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Participatory multi-criteria methods for adaptation to climate change

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Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The quality and implementation of climate change policies generally benefit from the involvement of diverse stakeholders. In 2018, the Ministry of Environment of the Slovak Republic commissioned an elaboration of the National Action Plan (NAP) for implementation of the National Adaptation Strategy to Climate Change (NAS). A structured process, including a panel of experts and the participation of stakeholders, was designed to establish and evaluate policy options for the NAP. The panel members involved high-ranking officials from the relevant ministries and public agencies involved in nature protection, forestry, water management, and public health, as well as academics, representatives of regional and local governments, businesses, and members of non-governmental organisations. Delphi and the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) were applied in order to evaluate the policy options. Interactive online tools were developed to perform the Delphi and AHP exercises. In the Delphi process, the participants drafted a comprehensive catalogue of challenges and potential policy activities in relation to adaptation to climate change in Slovakia. The AHP exercise evaluated and ranked 32 policy measures for eight specific policy objectives on the criteria of importance, urgency and feasibility.

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Notes

  1. Refers to a 35% indicative allocation for Policy Objective 2 of the Partnership Agreement for the Slovak Republic in the period 2021–2027/2030. Policy support for adaptation to climate change relies heavily on ESIF resources.

  2. The business representatives included owners of firms active in landscape planning, urban planning, vineyard management and environmental consulting. Some prospective panellists were less responsive than others. The Ministry of Transport (responsible for tourism policy), for example, nominated only one panellist (No 8—Cross-sectoral approaches). We invited ten NGOs to participate in the AHP process, of which one responded and was included into the panel.

  3. All strategies (including NAP) have to pass the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) before coming into force in Slovakia. The NAP enters the SEA process in 2021.

  4. The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) produces the ‘Democracy Index’. The index intends to measure the state of democracy in 167 countries of the World. The Slovak Republic was no 42 in 2019. Slovakia achieved good scores on electoral process, functioning of government and civil liberties (9.58, 7.14 and 7.94 out of 10), but medium ones on political participation and political culture (5.56 and 5.63 respectively).

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Funding

This work was supported by the Slovak VEGA grant no. 2/0002/18.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Forecasting, Centre of Social and Psychological Sciences, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Šancová 56, 813 64, Bratislava, Slovak Republic

    Vladimír Baláž, Dušana Dokupilová & Richard Filčák

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  1. Vladimír Baláž
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  2. Dušana Dokupilová
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  3. Richard Filčák
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Contributions

Vladimír Baláž (corresponding author): conceptualization, methodology, supervision, writing–original draft preparation.

Dušana Dokupilová: software design, investigation, validation, formal analysis, data curation.

Richard Filčák: project administration, funding acquisition, investigation.

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Correspondence to Vladimír Baláž.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Baláž, V., Dokupilová, D. & Filčák, R. Participatory multi-criteria methods for adaptation to climate change. Mitig Adapt Strateg Glob Change 26, 15 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11027-021-09955-4

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