Science‐policy linkages in climate change adaptation in Europe Open Access

As both mitigation and adaptation responses to climate change receive mounting global attention, discussions on the role of information in decision making are becoming both increasingly important and relevant. The unprecedented nature of human impacts on the global and local environment has increased the need for effective environmental policies, while an increase in the anticipated rate of climate change impacts requires such policies to be developed with ever greater haste. Policy makers now face the task of allocating ever‐scarcer resources towards the development of adaptation plans and programmes, raising questions as to the importance of accurate and precise information on future climate impacts and vulnerabilities in environmental, social and economic decision making. The complexity of decision‐making structures of multiple scales of governance in different countries presents an additional challenge, in that policies and actions at national or international levels invariably affect the capacities of local governments to act on adaptation. As the majority of climate adaptation research and policy occurs on national scales, local governments are not only often dependent on financial resources, but for information on changes in climate and relevant policy as well.

This paper draws on theoretical frameworks of science and policy linkages and existing knowledge from the climate change adaptation research community in order to explore the linkages between climate change research and the processes of adaptation decision‐making at broad to local scales of government. The paper assesses the extent of climate adaptation science, activities and awareness at multiple scales of governance in two case study countries of Finland and Italy. The two countries represent an interesting contrast in terms of the extent and approach to national adaptation policies and the structure that climate impact and adaptation research has taken. At the national scale, Finland is characterised by collaborative decision‐making structures and was among the first industrialised countries to adopt a National Adaptation Strategy, while Italy remains in the initial stages of national climate adaptation policy development. By contrasting the two cases, the paper identifies the similarities in how climate science has been approached and applied, and provides insight into the complexity of the nature of climate science and policy linkages at multiple scales of governance.

As climate change becomes accepted in both scientific and political sphere, policy‐makers across scales and sectors are faced with designing and implementing adaptation measures that ensure current planning activities account for changes in climate (in the context of other changes) using existing information and the best available estimates of future change. This need creates a challenge of ensuring climate scenarios and other relevant information reaches decision makers, but also raises questions about the role and importance of information in the decision‐making process. As such, much of current climate adaptation research has begun to shift away from the quantification of climate impacts and typologies of adaptation to attempt at understanding processes of adaptation, in order to identify means for ensuring effective adaptation measures are implemented (Schipper, 2007; Challinor, 2008).

Much of this work has focused on the quality of climate scenarios and projection of future change. Access to information on what to adapt and how to adapt is widely considered as an important prerequisite for the design of successful planned adaptations and to avoid implementing inappropriate measures, or maladaptation (Klein et al., 1999; Lim and Spanger‐Siegrfried, 2005; Füssel and Klein, 2006; Kropp and Scholze, 2009). As a result, extensive efforts have been put into improving the accuracy, temporality and resolution of climate scenarios. As in rational science‐policy approaches, the assumption behind such efforts is that decision makers require accurate knowledge of the future climate and its impacts to make appropriate decisions for the scale or sector in which the decision is being made. For example, accurate information on the rate of change of sea level rise would be considered essential for the design of lowest cost infrastructure to combat coastal erosion to be effective in the long‐term.

A related body of scholarship in climate adaptation has focused less on the nature of climate information itself and more on the extent to which climate information reaches the decision makers who require or request it. This work seeks to identify barriers that prevent information from being effectively disseminated or used, and to assess whether this information is what is required for decisions to be made. Work in the agricultural context has identified appropriate institutional and social conditions as important for seasonal precipitation forecasts to be of use to southern African farmers (Patt and Gwata, 2002). A more recent study by Ziervogel et al. (2008) stressed the need to bridge the gap between information providers and users in order for farmers to effectively access agricultural adaptations. In these fields of work, attempts to address uncertainty are made by making climate scenarios more relevant and ensuring that the information that decision makers requires is represented in the models (Challinor, 2008). In this work, coordinating institutions between information producers and users such as the often‐cited United Kingdom Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) have come to represent an important format for ensuring the linkage between science and policy spheres.

However, the high degree of uncertainty inherent in climate projections renders the achievement of accuracy in seasonal or longer term forecasts considerably difficult. Dessai and Hulme (2004) identify three types of uncertainty applicable within the context of climate change: epistemic (related to the incomplete knowledge of climate‐related variables and processes); natural stochastic (related to the chaotic nature of the climate system); and human reflexive (related to the part human behaviour plays in the climate change problem). For example, in a recent paper by Gawith et al. (2009) it was determined that despite the provision of high quality climate projections, decision makers in the UK encountered considerable implementation difficulties, as the extent of uncertainty was too high for decisions to be made confidently.

Issues of uncertainty in climate projections are increasingly being addressed by examining the perception of uncertainty in individuals (Patt, 2007), stressing the importance of communication of uncertainty to users of climate information (Webster, 2003; Patt and Dessai, 2005; Challinor, 2008), or applying frameworks that allow for decision making regardless of uncertainty. Much of this last body of work is based on the premise that uncertainty can never be fully characterised and therefore cannot be used as an justification for inaction (Dessai et al., 2007), and draws on models of robust decision making that use flexible and adaptive structures for a range of possible futures (Walters and Hilborn, 1978; Lempert and Schlesinger, 2000). Inherent in this approach is also the understanding that adaptation measures are not limited to technological or infrastructural measures, but also strategies for managing resources and sectors. Instead of overcoming uncertainty by striving for higher precision (i.e. higher spatial and temporal resolution) and accuracy (i.e. more realistic interpretations of reality), this approach accepts uncertainty as an inherent part of decision making that pertains not only to climate change, but to most social and environmental phenomena (Dessai et al., 2009).

Beyond the effective management of uncertainty, stakeholder engagement has been further noted as an important prerequisite to ensure climate information is relevant to users, and that local needs and knowledges are incorporated into adaptation decisions. A study on the process of vulnerability assessment in Norwegian municipalities revealed that while global climate models were important for bringing attention to the climate change issue, local responses required local actor engagement and locally specific data (Næss et al., 2006). This highlights a commonly perceived “misfit” between the information that is provided to users (i.e. decision makers) and the information that these users actually require (Hallegate, 2009). Næss et al. concluded that local authorities could benefit from their appointment as key authorities in vulnerability assessment in order to create an optimal fit between the information that was being supplied and the response by the municipal system itself. In their study of the UKCIP 2002 scenarios, Gawith et al. (2009) additionally found that the positive reception of the material by users was partly the result of the well‐structured, understandable and engaging means of its presentation. Thus, climate information providers are compelled to become increasingly sensitive to the kinds of information decision makers require, as well as to the format and delivery of information that is most usable to decision makers (Moss, 2007).

A final relevant issue of concern is that of capacity. While communicators of information are charged with providing appropriate information and ensuring this information reaches those who need it, decision makers themselves may face constraints in their ability to interpret and use the information, raising important issue of equity in adaptive capacity. Beyond access to information, an awareness of the climate change issue forms an important prerequisite for climate information to be incorporated into decision making. As with information provision, awareness‐raising is often a primary component of government‐led climate adaptation planning, occasionally coupled with the release of climate data, in order to increase citizen engagement and support for climate measures (Tompkins and Adger, 2005; West and Gawith, 2005). The importance of citizen support for climate change measures has been addressed by several authors in terms of the problem of risk perception as it relates to public willingness to address climate change, particularly in reference to mitigation measures (O'Connor et al., 1999; Lorenzoni and Hulme, 2009). Other facets of capacity in this context include such elements as the existence of climate information reception points (local environment officers, as in Næss et al., 2006), adequate scientific or technical expertise to interpret the information, flexible institutions to incorporate the information into decision‐making processes, and the legal authority to implement the decisions themselves (Yohe and Tol, 2002; Næss et al., 2006; Smit and Wandel, 2006).

The above review of the literature of adaptation science and policy demonstrates that thus far, much of the work within the field has taken a largely rationalist approach to adaptation needs and capacities. However, those approaches that introduce flexible decision‐making processes and broader conceptualisations of capacity have begun to acknowledge the complex and non‐linear relationship between climate science and adaptation decision‐making. In this paper, we draw upon both approaches to science‐policy linkages to assess the current state of climate science in both Italy and Finland, and the extent to which it is linked to adaptation policy‐making at national and select sub‐national scales. To assess how climate science and policy linkages have affected the level of adaptation measures in each country, we pose three sets of questions:

Q1. What is the extent of climate change science in each country?

Q2. How is climate knowledge disseminated and used in policy making?

Q3. What is the extent of climate change awareness and capacity to use climate information at sub‐national scales?

The first question is derived from the assumption that climate information is an important prerequisite to effective and successful planned adaptations, and so seeks to assess the extent of climate change research and emissions, impacts and vulnerability scenario development. This question addresses both the processes of climate information in terms of the aims and responsible bodies for its production, as well as a general overview of the kinds of data produced. The second question moves from the nature of the climate data itself to the ways in which climate information is presented and made available for use, both at the national and sub‐national scales. In these first two questions, the examinations of the processes of data production and dissemination provide insight into the extent to which the domains of science and policy in climate adaptation are linked. Through the third question, we identify the extent to which climate information is being, or has the potential to be, used at sub‐national scales of government through an assessment of the existing capacities within select sub‐national case study areas. To answer this question, we draw on conceptualisations of adaptive capacity that define it as the broad set of broad to local resources, structures and conditions that affect a system's ability to adapt (Yohe and Tol, 2002; Smit and Wandel, 2006), examples of which are provided in the preceding section.

The results of this paper are based on case study work completed in the early months of 2009 as a part of a larger multi‐scalar project aimed at assessing the capacity of four European countries to climate change: Sweden, Italy, Finland and the UK. Sub‐national case study locations were selected based on their demonstrated political interest in climate change adaptation or mitigation issues, and on a “nestedness” criterion that allowed for an examination of the interrelationships between scales. As a result of this selection, case studies are among the most progressive regions and municipalities on climate change adaptation, and provide an opportunity to examine the presence or absence of science‐policy linkages that have facilitated or constrained adaptation policy and other actions. Within the original range of countries, Finland and Italy offer an interesting contrast in terms of the way adaptation has been approached, both in terms of their respective forms of climate science and policy, and the extent of activity at different political scales. The details of the case study locations are presented in Table I.

Data were collected via two principal sources. A review of relevant documents was first conducted in order to determine key political regions, ministries and actors within the adaptation sphere. Documents included specific adaptation policies and strategies (e.g. the Finnish National Adaptation Strategy), as well as relevant policies (e.g. regional water plans), publications and non‐governmental reports. A total of 23 interviews in Italy and 21 interviews in Finland were conducted with climate change and environmental policy actors at each scale of administration, including policy makers, advisors, researchers and where pertinent, representatives of non‐governmental organisations.

Environmental policy‐making has always had close ties with science in Finland, a pattern that can also be seen in climate change research, a field characterised by research collaborations between universities and public research organisations that work under different Ministries. Climate and weather‐related observations were first collected in the late seventeenth century, with more consistent data are available from 1846 (Tuomenvirta, 2004). Climate change was first discussed in a workshop and published by Finnish Academy of Science in 1985 (Valtion luonnontieteellinen toimikunta, 1985). Funded by the Academy of Finland, the Finnish Programme on Climate Change (SILMU) was the first climate change programme and took a multidisciplinary approach in bringing together over 200 researchers in 80 research projects including seven universities and 11 research organisations (Finnish Environment Institute, 2008). Climate research continued in the Finnish Global Change Research Programme (FIGARE) between 1999 and 2002, jointly funded by the Finnish Academy and Government Ministries. FigARE continued the tradition of multidisciplinarity by including both natural and social sciences in its research projects.

In both projects, the production of climate data has been characterised by heavy reliance on expert/scientific knowledge and an emphasis on the natural sciences, despite large collaborative research programmes that have engaged multiple disciplines. Research in SILMU was divided along themes of atmosphere, water, land ecosystems and human interaction, and included climate change scenarios as an important part of the programme. Three scenarios of temperature and precipitation change were developed based on global climate models results over Finland: a central, “best guess” scenario, together with lower and upper estimates representing an unspecified uncertainty range (Finnish Environment Institute, 2008). Climate scenarios produced by FIGARE were used by an internal project that combined projections of changes in environmental, socio‐economic and technical, sea‐level and atmospheric scenarios in Finland during the twenty first century (Carter, 2004). These scenarios were further utilised in a project titled Integrated assessment modelling of global change impacts and adaptation (FINESSI). As a result of this three‐year project, a computer‐based evaluative framework was developed to investigate the impacts of global change on natural and managed systems throughout the country (Carter et al., 2004; FINESSI, 2008).

Climate change adaptation was first discussed in a preliminary analysis by the Finnish Environment Institute (Carter and Kankaapää, 2003) that highlighted the poor understanding of adaptive capacity across different Finnish sectors. Since this call, collaborative research programmes specifically on adaptation have aimed at bridging research on climate impacts with adaptation measures. The first of these, titled Assessing the Adaptive Capacity of the Finnish Environment and Society under a Changing Climate (FINADAPT) ran from 2004 to 2006. Coordinated by the Finnish Environment Institute, the programme engaged 11 research institutes working on 14 work packages, covering sectors from climate data and scenarios to biodiversity, forests, agriculture and human health^[1] and producing a number of publications based on the work packages and their sectoral areas (Carter et al., 2005; Peltonen et al., 2005; Carter, 2007).

Since the publication of the National Adaptation Strategy in 2005, the importance of research has been further stressed, exemplified by the establishment of the collaborative Finnish Adaptation Research programme (ISTO) in 2006. The aim of ISTO is to provide practical research knowledge and tools for the implementation of the national strategy. Prepared in co‐operation between various government ministries in 2005, the programme takes research needs identified during the preparation of the national adaptation strategy (NAS) into account within its sixteen projects that focus on various governmental sectors and concerns, ranging from extreme weather events to agriculture, biodiversity and built environment. The ISTO‐programme has been funded by the ministries themselves through their research budgets.

To summarise, the analysis of research efforts on climate change and adaptation in Finland shows a movement towards more specific information on adaptation, highlighted by the fact that there has been little basic research funding on adaptation. While initial research programmes focused on nation‐wide scenarios and reliable climate data, the focus in recent years has been directed towards more specific sectoral research with clear linkages to administrative sectors within the government. This is in part to support the implementation of the NAS but also reflects evolution of scientific knowledge on climate change and the needs of policy makers to take measures to adapt. Basic climate research and accurate scenarios are considered important, and attempts are being made to better coordinate climate research (e.g., ACCLIM II) in order to transform it into a common platform for all other research projects under the ISTO research umbrella. The Academy of Finland is currently preparing a research programme on climate change which will likely address the considerable gap in basic climate change research since the turn of the century.

In Finland, climate information at the national level is utilised mainly by sectors concerned with direct impacts of climate change (i.e. the environment, agriculture and forestry sectors), while lower scales of governance were found to utilise less information produced mainly as part of individual projects. Climate scenarios produced by both the Finnish Meteorological Institute and the Finnish Environment Institute are available to other government sectors at the national scale. Under the auspices of different ministries, many public research organisations also utilise these scenarios in their own research. A survey of scenario use by different groups of stakeholders was conducted as part of the developing consistent global change scenarios for Finland research project, and revealed that scenarios were of interest to both researchers and non‐researchers (Bärlund and Carter, 2002). More specifically, the needs of the users varied: while researchers prioritised information with a wide spectrum of spatial and temporal resolutions, non‐researchers found the low resolution more useful and were generally more interested in socio‐economic scenarios.

The Finnish institutional context for knowledge transfers is organised through public research organisations that produce sector‐specific knowledge on adaptation options within a specific administrative sector. The role of public research organisations in producing applied research knowledge for each governmental sector is considered to be important in developing knowledge‐based, political decision‐making (Rantanen, 2008). Consequently, the role of the ISTO‐programme is considered to be especially valuable in the implementation of the NAS (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, 2009). A mid‐term evaluation of ISTO in 2008 concluded that the programme had been successful in bringing together multiple disciplines and encouraging dialogue between disciplines, although it also indicated further room for improvement (Valli and Sierla, 2008). The evaluation particularly highlighted the need for more cross‐ and multidisciplinary research, as most of the research programmes have a specific disciplinary focus.

Overall, the programme was considered useful for administrative sectors, despite a continuing emphasis on identifying and measuring direct climate change impacts and not directly on adaptation. The programme aim of supporting applied research and providing practical information for adaptation had been to a certain extent met. However, thus far socio‐economic research into adaptation has not been as prominent as the natural sciences (Valli and Sierla, 2008). In addition, the ISTO‐programme has suffered considerably from funding cuts imposed upon all administrative sectors that resulted in a 70 per cent reduction in available funding for the programme (Valli and Sierla, 2008).

At the sub‐national level, the case study municipalities have had no access to local or regional climate scenarios, a concern which has been also identified as a constraint for Finnish municipalities in general (Peltonen, 2007). So far, knowledge of climate change in general is disseminated with the help of organisations that act as knowledge brokers. These organisations, such as the Association of Local and Regional Authorities in Finland, disseminate information through seminars and newsletters (ALFRA, 2007). A new project funded through European Union (EU) life+aims to close this gap by setting up a climate information portal for municipalities (Karhu, 2009). The aim of this project is to offer practical tools for local and municipal planning and decision making by unifying diverse and fragmented climate change information in a more uniform format under one web‐portal. In addition, research projects have proved to be a valuable support on data production as well as a source for production and analysis of research data for the case study municipalities. Out of the sub‐national case study actors interviewed, many had been involved in research projects that had directly contributed to a specific climate change issues (e.g. flooding). Within these projects, the direct connection between researchers and policy makers at the regional level was identified as important to the exchange of information. Furthermore, several seminars and workshops had also been organised around adaptation by inviting researchers to speak of particular issues in relation to adaptation.

Uncertainty with regards to climate change and impacts also features in the discussions in Finland. However, a degree of uncertainty is acknowledged and to some extent accepted in terms of policy making. The NAS published in 2005 states that uncertainty will always be a feature of climate change and needs to be acknowledged but it should not considered as a hindrance to policy making on adaptation because enough information to begin adaptation exists already (Marttila et al., 2005). Similarly, the local case study city of Espoo produced a preparedness strategy in 2007 as a part of larger project (Soini, 2007). This strategy addresses current and likely future vulnerabilities and outlines adaptation measures for the future. Again, uncertainty is address in the plan, stating that although climate change is uncertain, enough knowledge exists for the city authorities to take action on some sectors.

In Finland, climate change adaptation has so far remained an issue with which municipalities can voluntarily engage, but are not legally required to, as the NAS places no responsibilities on the local level. It should be noted that Finnish municipalities have a planning monopoly in terms of land use, limiting the ability of the national level to steer municipal activities. Though the revised Land Use Act of 2008 includes measures on adaptation that currently act as guidelines for land use at the local level, municipalities are obliged to rely on their own initiative in order to access and secure necessary resources for adaptation. In terms of resource allocation, a clear line can be drawn between the duties that are required by law from the municipal environment centres and strategic work that includes the creation and use of new information. Awareness and interest in strategic work such as climate change adaptation exists, but municipalities may be constrained by their capacity to act on their interests.

Both the city of Espoo and the Helsinki Metropolitan Area Council are or have been partners of partially EU‐funded projects that focus on adaptation. The developing policies and adaptation strategies to climate change in the Baltic Sea region research project, of which Espoo was part in collaboration with the Helsinki University of Technology and the Geological Survey of Finland, assessed regional impacts of climate change and helped to develop strategies and policies to deal with those (Hilbert et al., 2007). Similarly, the Helsinki Metropolitan Area Council is producing its strategy with the help of external funding and in collaboration with researchers (YTV, 2008). In contrast to this, the KUUMA Municipality Cooperation, which consists of a partnership between smaller municipalities, has so far not been able to take part in larger research projects during the preparation of its climate strategy.

For the former two cases, access to information on climate impacts and adaptation was generally not considered a problem by the respondents, nor were they constrained by other capacities (i.e. human resources or social capital) in using that information. The smaller municipalities acknowledged that the biggest challenges arose not from lack of data or information, but from their ability to access and use it given inadequate human resources. This is particularly a problem for small municipalities with only one member of staff working in the environment administration. Through the participation in the partially funded EU projects, Espoo and the Helsinki Metropolitan Council have instead been able to employ staff and access research information and networks to pursue their interest in adaptation. At the time of the interviews, climate information utilised by the case study municipalities was often very general climate information, and no stakeholders were included in the preparation of the projects.

Overall, the interviewees considered that support for climate change work and adaptation was considered to be sufficient and that the efforts were supported by other branches of municipality administration, citizens as well as local politicians. The city councils in the Uusimaa region have a large number of Green Party councillors that to some extent have additionally supported their work on adaptation. Efforts were also made by the municipalities to raise awareness of climate issues in order to highlight emerging threats arising from climate change, and gain further support for action. For example, the environment council in Espoo had arranged events on climate change, including a showing of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth for all city councillors. Despite this support, however, it was recognised that adaptation has also prompted a discussion on several contentious issues revolving around economic growth and environmental concerns. Thus, adaptation was not deemed to be an overriding goal, as municipalities continue to focus principally on the provision of basic municipal services such as heath care, education and economic concerns that frequently supersede concerns over adaptation.

Within the EU, Italy is among those states that have been slow to address either mitigation or adaptation, and has yet to develop formal adaptation measures at the national level. However, climate has been continuously monitored for several centuries, and has produced one of the longest instrumental temperature records in the world (Brunetti et al., 2006; MATTM, 2007a). Today, national climate data are collected primarily by the Italian National Meteorological and Aeronautic Climatology Centre through a network of weather stations operated by the National Air Force Meteorological Service. These data are supplemented by additional meteorological networks such as the National Hydrographical and Oceanographic Service and the National Agricultural Information Service, as well as regional networks operated by a select few Regional Environmental Protection Agencies (ARPA). The Superior Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA), a supporting research body of the Italian Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea (MATTM) has recently begun a collaborative effort to bring together different national climate data into a national climate indicator report.

Despite extensive climate records, work on current or future impacts of climate events and vulnerability remain limited. Climate and climate change research has not followed a general research plan but have existed in a fragmented state, with several national and regional bodies conducting individual climate research within different sectors and regions of the country. Among the most active institutions in the climate change field are ISPRA, the National Research Council (NRC) and the National Institute for the Environment, Energy and New Technologies (ENEA), which have made efforts to assess climate impacts and have conducted cost‐benefit evaluations of impacts in small geographic areas within their larger environmental and energy programmes. However, a lack of coordination between these various projects has resulted in incomplete knowledge of both current and possible future climate impacts and vulnerabilities. While more data exist for certain regions (e.g. northern Italian regions) or sectors (e.g. agriculture), nation‐wide data on current conditions (e.g. coastal erosion, soil depletion or water quality baselines), comprehensive national or regional climate projections and impacts and vulnerability assessments are lacking (ENEA; ARPA, interviews). In general, climate change scenarios have remained relatively undeveloped, and with a lack of comprehensive and uniform baseline data, impact assessment remains underdeveloped as well.

The Italian administration began to address the fragmented and incomplete nature of climate research in Italy in 2000 with the approval of the Research Programme on Sustainable Development and Climate Change. Jointly funded by MATTM and the Italian Ministries of Economy and Finance, University and Research, and Agriculture Food and Forestry Policies, the programme is aimed at filling gaps in knowledge of climate variability and impacts, baseline data and vulnerability of various social, economic and environmental sectors, as well as mitigation research on carbon sinks and greenhouse gas reductions (MATTM, 2007a). Included in the new programme was the creation of a central coordinating body for climate change research, now under the responsibility of the Euro‐Mediterranean Centre for Climate Change (CMCC) created in 2005. The CMCC was formed out of several existing research institutions and universities representing various fields of climatic, political and economic sciences. With regards to adaptation, the major focus of the CMCC thus far has been on the development of climate simulations and a regional model of the Mediterranean basin as the basis for the assessment of the socioeconomic impacts of climate change. While the establishment of the CMCC represents an important shift in research from multiple, uncoordinated bodies to a central coordinating authority for climate change research, comprehensive models of impacts and future scenarios are still limited in their development.

Climate change research has also been conducted at the regional scale, and in particular within the case study region of Emilia‐Romagna. Emilia‐Romagna's ARPA was among the first to be established in 1994, and provides information and technical support to the regional environmental and other administrations. Created in 1985 and later incorporated into the ARPA, the region's Hydro‐Meteorological Service (SIM) has monitored regional trends of temperature and precipitation for several decades to satisfy demands for climate and weather information and provide support to the regional agricultural sector. In 2007, the SIM was converted to the Hydro‐Meteorological and Climate Service (IMC) and shifted in orientation to address what several regional authorities consider to be the region's increasing interest in matters of climate change. Currently considered the strongest regional climate in Italy, the IMC has begun to downscale global circulation models to determine possible future climates in the region and participate in national projects on climate impacts in the agricultural sector. A number of EU projects have additionally created opportunities for IMC to study climate mitigation and potential climate impacts in a variety of sectors.

The vast majority of national and sub‐national policies and legislation in Italy have not yet begun to incorporate climate change adaptation. While all environmental data produced by Italian public institutions is accessible by all private, public and civil sectors, the fragmented nature of the baseline data and climate change assessments has created difficulty in obtaining coherent data sets. More importantly perhaps is the absence of a national programme of climate awareness or information dissemination; however, both the creation of the CMCC and the national conference on climate change have helped in the assimilation and dissemination of climate science to the policy sphere.

The 2007 National Climate Change Conference, jointly held by MATTM and ISPRA, represents perhaps the clearest instance of engagement between climate science and policy in Italy, as its main function was to pool existing research on climate impacts and vulnerabilities in order to pinpoint gaps in knowledge and ultimately, to the creation of a National Adaptation Strategy (MATTM, 2007a). The conference was precluded by a series of seminars organised along themes of the major climate‐related risks including erosion and coastal risk, desertification, glacier and snow cover loss, hydro‐geological risk, and the Po River basin. Participants included a combination of climate research institutions, NGOs, regional ARPA and representatives of regional and national ministries. The outputs of the conference included a summary of climate impacts and vulnerabilities by sector, as well as the identification of 13 priority areas for adaptation intervention (MATTM, 2007b). Though the conference failed to produce a national adaptation strategy, it still provided an important opportunity to link climate adaptation‐relevant actors and sectors and to assimilate existing climate change‐related research. The conference also spurred the publication of a volume of sectoral economic assessments of climate change impacts and possible adaptation measures, produced in early 2009 by CMCC partners and ISPRA (Carraro, 2008).

Since the conference, however, there has been little advancement of the adaptation issue on the national political agenda. While CMCC continues to advance knowledge of potential climate futures and has indicated its participation in the creation of a joint committee on a national adaptation strategy to be headed by the MATTM, few concrete measures have yet been undertaken. At the national scale, select activities that address ongoing risks and environmental management needs have begun to take climate change impacts into account, though few go beyond a cursory mention in the preamble of national plans such as a national heat wave strategy. At the regional and local levels, however, adaptation has begun to receive some additional attention, in part the result of the existence of strong climate research institutions at the regional level.

The region of Emilia‐Romagna's independent climate monitoring and modelling centre has in large part circumvented the absence of clear national data. Regional climate information is created and disseminated in response to regional information needs, particularly with regards to the agricultural sector in which seasonal and short‐term climate data are provided to agriculturalists. The region has also made use of intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) data and other European countries' experiences (i.e. the UK) with climate risks and environmental management (Regione Emilia‐Romagna, 2003). According to regional actors, the long‐term engagement in climate issues of both the ARPA and the IMC has additionally lent considerable weight to the climate change issue in the region. According to regional environmental authorities, the strong support for the region's ARPA has in turn fostered a strong link between the political and technical bodies of the regional government and is the foundation of political interest in climate adaptation in Emilia‐Romagna.

Regional plans that serve as the basis of all economic development and environmental management in Emilia‐Romagna have begun to incorporate climatic trends. While most are limited to broad references to the need to address sectoral impacts of changing climatic conditions, the Regional Water Plan (Regione Emilia‐Romagna, 2005) more directly addresses the likely impacts of declining water availability and increasing instances of drought. However, the plan and the Climate Change and Water Planning report that served as its basis both cite uncertainty in future conditions as a barrier to forming more specific adaptation actions, and instead advocate a management plan of general conservation to be updated at six‐year intervals and as new information becomes available.

Below the regional level, the differing functions and authorities of the province and municipality of Ferrara translate into different usages of climate information. The provinces in Emilia‐Romagna serve as administrative bodies of the region, adapting regional plans to provincial needs and circumstances and implementing them via technical and operational bodies. Thus, the incorporation of climate change information into provincial activities is largely dependent on the extent to which the regional level has done so. Climate information produced by the ARPA is not directly disseminated to the provincial level but is instead indirectly incorporated through provincial plans. However, the participation of the Province of Ferrara in an NGO project on climate change mitigation and adaptation policy development hosted by the Climate Alliance (adaptation and mitigation – an integrated climate policy approach) has provided the province's agricultural and environmental sectors with additional insight into probable changes in climate and potential strategies for adaptation. Conversely, the Municipality of Ferrara is somewhat more independent from the regional level and essentially constitutes its own planning authority for municipal services and development. Within the environmental and planning departments, climate impacts have yet to be incorporated into municipal plans.

The capacities of the various sub‐national levels clearly differ considerably. The regional level in Italy represents strong political autonomy, as decision‐making powers within several sectors have been allocated to regional authorities. As a result, regions are able to largely pursue their own policies, which in the case of Emilia‐Romagna have resulted in the ability to engage in adaptation‐relevant activities. Long‐standing and well‐funded climate research institutions within the region have led to the production of regionally relevant climate and other forms of data, recognised to be among the highest quality in Italy. The region is also among the most economically well‐off in Italy, and has dedicated financial resources for the activities of the ARPA and the newly created IMC. The ARPA has grown to include a personnel of over 1,000 employees, nearly the same number as ISPRA, the coordinating body for the ARPA, itself. Additional support and resources are also obtained through the participation of the ARPA in EU projects that allow for the transfer of financial resources, as well as information on best research and management practices. Moreover, regional authorities from both the technical and political spheres spoke of the strong political support for environmental management and the strong support for environmental and increasingly, climate‐related research.

At the provincial and local levels, the capacity to use climate information changes considerably. As in the Finnish case, no legal requirements for adaptation or other sustainability measures have meant that provincial authorities experience a dearth of adequate funding for voluntary measures, and have in some cases turned to private‐public partnerships to maintain sufficient financial resources to carry out local environmental or risk management activities. As such, few opportunities exist to pursue themes outside administrative responsibilities delegated by the region, though in both cases the participation in external networks have to some degree allowed for more engagement in climate change. The province's participation in the Climate Alliance project is one illustration of the importance of horizontal and vertical networks on both national and international scales in raising political awareness of climate change impacts and adaptation options, and providing opportunities to pool resources with other administrations.

Conversely, awareness of climate impacts at the municipal scale, and thus action on adaptation, remains limited. While the municipality has been actively engaged in environmental and energy‐related projects, adaptation remains outside the sphere of local activities in either environmental or planning sectors. As with other Italian municipalities, Ferrara is relatively autonomous in matters of local relevance, including planning and local environmental management, and is thus able to pursue locally relevant activities. Funds for municipal activities derive both from state and regional funds, as well as from local taxation. However, municipal authorities highlighted an absence of funds for activities outside responsibilities mandated by central government, and as a result have had difficulties allocating human or financial resources for the engagement in (voluntary) adaptation actions. Similarly, the provision of information on climate events and variability comes only through the national heat wave prevention programme that alerts municipalities of periods of heat wave risk. Municipal authorities also indicated that networks with NGOs or other more well‐funded municipalities within Italy provided important resources for information and the transfer of best practices.

Several points relevant to ongoing discussions of the role of climate information in policy can be drawn from the case studies. Despite the differing states of climate‐related science in the two countries, climate research in both Italy and Finland use the natural and physical sciences as the starting point for understanding climate change and its effects. In Italy, the current emphasis in climate research is to fill existing gaps in baseline data and climate impact scenarios. The national conference in 2007 and the recent CMCC volume represent important steps in bringing science and policy spheres together and moving towards the production of policy relevant climate change information. However, specific means for transferring information to policy‐makers have yet to be developed. Conversely, Finland has already developed impacts and vulnerability assessments and has begun to address the need for socioeconomic assessments of possible adaptations and practical data needed by decision‐makers to certain extent. At the national scale, Finland has relied on existing institutional mechanisms for knowledge transfer from research centres to policy makers through public research organisations operating under ministries and thus strengthening the existence of networks between sectoral research and the sectoral government administration. In both countries, the linkages between climate research and policy have also occurred most strongly within the environment sectors, indicating the persistence of the perceived connection between adaptation and environmental management.

While these case studies could be used to illustrate how the state of climate science and the existence of knowledge transfer networks in each country have corresponded to the extent of the development of planned adaptation measures, the ways in which adaptation is framed and addressed render the picture more complex. Climate change actors recognised uncertainty in climate projections as a barrier to informed decision making, hence the emphasis on the development of more comprehensive and relevant data on climate impacts and adaptation. However, actors also recognised the need to address current risk and resource management issues. In Finland, both national and local actors identified uncertainty as a constraint but highlighted the importance of action on adaptation regardless, while in Italy, in the absence of clear data regional authorities have opted to pursue sustainable measures for resource conservation and to update practices as new information becomes available. This approach resonates with the adaptive management approach to climate governance, in that decisions are made using existing information and adjusted to fit changing knowledge and conditions.

Both cases also create an opportunity to assess the way adaptation needs are framed at different scales. At the national and local scale in Finland and at the regional scale in Italy, risk management issues are framed as requiring a response regardless of certainty (Juhola et al., n.d.). The multitude of possible ways of framing the climate problem indicate that even with perfect information, inaction on adaptation could nonetheless persist in the absence of a certain understanding of climate change and adaptation. The role of awareness‐raising programmes and the influence of the media may both play a role in the framing of the issue, and in the case of Italy are thought to exert significant influence over public and political perceptions of climate change. Strong media negationism and the absence of national awareness‐raising programmes are pinpointed by climate actors as one determinant of the slow action on climate adaptation at the national level, while in Finland, awareness‐raising campaigns since the 1990s have been ongoing.

Finally, the multi‐scalar nature of adaptation decision‐making in both cases renders the transfer of climate information to decision‐makers contingent on such factors as the existence of multiple channels for knowledge transfer and the capacities of sub‐national bodies (Westerhoff et al., n.d.). While Finland has established strong horizontal linkages between science and policy makers, vertical linkages are considerably less developed. In both countries, sub‐national scales were varied in their capacity to either produce or access climate change‐relevant information. Resource‐rich areas have been able to increase their adaptive capacity by taking part in projects that provide them with human and social capacity. This is in contrast to smaller, less resource rich municipalities that find it harder to engage with adaptation and the added problems that it brings in terms of uncertainty and the need for information. In the case of the Emilia‐Romagna region, strong existing climate and environmental institutions have allowed the region to produce and apply locally created data, and in some cases drew directly from the IPCC or international experiences to estimate local impacts and possible course of action. At various sub‐national scales, local authorities were able to draw on EU or NGO networks to access different forms of information relevant to adaptation. These findings indicate that local scales are not necessarily reliant on a linear transfer of information from the national level but may in essence “jump” across horizontal or vertical scales to access information and resources. However, the ability of these areas to access networks and institutions is also in part dependent on the ability to access sufficient financial resources. As adaptation at sub‐national scales has thus far been voluntary, funding for such activities must come from local budgets or outside sources. While the participation in EU projects is an important source of funding, the ability to access these funding sources requires both political interest and adequate time and human (and thus financial) resources.

These linkages between science and policy are likely to become more important in the future when the necessity for adaptation becomes more apparent. Although this paper has mostly taken a linear view of to understanding the creation and use of science in policy making, there are differing epistemological stances that question this relation and point to the implicit assumptions left out of the analysis. It is presumed that policies are designed to address specific problems and objectives, and that impacts of policies can be anticipated with certainty; further, there is an inherent assumption that better information necessarily leads to better policies (Hertin et al., 2009). As a result, the production of knowledge through scientific processes is problematised and it is argued that the role of science in policy‐making and the way in which it is produced, selected and interpreted is impacted by decisions about social values and moral and ethical choices (Cortner, 2000; Juntti et al., 2009). Thus, rather than seeing the use of scientific information in policy‐making as a linear process, these conceptualisations view the policy process as characterised by sudden discontinuities, whilst intertwining knowledge and power in terms of strategic interests and path dependencies.

It should be noted that while this paper has taken a largely positivist approach to science‐policy linkages in adaptation, questions as to what counts as knowledge, how it is produced and presented, and in what ways it is used by policy makers could further reveal important aspects of the adaptation process. Such post‐positivist stances examine science‐policy linkages within a setting of complex relations and agendas laden with power. These questions have been addressed in studies that have examined transboundary haze in Asia (Murdiyarso et al., 2004), and in terms of environmental agendas in urban areas (Owens et al., 2006). This strand of literature has the potential to further contribute to our understanding of the planning of adaptation in different contexts, resulting in a more thorough exploration of the close linkages of the production of climate information for adaptation and strategies of adaptation. In the case of Finland, this is particularly significant at the national level where the public research organisations are funded to do adaptation research, while little basic social and economic research on adaptation takes place. Although it is argued that the participation of public research organisations in adaptation research increases the likelihood of policy‐relevant research and the utilisation of climate information in deciding on adaptation options and measures, it nevertheless supports a particular understanding of adaptation whilst excluding others. In Italy, the regional level presents a similar case, where the regional climate data is produced in close collaboration with regional level policy making that will in turn affect local resource management and planning actions.

To conclude, there is a need for a bridge between the theoretical literature on science and policy linkages and the climate adaptation field. A recently burgeoning interest in the processes and needs of local decision‐makers has begun to raise issues of capacity and equity in adaptation research, but further engagement on the part of both scientists and policy makers is still required. The scope of the project from which this paper was drawn was such that many of the more complex power relationships in the formation of knowledge were unable to be assessed in this paper, but the importance of their further study in both climate and other research is certainly acknowledged.

It should also be recognised that the case studies represent two examples of science‐policy linkages, and that issues of capacity and specific structures in different regions and municipalities make for a very different uptake and application of climate and other information. Though sub‐national political bodies have been able to create or access climate‐relevant information through international networks, as the only sources of information, these networks may not either fulfil local information needs or address underlying issues of capacity. National‐scale institutions still have an important role in guiding research to suit national circumstances and in improving local capacities, but this process will benefit from the engagement with both higher and lower scales of governance.

This paper is based on the organising adaptation to climate change (EUR‐ADAPT) project funded by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) and led by Dr Carina Keskitalo.

Lisa Westerhoff conducted this research under the EUR‐ADAPT project out of the Umea University, and currently works as a Lecturer at the University of Guelph in Canada. Her research concerns climate change adaptation and adaptive capacity in Europe, with a focus on Italy. Lisa Westerhoff is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: lisa.westerhoff@gmail.com

Sirkku Juhola is a Researcher at the Aalto University Centre for Urban and Regional Studies. Her research focuses on climate change adaptation and adaptive capacity in Europe and the Baltic Sea Region in particular.