System change for climate change? Understanding climate change adaptation mainstreaming within the European Union’s development cooperation

This PhD dissertation aims to assess the mainstreaming of climate change adaptation in the development cooperation efforts of the European Union (EU). Adaptation and aid activities are inherently interlinked for three reasons: (i) the disproportionate impact of climate change on developing countries, (ii) the potentially negative impact of climate change on poverty reduction efforts and (iii) the role development cooperation can play in reducing vulnerability to climate change. Integrating or mainstreaming climate change in aid activities is the prime response of aid donors in order to address these linkages. Approaching the nexus between climate change adaptation and development cooperation from multiple theoretical angles, this dissertation aims to generate a pluralistic and multi-faceted understanding of this integration process. More specifically, the two main perspectives that guide this dissertation are an institutionalist approach and a critical approach towards the nexus. Regarding the former, article 1 draws from the literature on environmental- and climate policy integration (EPI and CPI) in order to assess how and to what extent climate change adaptation is mainstreamed in the current development policy cycle (2014-2020). Regarding the latter, article 2 and 3 are aimed at problematizing this integration exercise by looking specifically at the power effects encapsulated in the discursive representation of climate change as a challenge for development cooperation, as well as in the concrete policy techniques that are being used in this regard. In article 2, this is pursued by employing a critical frame analysis in order to analyze the discourse surrounding the climate-development nexus within the EU. In article 3, I use a governmentality perspective to problematize the discursive constructions and policy techniques employed within the EU’s thematic agency for providing adaptation assistance towards its partner countries in the Global South: the Global Climate Change Alliance. All three articles point to a mainstreaming rationale in which adaptation is retrofitted in EU development cooperation, ignoring its transformational potential in aid activities. Discursively, adaptation is framed within the parameters of existing development paradigms, such as security and economic growth. Moreover, the responsibility for change in this regard is almost entirely projected upon EU partner countries. Third, mainstreaming is also predominantly imagined and pursued in a top- down fashion, in which meaning and implementation modalities are transposed from HQ-level towards EU delegations and partner countries alike. These political underpinnings of adaptation mainstreaming generate an institutional reality in which adaptation is ‘just another requirement’ within EU delegations, to be implemented through procedural and organizational adjustments. However, capacity is lacking in order to elevate adaptation mainstreaming to a level in which it could evoke a system change in development cooperation.

Grantor dc:publisher

Ghent University. Faculty of Political and Social Sciences

Year dc:date

2018

Author dc:creator

• De Roeck, Frederik

Contributors dc:contributor

• Orbie, Jan
• Delputte, Sarah

• Social Sciences

Statement dc:rights

• info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8572062
https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8572062/file/8572063

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:archive.ugent.be:8572062