of climate change adaptation actions taken on a subnational level of government, using disaster data from the International Disaster Database (EM-DAT) and data on adaptation actions from CDP. Disaster severity is operationalised in three separate ways to distinguish between different kinds of disaster impacts: in terms of (1) economic damage, (2) how many are affected, and (3) fatalities. I hypothesise that all independent variables are positively related to climate change adaptation, and test the hypotheses using OLS regression. The result depicts a positive correlation between the number of disasters experienced and adaptation actions. I do not see a positive relationship between climate change adaptation actions and the two impact variables total affected and total fatalities. The relationship between economic damages and adaptation actions indicates that economic damages could have different impacts depending on the level of economic development in a country. This study contributes to the integration of the two research fields climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction by studying climate change adaptation as a form of disaster risk reduction, and deepening the knowledge of what can drive adaptation. Finally, this study contributes by showing that the level of economic development could be an important aspect of the exposure-adaptation relationship.

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This study has intended to demonstrate the effects of categorising climate change as a developmental issue rather than a security issue on the conflict in Darfur. This was achieved by studying the following research questions: (I) What is the role of climate change adaptation in developmental work in Darfur? (II) What is the role of climate change adaptation in security work in Darfur? (III) How is the work on climate change adaptation connected to the course of the conflict? These questions have been answered by collecting material relating to development and security in Darfur. This material was then analysed with the help of models by McGray et al., Barnett et al. and Matthews to identify the work that has been done with climate change adaptation in the two areas. This showed that the developmental work mainly focused locally on drivers of vulnerability and that the security work did not regard climate change up until 2016. The merely local approach by development work and the lacking attention to climate change in the missions caused a lacking national plan, a lacking disaster risk programme, no focus on land tenure rights, a wrong attitude towards conflict reconciliation, and an incomplete approach to vulnerability. These missing points of integration were all found to have negatively impacted peace consolidation, which has allowed for violent communal outbreaks to continue.

The ambition of this thesis is to fulfill two aims. The first aim is theory development, by presenting a theoretical framework where climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) are combined. The second aim is empirical, where the theoretical framework is used to analyze an example of DRR with an ambition to include CCA. An integrated approach is beneficial for the achievement of sustainable development and for strengthening resilience to hazards (Schipper 2009; Mitchell et al 2010). However, the two fields largely operate in separate which can cause reversed development outcomes and hamper the overall objectives of both DRR and CCA. The ambition of this thesis is hence to investigate to what extent the approach is used within humanitarian aid organizations today, with a specific focus on the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). The method used is a qualitative content analysis of the “Integrated Flood Resilience Programme” in Bangladesh (IFRP) conducted by the IFRC. The main finding of the study suggests a surprising progress of including CCA and climate change as components within DRR. However, there are still core aspects of an integrated approach missing in the project. For instance, there is no inclusion of an environmental risk assessment or alignment with climate frameworks, except for parts of the Sustainable Development Goals. Moreover, the efforts associated with CCA are perceived unspecific in comparison to other parts of the project. This thesis therefore reaffirms some of the conclusions made by other scholars (e.g. Mitchell et al 2010; Schipper 2009: Thomalla et al 2006; Hammond 2017), implying that DRR and CCA still mostly operate separately.

Flooding is already an issue that occurs from time to time. With climate changes the frequency of floods that occur due to heavy rainfall will most likely increase. Sweden is no exception and cities in Sweden have been victims of heavy rainfall events and floods. This leads to a need of climate change adaptation in municipalities. The municipalities in Sweden have monopoly on planning and are therefore utterly responsible to plan and adapt to climate changes. Planning can both be to prevent flooding from occurring but also to adapt the municipality to floods, in other words, when a flooding occur the consequences and damage will be minimized. The method used in this research was literature review. The research studied municipalities responsibilities connected to the flooding issue but also advice and recommendations from other authorities, as well as what measures municipalities can take to avoid flooding or minimize the consequences. The research also includes a short case study of Umeå municipality to study their work on the issue. The results mainly show that it is important to plan for flooding early in the planning process. However, the continuously work in every stage in the planning process to adapt to flooding or minimize the consequences of them is important. This research showed that it is a lack of adaptation for flooding in Umeå municipality.

One of the biggest upcoming challenges to the international community is the problem of a changing climate. The earth’s surface temperature is rising and associated impacts on physical and biological systems are increasingly being observed. Science tells us that climate change will bring about gradual changes, such as sea level rise, and shifts of climate zones due to increased temperatures and changes in precipitation patterns. A changing climate affects the entire world but will strike hardest against the poorest as they are the ones most dependent on agriculture which is a sector that is very vulnerable to changes in temperature and precipitation patterns. One region that will be especially vulnerable and has experienced the problems of shifting climate zones before is the Sahel region that borders to the south end of the Sahara desert where problems of desertification have occurred before. This region will in large extent be affected if the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) predictions of a rising temperature will become a reality. This is one of the reasons why I have chosen Burkina Faso, situated in the south end of the Sahel region, as the objective for my MFS. The question of rising temperatures will be especially important here as the region is very sensitive to differences in temperature. A crucial topic in this part of the world as well as the topic of this study is the process of adapting to the new climatic situation.