Research Handbook on Climate Change Adaptation Policy

• Author: Margherita Paola Poto
• Position: K.G. Jebsen Centre for the Law of the Sea
• Pages: 12-15

© 2019 Margherita Paola Poto. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attri-

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Citation: Margherita Paola Poto. “Review of Research Handbook on Climate Change Adaptation Policy” Arctic Review on

Law and Politics, Vol. 10, 2019, pp. 138–141. http://dx.doi.org/10.23865/arctic.v10.1737

Arctic Review on Law and Politics

Vol. 10, 2019, pp. 138–141

138

Book review

Review of Research Handbook on

Climate Change Adaptation Policy

E. Carina H. Keskitalo & Benjamin L. Preston (Editors). Research Handbook

on Climate Change Adaptation Policy, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA,

USA: Edward Elgar Publishing. 2019. ISBN: 9781786432513 (hardcover), ISBN:

9781786432520 (eBook).

Reviewed by Margherita Paola Poto, K.G. Jebsen Centre for the Law of the Sea, UiT

The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø.

Background of editors and contributors: The Research Handbook on Climate

Change Adaptation Policy, edited by Keskitalo and Preston, is a collection of contri-

butions on the theme of climate change adaption policies. E. Carina H. Keskitalo

is Professor of Political Science at the Department of Geography, Umeå University,

Sweden, with a focus on environmental policy; Benjamin Preston is a Senior Policy

Researcher and Director of RAND’s Infrastructure Resilience and Environmental

Policy Program, with a background in environmental biology. The contributors’

backgrounds provide an intersectional approach which looks at adaptation policies

from a social science perspective, offering a clear indication of the choice to look at

climate change adaptation policies through the integrated approach of social theo-

retical frameworks developed in a multilayered system of governance. Short of that,

the contributors offer a unique bird’s eye view from the perspective of 14 countries:

Australia, Austria, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Kenya, the Netherlands,

New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, the U.K. and the U.S.A.

The book’s approach in summary: The editors bookend 22 substantive chapters

with an opening and closing chapter of their own. Their approach comprises three

main stages of analysis: in Part I, an observation of adaptation policies through the

lens of social theory; in Part II, a review of theoretical frameworks in relation to adap-

tation; and in Parts III and IV, an analysis of case-study areas to investigate adapta-

tion in practice at different levels and across sectoral and cross-cutting perspectives.

Two main observations emerge from reading and deeply engaging with this book:

the rst is that climate change adaptation policies need to be developed using a