Social learning about climate adaptation: global and local perspectives
This paper explores social learning about climate adaptation in relation to the architecture of climate governance. It compares the potential for social learning at the international level with a local perspective based on preliminary results from a case study of climate adaptation in the Stockholm region, Sweden. It focuses on conditions that have been shown to influence social learning in other areas, with special attention to “boundary organizations”; arenas for bridging across perspectives at different scales and levels of governance; “shadow systems” for developing knowledge outside the norm; and the role of conflicting goals.
The paper concludes that there is a need for arenas for social learning about local adaptation that have enough diversity among participants to be able to address conflicting goals in addition to sharing knowledge. It also suggests that research on social learning would benefit from more attention to influences across governance levels.