1 Introduction

Environmental policy making is increasingly dealing with rapid social and environmental changes, high uncertainty, and contested values in closely interconnected, globalised societies. Addressing climate change, biodiversity loss and sustainability challenges are examples of where such contestation is apparent. Over 3,000 international environmental agreements (IEA) exist around the globe (Mitchell et al. 2020). These IEAs help to address drivers of environmental degradation, set management goals for common-pool resources and respond to global threats. IEAs help define a common language and shared aspirational goals, but often with little consideration of how goals made by external decision-makers might align at the local scale. This mismatch raises questions of legitimacy and efficacy because goals set by IEAs may ignore local socio-political contexts and realities (Herrera 2019).

Setting aspirational goals helps in articulating alternative futures and mobilising action towards shared goals of diverse actors (Finnemore and Jurkovich 2020). But achieving aspirational goals is often challenging. Past efforts to meet targets on biodiversity protection were insufficient (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity 2020) and global efforts to meet the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals are on the same trajectory (United Nations 2023).

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) outline general guidance to nations, with broad objectives of sustainable development and a healthy environment. For example, establishing new protected areas and expanding existing ones are targets to halt biodiversity loss and achieve climate change objectives under the global biodiversity framework (GBF; Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity 2022). Protected areas underpin aspirations to halt biodiversity loss (Maxwell et al. 2020), but differ broadly in objectives, including aligning with global environmental agendas, exerting sovereignty by nation states, providing economic benefits and achieving social-environmental justice (Wakild 2018). Therefore, it is unclear how protecting more land, rivers, and oceans will help to meet the ambitious objectives set by these major conventions, with questions of participation, expected outcomes, and benefits to the biodiversity-climate-society nexus (Pascual et al. 2022).

Climate change and biodiversity traditionally have had separate agendas (Pörtner et al. 2021) and are studied separately. Our analysis integrates these elements to address how rules and policies in use can facilitate or constrain adaptation. Our focus is protected areas, a preferred form of land-based conservation, often included in climate mitigation and adaptation strategies (Carrasco et al. 2021; Roe et al. 2021). Protected areas represent social-ecological systems with complex, cross-scale dynamics across geographical and legislative boundaries (Cumming and Allen 2017). Although governance arrangements of protected areas are mostly implemented locally, decision making processes spread across scales and are influenced by high-level discourses, with implications for defining actions, participation, benefit sharing (Maxwell et al. 2020) and cross-sector integration (e.g. water, agriculture). Moreover, protected areas are also vulnerable to climate change (Hannah 2010; Hopkins et al. 2015) with climate impacts potentially transforming ecosystems and related services they provide to local communities, thus affecting the achievement of high-level goals.

In this paper we examine the rationale for meeting sustainability agendas on climate change and biodiversity loss at the national and local level (understood here as protected areas). We analyse adaptation-related policy discourses and identify potential mismatches between high-level biodiversity and climate change objectives and local realities of protected areas. We explore adaptation discourses in policy documents and interviews with protected area managers in Australia, Colombia, and South Africa. These nations are signatories to the CBD and UNFCCC and have social, economic, and environmental attributes in common. Our findings illustrate how climate adaptation narratives emerge from specific socio-political contexts, and how these discourses influence the integration of biodiversity conservation and climate change agendas across scales. Exploring aspirations and socio-political forces behind adaptation can help unveil opportunities to reconcile cross-scale requirements and actions for sustainability.

2 Methods

2.1 Case studies

We used a multiple case study design (Yin 2009) to examine how policies at the national level translate into actions at the local scale. The multi-scale organisation of protected areas provides a basis to examine cross-scale interactions to address climate change as part of broader sustainability agendas. The case studies are protected areas from Australia, Colombia, and South Africa. These nations share histories of colonialism, have mega-diverse biodiversity, established protected area systems and economies that rely strongly on mining of fossil fuels (Table 1), offering an opportunity to compare political contexts and national challenges of implementing conservation agendas under scenarios of change.

Table 1 Summary of environmental and socio-political contexts of the three nations: Australia, Colombia, and South Africa. NDC: Nationally Determined Contribution; SDG: Sustainable Development Goal
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The three nations have different government models (Table 1), and distinct ways for designating, managing, and governance of protected areas. We focused on national parks, which are protected areas managed by government agencies. In Australia, each state and territory has different rules and institutions for setting and managing protected areas, independent from the Federal Government (and its small number of national parks) within an agreed national reserve system program. National parks in Colombia and South Africa are managed by national government agencies. Below we provide a summary of the socio-political context of each nation. Australia is a young nation on an ancient continent with one of the oldest continuous human cultures, of at least 65,000 years. Environmental history highlights the narrative of dominion over nature held by European settlers and their transformation of natural ecosystems to agriculture and grazing systems (Colloff 2020). With a federal system of government, Commonwealth (national), state and territory parliaments make their own laws and policies, with little integration between them (Ross and Dovers 2008), but some policy areas are centralised under the direction of the Commonwealth Government (Fenna 2019). The Australian constitution does not directly assign environmental matters but enables the Commonwealth Parliament to legislate for national implementation of IEA (Commonwealth of Australia, 1977). The effects of colonisation are still largely evident in the lack of limited opportunities for participation in national affairs and environmental governance by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples (Hobbs 2018).

The legacies of colonisation have shaped aspirations for economic development and contested views of nation in Colombia based on its rich and unique biodiversity (Carrizosa Umaña, 2014). The narrative of rich biodiversity has been a political construction of nationalism and identity, and has facilitated international scientific collaboration and the development of conservation policies (Quintero-Toro 2012). But nature has also been regarded as an economic resource for exploitation. Deforestation rates are among the highest in Latin America (Armenteras et al. 2017) and protected areas have not been spared (Clerici et al. 2020). Colombia was severely affected by a 50 year-long civil war that ended in 2016 with a peace process, which created the opportunity for reimagining the nation and trying to reconcile nature and society via low-impact economic development (Maldonado et al. 2018). Under the 1991 constitution, the government is mandated to protect cultural and natural assets, guarantee the rights of society to a healthy environment and provide guidance to protect areas of ecological importance.

South Africa is known for its unique ecoregions, such as fynbos and highveld. Its complex socio-political context was shaped by British and Dutch colonisation and war in the nineteenth century and the development of mining for gold, coal, and diamonds. Racial segregation under the apartheid regime (1948–1993) affected environmental policy: nature was controlled and managed in game reserves for wealthy Whites, while Blacks were dispossessed of traditional lands and became labourers on reserves, farms and in mines (Thakholi 2021). Environmental laws and policies framed under the 1996 post-apartheid constitution (Republic of South Africa 1996) provide guidance for conservation and an ‘ecologically sustainable development and use of natural resources’, including for social and economic development, equitable access to natural resources, alleviation of poverty, and social justice as aspirational goals, including actions to integrate and harmonise these elements (Republic of South Africa 1998, 2004). Protected areas’ policy objectives for protected areas are to manage ‘the interrelationship between the natural environment, biodiversity, human settlement and economic development (Republic of South Africa 2003). Many larger reserves transitioned to the South African National Parks (SANParks) reserve system in the 1920s. The transition to democracy after apartheid opened opportunities to overcome the legacies of colonialism and racism. However, weak policy implementation hinders realisation of the vision of social justice declared in the constitution (Plagerson et al. 2019).

We studied six protected areas across the three nations, each one with different conservation goals and facing different drivers of change (Fig. 1). The parks in Australia are part of the interstate Australian Alps corridor: Kosciuszko National Park in New South Wales state (NSW) and the neighbouring Namadgi National Park in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). Each park is managed under state and territory legislation and differs in conservation goals and management approaches. The three parks in Colombia are located in different biogeographical areas: Los Colorados in the Caribbean, Otún Quimbaya Flora in the Central Andes, and Alto Fragua in the Amazon piedmont region. All three parks are managed by Parques Nacionales Naturales de Colombia, the national agency in charge of protected areas. The case study in South Africa is Garden Route National Park, a mosaic of diverse land uses including forests, conservation areas, agricultural lands, coastal and marine ecosystems and urban areas, located between the Eastern and Western Cape provinces. This park was created by merging three former protected areas and is managed by the national agency South African National Parks (SANParks).

Fig. 1
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Summary of the case studies: governance context, conservation goals, and drivers of change

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2.2 Approach, data and analysis

We consider that the multiple structures, processes and ways of sense-making of the social world are subject to diverse interpretations and meanings that have causal effects (Elder-Vass 2012), illustrating the role of the social context in shaping how environmental discourses are constructed and legitimised (Louder and Wyborn 2020). By social context we mean the socio-cultural, economic, political, historical and environmental settings and structures in which social interactions occur. These settings and structures influence individual and collective values, preferences, perceptions, decisions and actions (Elder-Vass 2012, pp. 19–34).

In interpreting social-environmental discourses, we apply critical realist-constructionist approaches to the political and ethical perspectives that shape discourses, and how these perspectives are reflected in the values, rules, knowledge and practices used to address particular policy issues (Gorddard et al. 2016; Hajer 1995). This approach is congruent with the Advocacy Coalition Framework (Sabatier 1988), whereby disparate groups co-ordinate decision making to pursue preferred societal aspirations based on shared values, beliefs and preferences.

Understanding how policy discourses are constructed reveals how they gain legitimacy though links to normative societal values and aspirations. Policy discourses are based on imagery, metaphors and stories which then influence political agendas, legislative behaviour and policy implementation (Czech et al. 1998). Analysis of the language and metaphors in policy documents that construct, interpret and communicate social-environmental problems reveals how decision makers and stakeholders create meaning and consensus about the nature of a problem and its possible solutions (Dryzek 2013). An interpretive structural approach helps us to explore the historical, political and social-ecological context underlying construction of environmental policy discourses, and how these discourses legitimise and enable actions (Phillips and Hardy 2002). How policies are influenced by power is inherent to our analysis because what and whose knowledge, values and rules are included in or excluded from decisions is a product of power relations of decision makers and their structures and processes (Colloff et al. 2021).

We used mixed qualitative methods applied to empirical data from semi-structured interviews and reviews of legislative and policy documents on climate adaptation and biodiversity. We reviewed policy documents between 1991 to 2021 (documents listed in Supplementary Material S1), acknowledging the pivotal role of the 1992 UN Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in shaping environmental policies thereafter. This analysis revealed how discourses make adaptation actions credible, legitimate and important, how social-ecological realities are constructed and aligned from the international scale to local conservation. Policy and legislative documents were sorted according to the policy hierarchy model (Samnakay 2017, 2021) from the national level (e.g. constitutions and national legislation) to the local level (e.g. protected area management plans). Documents were screened to identify words and phrases used to communicate aspirations, approaches and expected outcomes, with reference to policy drivers, and links between drivers of change and responses. To analyse the level of policy integration, we considered administrative mechanisms, processes and policy settings, as described by (Ross and Dovers 2008). Administrative mechanisms include constitutional mandates and legal systems providing guidance to address the policy problem, processes are those procedures providing a blueprint for policy planning, communication and integration, including plans, policies, strategies, and political cycles.

We also assessed countries’ Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement as an indication of the relationship between the national and global scales on climate actions, as constructed within each nation and indicative of national discourses. Applying an interpretative analysis of policy discourses (Phillips and Hardy 2002), this assessment revealed how existing discourses make adaptation actions credible, legitimate and important and how social-ecological realities are constructed and aligned from the national to the local level. The environmental discourse archetypes typology (Dryzek 2013) was used to classify the policy discourses.

We used empirical data from 51 semi-structured interviews with protected area managers and other stakeholders including researchers and practitioners involved in conservation and climate adaptation in the three countries, including 16 interviews in Australia, 15 in Colombia, and 20 in South Africa. Interviews in South Africa were held in-person during fieldwork in February–March 2020, and in Australia and Colombia were mainly online due to COVID restrictions during 2020 (at least four interviews in Australia were in-person); interviews lasted an average of 40 min. The interviews were part of a previous study (Múnera‐Roldán et al., 2023) to identify narratives of adaptation focusing on how adaptation is conceptualised and implemented at the local scale. The interview questions included existing barriers to scaling adaptation and aspirations for the future. Interview protocols were approved by the Australian National University Human Research Ethics Committee (# 2019/226). Interviewees gave written consent and quotes are referenced with an abbreviation for each nation (Colombia: Co; Australia: Au; South Africa: SA).

3 Results

The three nations share common policy discourses of economic development based on extractive industries. However, each nation addresses climate change and biodiversity loss differently, including aspirational goals of reducing poverty, addressing inequality and social conflicts, as in Colombia and South Africa or conservative ideologies based on reducing emissions in Australian climate change discourses.

Despite assumptions that climate change and biodiversity agendas find common ground in ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA), in practice, both major agendas have different pathways. From the three nations, only Colombia explicitly indicates synergies across place-based conservation via protected areas with its adaptation commitments under its NDC. However, EbA approaches are used in Colombia and South Africa to integrate agendas across sectors and governance scales. In both countries, the rationale for adaptation takes a systemic perspective to conserve, restore, and manage ecosystems to guarantee a sustainable provision of benefits from nature to society. This systemic approach is facilitated by clear environmental policy frameworks, providing a base for protected area managers to engage in adaptation, legitimising nature conservation in protected areas as part of national commitments under international agreements. EbA in Australia was less clear, partly because of the lack of clear rules to integrate stakeholders’ agendas across sectors or jurisdictions. Below, we detail the legal landscape framing action on climate change and biodiversity loss in each nation, and barriers for scaling EbA across scales.

3.1 Legal landscape for integrating biodiversity in adaptation

Environmental policy frameworks in the three countries have been influenced by international environmental agreements. However, each nation uses different policy discourses as reflected in their commitments to the two IEAs and their adaptation actions, influenced by competing political interests and agendas, affecting actions at the local scale. Administrative mechanisms and processes in the three countries are affecting the integration of local and high-level narratives (Table 2).

Table 2 Legal landscape and integration between biodiversity and climate change, considering existing mechanisms and processes ( ● good; ● fair; ○ absent)
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Australia’s first communique to UNFCCC in 1994 addressed the need for cross-sectoral actions, including opportunities for natural ecosystems and protected areas. But in the 2015 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), agriculture and land-use change issues dominate over natural ecosystems, while the 2022 NDC reports domestic investments for adaptation in natural resource management, water infrastructure, drought and disaster resilience, although it does not specify mechanisms for implementation across jurisdictions. From 1992–2021 there was little change in policy mechanisms or phrases used in the discourse: emissions trading, clean energy, carbon farming, offsets, and new technology. Until the 2022 climate change amendment to the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007 (Cth.), no actions or objectives were backed by legislation and few policies are proactive.

Participants in Australia recognised limited opportunity for EbA approaches under existing Commonwealth and state legislation, especially since climate adaptation has been effectively absent from national policies and biodiversity legislation does not include considerations to anticipate, prepare and respond to climate-induced impacts on species or ecosystems (Commonwealth of Australia 1999). Respondents mentioned several barriers to engaging effectively in adaptation, including the lack of rules and laws on climate change and the absence of mechanisms for integrating climate change with environmental laws and policies across scales. For example, the Federal Government asserts in its National Guidance on Notifying Change in Australian Ramsar Wetlands that there is no obligation to notify climate induced changes (Principle 6, DEWHA 2009; p. 8). This lack of mechanisms negatively affects responses to IEAs, constraining agency to prepare and respond to climate change impacts affecting Ramsar wetlands: we can't deal with climate change explicitly through that avenue [the EPBC Act] and I'm not sure whether there's any way that we do that (Au-3).

Major policy changes in Colombia were triggered by the 1992 CBD, with new environmental legislation and institutions to guarantee the sustainable use and protection of biodiversity, humans’ rights to a healthy and productive environment, and the conservation of strategic ecosystems related with water cycle. Climate change action is legislated in Colombia (Republica de Colombia 2018), creating opportunities for cross-sectoral integration, connecting local actions with regional, national, and international policies. High-level discourses on climate change have transitioned from emissions reductions (early 2000s) to risk and vulnerability (2010s) and building social-ecological resilience (2021). Biodiversity is mainstreamed in Colombian climate change policies, for example through expanding protected areas as a commitment to adaptation under the 2020 NDC. Colombia’s NDC for adaptation is based on ecological responses to climate change, prioritising the environment in 11 adaptation objectives such as expanding protected areas, protection of strategic ecosystems, ecological restoration and mainstreaming climate change in policies and watershed planning.

Implementing and scaling up EbA in Colombia is facilitated by a national narrative to guarantee the provision of ecosystem services to society, and water security and ecological restoration have been critical to facilitate collaboration: national parks and regional authorities have clear restoration goals, and they are contributing to the [adaptation] goals that the nation has to meet the nationally determined contributions and the Paris agreement (Co-4). Parks staff are working closely with other stakeholders to expand collaborations and coordinate landscape planning under an EbA approach. Participants in Colombia recognise the institutional challenges to integrate conservation in adaptation at different scales and across sectors, especially to converge and effectively articulate decision-making processes about land-use planning: it is not enough to create the protected area if there is inadequate resource management which in the medium or long term will impact the fulfillment of the conservation objectives of the area. One of the challenges now in politics is this whole scenario of intersectoral agreements to generate specific actions within those landscapes where protected areas are located (Co-02).

The South African environmental policy framework aims for a balance between society, environment, economic development, and social justice. This balance has been central in biodiversity conservation and climate policies. The White Paper on the National Climate Change Response (Republic of South Africa, 2011) outlines opportunities for mitigation, transition to renewables, addressing poverty and inequality while acknowledging dependence on coal mining. High level climate change policies in South Africa describe adaptation as a risk-based, cross-sectoral process involving water, agriculture, health, biodiversity, and human settlements, assuming that healthy ecosystems will help society adapt to climate change. The 2021 NDC aims for a ‘just transition’ to achieve mitigation and adaptation by prioritising biodiversity and ecosystems for adaptation. EbA and landscape approaches are linked to sustainable land management outside park boundaries through engagement and co-development of plans with local communities, private owners, and local governments, whereby the park is treated as a stakeholder in the landscape.

EbA approaches in South Africa involves conserving, rehabilitating, and restoring ecosystems, and expanding protected areas, which provide opportunities at the local level to implement adaptation: there’s very strong impetus from a climate science perspective around the direction of expansion, and it’s not all about protected area expansion, it’s about how we manage the landscape in between and around the parks, how we foster compatible land uses to support that ecological sustainability in the long term (SA-20). Although managers in South Africa do not perceive climate change as an immediate problem, they consider it to be part of a long-term approach that requires monitoring and assessment of social-ecological vulnerabilities. Expanding protected areas and creating new ones are recognised as opportunities for EbA, which is facilitated by existing legislation. For instance, high-level discourses about justice provide a common language at the local level to implement future aspirations for adaptation: I would like to see a much fairer, just space so we can address the challenges and grab opportunities that are coming our way and learn from and adapt to properly. We all want the Garden Route [National Park] to still be this beautiful place, where people and nature can coexist for the benefit of all, not just for the benefit of some (SA-15).

Vulnerability and disaster risk reduction are commonly linked with EbA in Colombia. The 2018 law on climate change prioritises risk reduction and addresses vulnerability while promoting a transition to a competitive but sustainable, low-carbon economy, identifying drivers of change of social-ecological systems and underlying issues affecting vulnerability, including multicultural social contexts and polycentric governance. Disaster risk reduction is a high-level policy framework in Colombia in response to past extreme climate events and has created opportunities for managers to contextualise local aspirations for conserving nature as part of a broader landscape approach involving collaboration with local governments and other sectors (e.g. water) in planning and monitoring efforts: monitoring water systems, which is related with climate change, is done in the park’s buffer zone in order to articulate our work with the municipality’s natural risk reduction unit (Co-10).

Narratives from Australia and South Africa tend to use the term ‘resilience’ either in preference to or synonymous with ‘adaptation’. In Australia, ecosystem resilience, achieved via environmental management, underpins adaptation for biodiversity in the National Climate Resilience and Adaptation Strategy (NCRAS) of 2015 (Commonwealth of Australia 2015) and 2021 (Department of Water Agriculture and the Environment, 2021). The 2015 NCRAS highlights the national reserve system as critical to ecosystem resilience, but protected areas are not mentioned in the 2021 NCRAS objective to ‘better anticipate, manage and adapt to climate change’ through addressing cross-sectoral links, including the environment, or in Australia’s NDCs. Protecting threatened species and ecosystems remains the focus for biodiversity adaptation in Australia’s NRCA, which does not provide mechanisms for managers about how to connect conservation and adaptation across scales and sectors. Resilience is interpreted and implemented at the local level as ‘business as usual’ to reduce threats and maintain ecological integrity. Resilience is central to the strategic adaptive management philosophy in South Africa, and foundational for management plans (SANParks 2020).

Colombia and Australia link EbA with natural capital, market-based approaches, industry, and the economy. EbA appears for the first time in Australia’s discourses in the 2021 NCRAS. In Colombia, ecosystems are central to adaptation in climate change strategies, including its NDC, which promotes EbA for the mining and energy sectors.

3.2 Barriers and enablers to aligning adaptation across scales

The long-term effectiveness of protected areas as an EbA approach is constrained by mismatches between perceptions of ecosystem dynamics, ecological processes, and a sense of urgency to respond to events. Australian protected areas are not mentioned in its NDC or in the Commonwealth adaptation strategies, in contrast to the approach at the sub-national level. Climate strategies from the Australian Capital Territory (2019) and the New South Wales (2022) governments take an EbA approach, although the NSW protected areas network recognises limitations to EbA as part of an integrated response to climate change, including increased ecosystem degradation and land-tenure issues (DECC 2007).

Our findings illustrate the importance of regulatory frameworks to enable adaptation and cross-scale connections. In Australia, respondents mentioned frustration over a disconnect between fire regulations and ecosystems dynamics related to mandated prescribed burnings to manage vegetation and reduce fire risks: it's a political [mandate] we have to burn this many hectares, and for most of us it's quite annoying, because that's not the way ecology works. And that's not the way fire protection actually works (Au-08). These rules constrain local capability to develop new approaches and update management plans. Similarly, despite the proactive philosophy of strategic adaptive management applied in South Africa, management responses to climate change are reactive, partly because strategic adaptive management (and therefore managing for resilience) deals with natural processes whereas climate change is anthropogenic, making it harder for managers to define and understand ecosystem responses to climate-induced change: It's difficult for us to grasp it [climate change] because it’s beyond that sort of lifetime scale…then we’re going to command and control it (SA-12).

The politicisation of climate change issues can affect how regulatory frameworks are defined and the effective implementation of adaptation. Managers in Australia described how perceived politicisation of climate change, is reflected in the lack of rules and laws on climate change and poor integration with environmental laws and policy: we’ve been talking about climate policy and climate change for a long time, probably 30 years now, and we’ve seen little movement on it because of the politics (Au-6). In Colombia, despite the opportunity to integrate agendas under disaster risk reduction discourses, there is a perceived institutionalised rhetoric of disaster risk policies that continue to be implemented through short-term, reactive approaches: We can’t pretend that a five-year EbA program is a long-term solution. It requires collaboration and engagement across local communities and environmental authorities and that is not happening. (Co-12).

Colombian and South African respondents recognised the many challenges at the local level for integrated landscape management as part of EbA approaches in areas where land-use conflicts are increasing. Managers in South Africa recognise land tenure conflicts while reflecting on the social role of parks under climate change: [under EbA] you assume the protected area is going to help communities with water and clean air and shade and all kinds of things that people would need under climate change. But on the other hand, the people outside the protected area are really stressed (SA-19). Despite such tensions, participants from Colombia and South Africa recognised the important role of parks as being critical to providing resilience and opportunities for adaptation at the regional level. This is partly thanks to decentralised policy approaches and clear roles and responsibilities, which facilitate the implementation and mainstreaming of EbA at the local level as part of integrated land management with local communities and local governments. As one respondent in Colombia explained: [Los Colorados] park works closely with the San Juan Nepomuceno municipality, with local families and land-right holders to integrate good land management practices and conservation of natural resources, and thanks to that the park is meeting its ecological connectivity goals (Co-08). Similar approaches were mentioned in South Africa, as part of the work managers do inside and outside the park with various stakeholders and land-right holders. Although Australian participants share aspirations for landscape approaches as part of EbA, their responses highlighted the importance of acknowledging socio-political tensions of EbA.

Differing environmental discourses at the local scale can impair cross-scale implementation of EbA, as observed in the tensions over managing feral horses varies across jurisdictions in Australia. In 2018, the state of New South Wales passed a law to protect feral horses, The Kosciuszko Wild Horse Heritage Act 2018 (NSW Parliament 2018), following pressure from community groups regarding the perceived heritage status of the animals. As a result, feral horses are managed in Kosciuszko National Park, while Namadgi National Park in the neighbouring ACT all feral horses are culled (Braysher and Arman 2014). The social-political contestation over horses in Kosciuszko was mentioned as a barrier for adaptation, as managers anticipate more environmental damage from horses in the future: [feral species] programmes are underway, but the horse project is much more difficult to manage and get agreement on what to do to protect the values in that park that occur nowhere else in the world, and they're under threat from climate change. The expectation is, as it gets drier and with warmer winters, the horses will move up into those areas, but that is a very long-term discussion to have with the community (Au-11). This situation not only affects local capacity to update and implement management plans but constrains aspirations for landscape connectivity in the Australian Alps region.

The approach to implementation of EbA in South Africa is to co-envision with local communities a park’s future desired state, facilitated to identify drivers of change and objectives for the park’s management plan, aligning local perspectives and high-level agendas for biodiversity conservation. However, respondents indicated mismatches regarding different frames in use for landscape approaches, which then constrains cross scale integration of conservation goals: we might think that's quite an important site to get a conservation outcome for some of the areas next to the Wilderness Lakes [Ramsar site]…but for the provincial government if the land around the lake it's not of a very high biodiversity value, they won't make it their critical biodiversity area (SA-11).

4 Discussion

Out findings demonstrate that mainstreaming biodiversity as an integral part of adapting to climate change is addressed differently by each nation, where adaptation narratives carry different imaginaries regarding the effects of climate change on conservation goals. In particular, adaptation may be regarded as actions to prevent ecological change or, in a contrasting imaginary, as processes to facilitate adaptation to potentially different, but still functional ecosystem states. There are also national differences regarding who benefits from EbA and the approaches used to implement it.

At the national level, discourses from Colombia and South Africa represent broad aspirational goals for sustainable development, where conserving nature will reduce climate change impacts on livelihoods. Such discourses are then translated into local narratives as the means to address inequality and social conflicts related to place-based conservation. EbA is one of eleven frames used to communicate adaptation action (Singh et al. 2022). Based on our analyses, EbA is communicated as four broad narratives, representing different expected outcomes: protecting nature, disaster risk reduction, environmental justice, and ecosystem benefits at the landscape level (Fig. 2). These narratives represent goal-oriented and process-based approaches. Protecting nature and disaster risk reduction aims to prevent ecological change through normative approaches. The systemic approach applied in Colombia and South Africa, means that adaptation is not just an outcome but the process whereby park managers engage with other stakeholders beyond the boundaries of protected areas, with other jurisdiction and sectors in the landscape. In Australia, national environmental policies focusing on objectives to protect threatened species and ecosystems are proving too narrow to enable local action.

Fig. 2
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Ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) narratives: protecting nature, disaster risk reduction, ecosystem benefits at landscape level, and environmental justice, which are then implemented through normative or process-based frames

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We describe below how high-level policies provide a narrative for local action which then facilitates or constrains the operationalisation and scaling of adaptation.

4.1 From high-level narratives to local action

Our findings demonstrate the importance of examining socio-political contexts that shape adaptation preferences, and how policy translation prevents or facilitates new ideas for adaptation of conservation. Different environmental discourses and policy approaches at the national scale exemplify how narratives, beliefs, and identities can enable actions but also constrain them by not considering future options or how to implement conservation adaptation at the local scale. The full potential of nature’s contribution to adaptation (Colloff et al. 2020) is compromised by favouring agendas that prioritise economic benefits over environmental ones, as is the situation in our case studies.

Environmental legislation in Australia promotes sustainable development and conservation of natural resources, but in practice lacks mechanisms to integrate environmental management and climate adaptation across scales and sectors (Ross and Dovers 2008; Samnakay 2017). Moreover, what is missing from approaches for adapting biodiversity conservation is a proactive approach that anticipates climate change impacts and facilitates managers preparing for future climate impacts. Some state and territory governments have attempted a more systemic approach to climate change (Crowley 2021), but there is little guidance on cross-scale or cross-jurisdictional integration, highlighting a mismatch between climate adaptation and biodiversity conservation agendas. Denialism and political obfuscation have rendered climate change policies inadequate and ineffective (Hytten 2021). This politicisation and inadequate environmental legislation were mentioned by interviewees as one of the reasons constraining adaptation in protected areas.

Australian discourses represent a narrow, fragmented, incremental approach to adaptation, neglecting the role of nature in supporting sustainable development and EbA (Coffey and Marston 2013) and ignoring future consequences of climate change. The use of environmental offsets to mitigate environmental damage from mining and development represents an instrumental view of nature, aligned with administrative rationalist discourses (Dryzek 2013). Such discourses regard ecosystems as stocks of energy and matter to be controlled and managed, thus ignoring environmental uncertainty and biasing assumptions about the effects of biodiversity loss (Maseyk et al. 2021). Australian climate change strategies are based on conservative political ideologies (Hytten 2021), providing few options to integrate biodiversity and climate agendas across scales (McCormack 2018).

Colombia has a sound environmental policy framework that enables the mainstreaming of biodiversity into climate change policies and across sectors (Echeverri et al. 2023), for example, through expanding protected areas as a commitment to adaptation under the NDC. Discourses have shifted from framing climate change and biodiversity loss as problems of development towards addressing these issues through implementing the peace process and ensuring a supply of ecosystem services. Environmental discourses, with many instruments and rules for environmental management and commitments to IEAs, also align with administrative rationalism but with a shift towards the sustainable development discourse (Dryzek 2013, pp. 147–162) through the addition of climate adaptation and post-conflict reconciliation. However, the implementation of EbA strategies remains poorly implemented as evidenced by the high deforestation rates in and around protected areas (Clerici et al. 2020; Murillo-Sandoval et al. 2021). This disconnect between local realities and aspirations to address climate change is related to weak local governance, uneven power dynamics and highly contested land tenure, all of which have contributed to social-ecological conflict and violence (Faguet et al. 2020; Murillo-Sandoval et al. 2021). Moreover, fossil fuel extraction has been at the core of development discourses in the last two decades, prioritising short-term economic interests (Strambo and González Espinosa 2020). Promoting extractive industries and protecting biodiversity are clearly incompatible, reflecting underlying conflicting social-political factors affecting policy action.

Despite critiques of opportunistic policies based on instrumental values of nature as the means to address sustainability (Milhorance et al. 2022; Woroniecki et al. 2020), we found that protected area managers in Colombia use such policies to integrate adaptation into management. This policy alignment at the local level offers an opportunity to address governance problems by considering contextual factors that shape policy translation at different scales. However, cross-sectoral integration of adaptation, especially EbA, remains a challenge (Milhorance et al. 2022), as it is attempting to address the underlying factors of vulnerability to climate change, the political aspects of adaptation (e.g. land tenure conflicts, poverty), and the illegal use of natural resources more evident at the local level. Colombia has successfully legitimised its environmental policies as part of the process of creating a modern state and building its identity as a megadiverse nation (Leal 2017). But environmental inaction (e.g. ignoring deforestation) reveals a disconnect between international commitments, the national socio-political context (Clerici et al. 2020) and local aspirations for sustainability.

For its focus on justice equality, environmental discourses in South Africa align with Dryzek’s sustainable development discourse (2013), but the focus on complexity and resilience as applied to protected areas indicates elements of the ecological modernisation discourse (Dryzek 2013, pp. 165–183). In South Africa, climate change was initially framed as a scientific problem but became translated into a development problem to address impacts on society and its interaction with other drivers of vulnerability and change (Ziervogel et al. 2014). However, climate change is still poorly addressed in policies because of the lack of legislation to link the implementation of adaptation actions across sectors (Taljaard et al. 2019).

Despite this legislative gap, South African policy and management frameworks enable vertical integration between local (protected area), regional and national objectives in the alignment of conservation goals. However, the lack of clarity on how to address climate change constrains cross-scale adaptation, especially regarding the actions, needs, and values of different stakeholders. For example, implementation of adaptation at local scale is impaired by a poor understanding of the effects of climate change on ecosystem services and EbA, despite the promotion of EbA in national policies (Pasquini and Cowling 2015) and by provincial governments. Moreover, existing legislation does not facilitate resilience and adaptation goals (Novellie et al. 2016). Therefore, the social construction of adaptation based on resilience and justice requires major efforts to address structural problems in ways that are credible, legitimate, and important for local communities.

4.2 Practical implications

The challenges protected areas managers face in implementing and scaling up adaptation are not new and have been documented in other countries (Lemieux and Scott 2011; Lonsdale et al. 2017; Whitney and Ban 2019), indicating a potential ‘adaptation paralysis’ in protected areas governance. This apparent paralysis reveals mismatches across high-level goals and local-based contexts and realities. Addressing such stagnation requires attending to the human dimensions of adaptation, including those related to governance. Clarifying roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities across scales can help prepare protected area governance systems to better understand and adapt to change (Borrini-Feyerabend et al. 2013) especially when climate change makes it harder for managers to strategically prepare and respond to observed and projected climate impacts (Hannah 2010; Hopkins et al. 2015). As we found, particularly in Colombia and South Africa, a focus on governance can help mainstream ecosystems as part of national and subnational responses to address climate change.

We highlight the importance of considering conservation objectives for protected areas beyond narrow targets such as the proportion of land protected, or site-based protection of threatened species, to focus on how conserving biodiversity can contribute to climate adaptation for other sectors and society (Angelstam et al. 2021). For example, Australia and Colombia excel in the protected area coverage in their national reserve systems (about 20% of Australia and 27% of Colombia, including other effective area-based measures) managed under different governance schemes, including State, private, and Indigenous Protected Areas (UNEP-WCMC and IUCN, 2024). However, the long-term goal of protecting biodiversity has not been achieved in either nation (Pressey et al. 2021; Suarez-Castro et al. 2023), despite climate change being identified as a major challenge for conserving biodiversity in both countries (Dunlop and Brown 2008; Múnera‐Roldán et al., 2023). In this sense, recognising existing biases promoted by prevailing conservation narratives and their role in informing rules and action can facilitate transitions toward more pluralistic narratives that enable more opportunities for adaptation.

For instance, despite successful conservation stories such as the Indigenous Protected Areas (IPA) program (Tran et al. 2020), Australian conservation policies are mostly biased towards protecting species and ecosystems over social and recreational values (Hernandez et al. 2021). Such eco-centric conservation narratives ignore issues of social justice (Louder and Wyborn 2020) becoming a barrier to engaging different perspectives and approaches about nature’s contributions to human well-being and adaptation, and therefore defining actionable and inclusive adaptation pathways. Overcoming this require can start by recognising potential biases or ‘conceptual failures’ in current framings with narrow visions of nature that subsequently can lead then to knowledge and power imbalances and potentially implementation failures (Pereira and Gebara 2023).

Our case studies from Colombia and South Africa provide examples of how pluralistic and participatory conservation strategies open possibilities for different narratives to balance instrumental, intrinsic and relational values, widening opportunities to understand and negotiate EbA options with relevant stakeholders (Múnera‐Roldán et al., 2023). Our findings reaffirm the relevance of participatory approaches broaden the range of interests and values from diverse stakeholders, a key issue for policy coherence (Pickering 2023) to mainstream EbA across scales. Adapting to climate change is locally contextual, but the principle of subsidiarity requires clear rules and coordination to facilitate cross-scale integration (Dovers and Hezri 2010). The successful implementation of climate adaptation and biodiversity agendas at the local scale is influenced by the extent of horizontal integration, which requires aligning the agendas of different stakeholders. For example, NDCs enable the mainstreaming of adaptation across sectors and sub-national units (Hsu et al. 2020) but require coordination and compliance to guarantee policy coherence. As we have documented above, enabling policy contexts can facilitate cross-scale and cross-sectoral integration of EbA, as was observed in Colombia and South Africa, where both local and high-level narratives can find an operational role in driving transformative change. Additionally, better clarity on how to report and integrate climate change in biodiversity conservation can increase understanding about the impacts of climate change on conservation goals, increasing managers capacities to deal with uncertainty and dynamics of change. Having such clarity can guide climate-ready conservation objectives through which different stakeholders can determine the feasibility and desirability of implementing current strategies under scenarios of change, and its implications for conservation values (Hopkins et al. 2015).

A way forward is through reconciling pluralities of values, rules, knowledge and actions across scales and stakeholders (Gorddard et al. 2016) and moving beyond technical aspects, such as monitoring of indicators, to recognise the fundamental role of governance in adaptation to climate change (van Kerkhoff et al. 2019). However, despite calls for pluralistic approaches and the inclusion of traditional knowledge, policies in the three nations we studied continue to focus on scientific and technical solutions to reduce uncertainty and define objectives and actions, thus legitimising some forms of knowledge and practice and marginalising others. From our case studies, we found that only those protected areas in Colombia are in the process of integrating local knowledge in adaptation at the local level (Múnera and van Kerkhoff 2019), but challenges remain for mainstreaming at higher levels, risking the prioritisation of interests of some stakeholders over others and making it harder to achieve social-environmental justice. In the case of South Africa, the participatory visioning approach used for the management plans (Roux et al. 2021) offers an opportunity to broaden a collective understanding of climate change impacts on protected areas values. Australian protected areas can learn from the successful examples to implement and design IPAs, where local values and aspirations are openly deliberated helping to understand trade-offs and consequences of decisions as well as roles and responsibilities (Preuss and Dixon 2012).

Another practical implication of considering local narratives in sustainability and adaptation is presented by the implementation of the GBF. Local narratives are grounded in everyday reality and the relationships that managers and stakeholders create with place, providing a better understanding of how climate change will affect ecosystems and the impacts on local values and benefits (Múnera‐Roldán et al., 2023). Place-based narratives can inform conservation goals that align with people's needs and values, potentially bridging the gap for implementing the GBF and the SDGs. This approach could create options for EbA based on local realities and aspirations, instead of rigid, top-down narratives with their own interpretations of local realities that are biased by political and economic interests (Pereira and Gebara 2023; Wakild 2018). Place-based pluralism requires coherent approaches with clear roles and responsibilities including land tenure rights at different levels (Willmore 2020) as part of participatory spaces where human relations with nature are critically deliberated, thus allowing a safe space to evaluate if current structures and norms are fit for purpose to navigate a changing climate (Hopkins et al. 2015).

Integrating adaptation and conservation as part of sustainable development requires consideration of which elements of nature should be conserved and used and who benefits or loses out. Accordingly, conceiving, operationalising and implementing adaptation requires consideration of relational and ontological issues that are most visible at the local level. Providing adequate resources and enabling policy frameworks are fundamental to support local scale efforts as building blocks for the scaling up and scaling out of adaptation.

5 Conclusions

The case studies we presented demonstrate how environmental approaches in each nation reflect specific beliefs and identities, giving form to distinct epistemic discourses and communities. These discourses share similar metaphors to justify economic development over biodiversity protection and adaptation to climate change. The social construction of adaptation in protected areas reflects the influence of international agreements as opportunities to build capacity, fill knowledge gaps, and adapt planning. At the local scale, existing environmental and climate change laws and policies can enable agency, support cross-scale integration and open opportunities for adaptation. In South Africa and Colombia climate change is framed as an opportunity for sustainable development and environmental justice. For Colombia, building its identity as a biodiverse nation has been critical at local area scale to identify alternatives and opportunities for adaptation and planning, legitimise protected areas and connect local efforts to national commitments under international agreements. In contrast, unclear rules and policies on climate change in Australia have constrained agency for adaptation in protected areas.

Protected areas are not just conservation museums or strategies to meet international agreements. They represent links with people, with iconic species and landscapes. They are fundamental to provide food and water for society, including local and Indigenous communities, as well as recreation spaces for some members of society. The challenges to meet sustainability goals depend on our ability to recognise the multiples ways people connect and value the natural world, while acknowledging the important role of nature in supporting adaptation in the future. To be effective, credible, and legitimate, adapting natural resources to a changing climate requires fundamental changes in discursive practices, recognition of power structures and imbalances, and addressing underlying barriers that perpetuate maladaptive practices.

Bridging local realities with global aspirations needs to address the ethics of how to respond to environmental change, who is affected by conservation and adaptation approaches, and their impacts on social-ecological systems. These practices can be aided by critically exploring the discourses, metaphors, and stories shaping collective thinking and action to identify areas of contestation and by finding options to incorporate new knowledge and practices.