Mainstreaming Climate Change Adaptation: The Case of Multi-Level Governance in Finland

Abstract

Although mitigation of climate change dominates the climate change agenda in Finland, adaptation to climate change is increasingly recognised as an important policy issue across all levels of governance. Finland was an early mover on adaptation, being the first country in Europe to publish a National Adaptation Strategy to climate change in 2005. After a few years of mainstreaming of adaptation into regular planning, implementation and monitoring at the national level, adaptation has been recognised important and some measures have been implemented but that there are also sectors where hardly any measures have been taken. At sub-national level, actors are pursuing voluntary climate strategies that are not directly linked to the developments at the national level. This chapter highlights how the different levels of governance are disconnected in terms of their actions on adaptation. On the one hand, at the national level, the NAS predominantly concentrates on administrative sectors by mainstreaming adaptation. On the other hand, the lower levels of governance are pursuing their separate climate strategies that are based on voluntary initiatives with little input from the national level. Thus, despite the early action on adaptation, it can be argued that implementation of adaptation measures has been slow and fragmented across levels of governance.