Beyond hazards and sectors: governing systemic climate risks

The report uses an exploratory comparative analysis of adaptation governance across selected countries and US states to examine both the recognition of systemic risks (i.e. how these are framed in strategies and assessments), and how systemic thinking is put into action (i.e. the extent to which it is embedded in mandates and funding streams, and in appraisal, monitoring, and accountability). Evidence is drawn from a desk-based review of regional, national and subnational strategies and closely related resilience frameworks; a short expert survey covering multiple regions; and semi-structured interviews with adaptation coordinators and policy specialists across levels of governance.

Key messages include, among others:

• Adaptation policies increasingly talk about interconnected and systemic climate risks, but far fewer act on them through mandates, budgets, appraisal rules, delivery systems, and accountability.
• In the reviewed cases, the main implementation gap is not a lack of recognition of climate risk, but weak operational routines that still default to hazard- and sector-based approaches.
• Systemic climate risks emerge through interactions between sectors, infrastructure networks, ecosystems, and social vulnerabilities – meaning progress in one area can unintentionally create risks elsewhere.
• Managing deep uncertainty may call for moving beyond “predict-then-act” planning towards iterative approaches that remain robust across a range of futures, including tail risks and non-linear change – a lesson suggested by the cases examined in this report.
• Policy coherence remains a bottleneck: competing objectives across portfolios are often left unresolved, and co-benefits are frequently neglected because coordination and incentives are not designed to capture them.