Articulations and enactments of climate adaptation citizenship: how citizens in small remote communities in the Nordics engage with climate change-related hazards

The article examines how people in small, remote communities across the Nordic region respond to climate-related hazards and introduces the concept of climate adaptation citizenship. This concept is built around three dimensions: awareness, action, and political engagement. Based on five case studies in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and the Faroe Islands, the study finds that citizens are often aware of changing local weather conditions and hazard risks, but they do not always explicitly connect these changes to global climate change. Instead, adaptation is mainly grounded in lived experience, attachment to place, and concern for protecting homes, livelihoods, and communities.

The study shows that climate adaptation citizenship is most commonly expressed through practical everyday actions such as monitoring weather, maintaining property and infrastructure, and helping neighbors, rather than through formal climate activism. Political engagement also tends to be local and place-protective, such as advocating for better flood or landslide protection, rather than participation in broader climate movements. Overall, the paper argues that adaptation citizenship differs from mitigation-oriented climate citizenship because it is more local, practice-based, and tied to immediate hazards, while still having the potential to contribute to broader transformative climate adaptation.