Cross-boundary policy entrepreneurship for climate-smart agriculture in Kenya

Many initiatives to address contemporary complex challenges require the crossing of sector, domain, and level boundaries, which policy entrepreneurs are believed to facilitate. This study aims to enhance our understanding of how, why, and with what effect such entrepreneurs operate to cross boundaries. As this requires an account of both entrepreneurial strategy and the surrounding policy environment, we embed entrepreneurship in the policy frameworks of multiple streams, advocacy coalitions, and punctuated equilibrium. We use qualitative methods to analyse policy development for climate-smart agriculture (CSA) in Kenya. CSA is a cross-cutting strategy to sustainably increase agricultural productivity, resilience, and food security while curtailing greenhouse gas emissions. Our results demonstrate that policy entrepreneurs target varying ideas, interests, and institutions across boundaries in order to establish cross-boundary linkages, but this requires additional resources including connections, funding, and time. Simultaneously, this process offers opportunities, for instance, regarding choice of audience and potential resources to tap. Cross-boundary entrepreneurial strategies include venue shopping to soften up communities; framing CSA in multiple ways to address different audiences; demonstrating brokerage between coalitions through impartial leadership and creating a neutral institutional setting; and process manipulation to bypass complexities arising from the scattered policy environment. Although entrepreneurs managed to realize the adoption of a Kenya CSA strategy, the process displays limited changes in policymakers’ ideas; the policy remains the main responsibility of the agriculture ministry alone and receives limited support from local authorities. This raises questions regarding the cross-boundary nature and implementability of this strategy

A policy mixes approach to conceptualizing and measuring climate change adaptation policy

Comparative research on climate change adaptation policy struggles with robust conceptualization and measurement of adaptation policy. Using a policy mixes approach to address this challenge, we characterize adaptation policy based on a general model of how governments govern issues of societal interest. We argue that this approach allows for context-sensitive measurement of adaptation policy, while being both comparable and parsimonious. This approach is tested in a study of adaptation policies adopted by 125 local governments located in Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK. Using a systematic data collection protocol, a total of 3328 adaptation policies were identified from local council archives between the periods of January 2010 and May 2017. Results of this analysis suggest that there is structured variation emerging in how local governments govern climate change adaptation, which justifies calls for comparative adaptation research to use measurements that capture the totality of adaptation policies being adopted by governments rather than focusing on specific types of adaptation policy. We conclude with a discussion of key issues for further developing of this approach

Attitude control analysis of tethered de-orbiting

The increase of satellites and rocket upper stages in low earth orbit (LEO) has also increased substantially the danger of collisions in space. Studies have shown that the problem will continue to grow unless a number of debris are removed every year. A typical active debris removal (ADR) mission scenario includes launching an active spacecraft (chaser) which will rendezvous with the inactive target (debris), capture the debris and eventually deorbit both satellites. Many concepts for the capture of the debris while keeping a connection via a tether, between the target and chaser have been investigated, including harpoons, nets, grapples and robotic arms. The paper provides an analysis on the attitude control behaviour for a tethered de-orbiting mission based on the ESA e.Deorbit reference mission, where Envisat is the debris target to be captured by a chaser using a net which is connected to the chaser with a tether. The paper provides novel insight on the feasibility of tethered de-orbiting for the various mission phases such as stabilization after capture, de-orbit burn (plus stabilization), stabilization during atmospheric pass, highlighting the importance of various critical mission parameters such as the tether material. It is shown that the selection of the appropriate tether material while using simple controllers can reduce the effort needed for tethered deorbiting and can safely control the attitude of the debris/chaser connected with a tether, without the danger of a collision

Enabling local public health adaptation to climate change

Local public health authorities often lack the capacity to adapt to climate change, despite being on the ‘front lines’ of climate impacts. Upper-level governments are well positioned to create an enabling environment for adaptation and build local public health authorities' capacity, yet adaptation literature has not specified how upper-level governments can build local-level adaptive capacity. In this paper we examine how federal and regional governments can contribute to enabling and supporting public health adaptation to climate change at the local level in federal systems. We outline the local level's self-assessed adaptive capacity for public health adaptation in Canadian and German comparative case studies, in terms of funding, knowledge and skills, organizations, and prioritization, drawing upon 30 semi-structured interviews. Based on interviewees' recommendations and complemented by scientific literature, we develop a set of practical measures that could enable or support local-level public health adaptation. We find that adaptive capacity varies widely between local public health authorities, but most report having insufficient funding and staff for adaptation activities. We propose 10 specific measures upper-level governments can take to build local public health authorities' capacity for adaptation, under the interrelated target areas of: building financial capital; developing and disseminating usable knowledge; collaborating and coordinating for shared knowledge; and claiming leadership. Federal and regional governments have an important role to play in enabling local-level public health adaptation, and have many instruments available to them to fulfill that role. Selecting and implementing measures to enable local public health authorities' adaptive capacity will require tailoring to, and consideration, of the local context and needs

Wildfire adaptation in the Russian Arctic: A systematic policy review

A scientific consensus acknowledges that climate change has increased wildfire activity in the Russian Arctic, a trend projected to continue in response to further warming. Regional governments across Russia have started to design and develop adaptation policies and plans (i.e. outputs) to this end. Our comprehensive understanding on the state of wildfire adaptation in policy is limited. In this article we systematically review policies and plans developed to adapt to wildfires in the Russian Arctic. Using systematic approaches, we identify 12 wildfire adaptation outputs adopted between 2008 and 2020. Our findings indicate that wildfire adaptation outputs are aimed at reducing the risk of wildfires and improve wildland fire response, implemented through legislative and regulatory mechanisms, developed at the regional level, adopted in response to national mandates, and mainstreamed into existing forest management policies. Although there is evidence of wildfire adaptation planning occurring in the Russian Arctic, we find that the nature and extent of wildfire adaptation outputs are not sufficient to address the seriousness and severity of climate change, with key shortcomings found in relation to the scientific, human, and management characteristics. We argue that expanding the profile of climate change research in the Russian Arctic and improving the dialogue among researchers, local and Indigenous peoples, and decision-makers are critical for providing useful recommendations for policy makers to accelerate wildfire adaptation in the Russian Arctic

What does the Paris Agreement mean for adaptation?

The Paris Agreement takes a significant step forward in strengthening the adaptation pillar of global climate policy. By widening the normative framing around adaptation, calling for stronger adaptation commitments from states, being explicit about the multilevel nature of adaptation governance, and outlining stronger transparency mechanisms for assessing adaptation progress, the Agreement is a milestone in ongoing efforts to make adaptation an equal priority with mitigation. Significant work remains to be done, however, to clarify how the long-term goal for adaptation set out in Article 7 will be meaningfully realized. The challenge for Parties in implementing the Paris Agreement will be to establish credible commitments from state and non-state actors with regard to adaptation planning, implementation, and financing

Frontiers in data analytics for adaptation research: Topic modeling

Rapid growth over the past two decades in digitized textual information represents untapped potential for methodological innovations in the adaptation governance literature that draw on machine learning approaches already being applied in other areas of computational social sciences. This Focus Article explores the potential for text mining techniques, specifically topic modeling, to leverage this data for large‐scale analysis of the content of adaptation policy documents. We provide an overview of the assumptions and procedures that underlie the use of topic modeling, and discuss key areas in the adaptation governance literature where topic modeling could provide valuable insights. We demonstrate the diversity of potential applications for topic modeling with two examples that examine: (a) how adaptation is being talked about by political leaders in United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change; and (b) how adaptation is being discussed by decision‐makers and public administrators in Canadian municipalities using documents collected from 25 city council archives. This article is categorized under: Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change > Institutions for Adaptatio

Climate change adaptation and cross-sectoral policy coherence in southern Africa

To be effective, climate change adaptation needs to be mainstreamed across multiple sectors and greater policy coherence is essential. Using the cases of Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia, this paper investigates the extent of coherence in national policies across the water and agriculture sectors and to climate change adaptation goals outlined in national development plans. A two-pronged qualitative approach is applied using Qualitative Document Analysis of relevant policies and plans, combined with expert interviews from non-government actors in each country. Findings show that sector policies have differing degrees of coherence on climate change adaptation, currently being strongest in Zambia and weakest in Tanzania. We also identify that sectoral policies remain more coherent in addressing immediate-term disaster management issues of floods and droughts rather than longer-term strategies for climate adaptation. Coherence between sector and climate policies and strategies is strongest when the latter has been more recently developed. However to date, this has largely been achieved by repackaging of existing sectoral policy statements into climate policies drafted by external consultants to meet international reporting needs and not by the establishment of new connections between national sectoral planning processes. For more effective mainstreaming of climate change adaptation, governments need to actively embrace longer-term cross-sectoral planning through cross-Ministerial structures, such as initiated through Zambia’s Interim Climate Change Secretariat, to foster greater policy coherence and integrated adaptation planning