Diffusion of climate policy integration in adaptation strategies: Translating the EU mandate into UK and Danish national contexts

Abstract

In this paper, we examine how EU Climate Adaptation Strategy and especially its pivotal principle of policy integration of climate adaptation has diffused to the climate adaptation strategies of Member States. We explore how this quest for climate adaptation policy integration was pushed by vertical diffusion of the framing and policy mixes launched at EU level. To do so, we analyse and compare national climate adaptation strategies in two EU Member States – the UK and Denmark – over a period of time 2013-2021 that witnessed Brexit and increased attention to climate impacts. Conceptually and analytically, we draw on the policy diffusion literature centring on four potential drivers of vertical policy diffusion: interests, rights, ideology, and recognition which inform the analysis. Further, to scrutinize what is diffused, we conceptualise climate policy integration including the rationale and policy instruments for CPI. We find that both countries’ approaches to climate change adaptation have been shaped by rights-based diffusion in a mixture of shadow hierarchy, soft power and activation of other policy areas with binding directives, and we further identify divergence between the cases in attention before and after Brexit and in mandating local level actions.