PLAN – The Potentials of and Limits to Adaptation in Norway
Background and Goals
The project provides an empirical and theoretical understanding of adaptation as a social process, with a focus on the potential for reducing negative impacts and realising any potential opportunities. The project focuses on the ways in which competing interests, objectives and priorities, different values, unequal power relationships and policy planning processes promote or obstruct adaptation measures at national, individual and community level.
The key questions that will be answered in this research project are:
1) How do social processes influence ability to adapt to climate change?
2) What are the limits on adaptation as a response to changed climatic conditions?
3) What are the effects of these limits on human safety?
Objectives:
1. Identification and evaluation of the different contexts in which adaptation measures are implemented in Norway, and the characteristics that promote or obstruct adaptation measures.
2. Development of a theoretical framework for understanding adaptation as a social process in developed countries, with a focus on the way in which priorities, interests, values and information influence the response to climate change.
3. Theoretical basis and evaluation of the limits of adaptation, based on different criteria for evaluating the importance of climate change (e.g. loss of economic value, loss of life, reduction in biodiversity, distribution and equity, quality of life).
4. Development of a state of the art, geographically differentiated GIS that combines research results and information on the effects of climate change, vulnerability and adaptation.
Content time
toResearch area/region
Country
- Norway
Spatial resolution
northern countrys
Steps in the process of adaptation to climate change
Step 3: Develop and compare measures
Measures and/or strategies
The project focuses on adaptation measures as social processes. For example, various sub-projects deal with the energy and water sector. In terms of adaptation measures, research is focused on how practices, processes or structures need to be adjusted to take account of changed climatic conditions, absorb potential damage and benefit from favourable opportunities.
Participants
Funding / Financing
The project is being funded by the Research Council of the Norwegian NORKLIMA programme.
Project management
University of Oslo
Cooperation/Partners
National partners:
- University of Bergen,
- University of Tromsø,
- CICERO,
- Fridtjof Nansen Institute,
- Norwegian Institute of Urban and Regional Research (NIBR),
- Norwegian Meteorological Institute (met.no).
International partners:
- National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR),
- University of Oxford,
- Stockholm Environment Institute,
- Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research,
- University of Linköping.
Contact
University of Oslo
Department of Sociology and Human Geography
0317 Oslo
Norway
