Mainstreaming climate adaptation: taking stock about “what works” from empirical research worldwide

TLDR

Climate adaptation is unavoidable, yet mainstreaming it into existing policies is widely advocated while knowledge of what makes it effective remains scarce and fragmented. The study reviews peer‑reviewed empirical analyses of climate adaptation mainstreaming to assess achievements and identify critical factors. It synthesizes existing literature to evaluate outcomes and determinants. The review finds that while adaptation policy outputs are often identified, they rarely translate into outcomes—an implementation gap especially pronounced in developing countries—yet effectiveness does not differ across countries, underscoring the need for explicit definitions and unified frameworks.

Abstract

Adaptation to a changing climate is unavoidable. Mainstreaming climate adaptation objectives into existing policies, as opposed to developing dedicated adaptation policy, is widely advocated for public action. However, knowledge on what makes mainstreaming effective is scarce and fragmented. Against this background, this paper takes stock of peer-reviewed empirical analyses of climate adaptation mainstreaming, in order to assess current achievements and identify the critical factors that render mainstreaming effective. The results show that although in most cases adaptation policy outputs are identified, only in a minority of cases this translates into policy outcomes. This "implementation gap" is most strongly seen in developing countries. However, when it comes to the effectiveness of outcomes, we found no difference across countries. We conclude that more explicit definitions and unified frameworks for adaptation mainstreaming research are required to allow for future research syntheses and well-informed policy recommendations.