Harnessing Current Government Practices to Plan for and Adapt to the Risks and Uncertainty Posed by Climate Change

This research paper, prepared by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) for the 2010 World Resources Report, argues that existing government practices can be harnessed to manage the risks and uncertainties of climate change. The authors propose a framework of seven adaptive policy-making practices divided into 'planned adaptability' and 'autonomous adaptability' to help policy-makers navigate complex, unpredictable socio-economic and ecological systems.

• The authors propose that current government practices are sufficient to plan for climate-related risks, provided policy-makers adopt a new appreciation for 'adaptive policies' that can anticipate risk and navigate the unforeseen.
• Planned adaptability involves conscious efforts to anticipate risk through analytic and deliberative processes. This includes five specific practices: integrated and forward-looking analysis (using scenario planning), built-in policy adjustments (semi or fully automatic), formal policy review (including permanent pilots), promoting variation (diverse solutions), and multi-stakeholder deliberation.
• Autonomous adaptability focuses on designing policies that enable stakeholders on the ground to respond to unforeseen events that cannot be anticipated through analysis. This is achieved through four practices: promoting variation, multi-stakeholder deliberation, enabling self-organization (leveraging social capital), and decentralization of decision-making.
• The authors identify several political and fiscal barriers to adaptive policy-making, such as the political unacceptability of 'experimentation' and the difficulty of promoting policy variation. They suggest 'barrier-busters,' such as framing all policy implementation as a 'continuous policy pilot' to make testing and adjustment more palatable to politicians.
• In the context of massive capital infrastructure investments, such as hydropower, the authors suggest that risk management should involve diversity, which may mean opting for more and smaller-scale investments and diversifying power sources to avoid correlation with drought risks.
• The paper highlights that crop insurance programs in Canada are a notable example of a policy that successfully integrated multiple adaptive practices, including integrated assessment, built-in adjustments, formal review via pilots, and decentralized decision-making.

APA

Swanson, D., Roy, D., Nair, S., & Tyler, S. (2010). Harnessing Current Government Practices to Plan for and Adapt to the Risks and Uncertainty Posed by Climate Change. World Resources Institute. https://files.wri.org/d8/s3fs-public/2023-01/wrr-2010-11-question-1-response-3.pdf

Chicago

Swanson, Darren, Dimple Roy, Sreeja Nair, and Stephen Tyler. Harnessing Current Government Practices to Plan for and Adapt to the Risks and Uncertainty Posed by Climate Change. World Resources Institute, 2010. https://files.wri.org/d8/s3fs-public/2023-01/wrr-2010-11-question-1-response-3.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Swanson |first1=Darren |last2=Roy |first2=Dimple |last3=Nair |first3=Sreeja |last4=Tyler |first4=Stephen |title=Harnessing Current Government Practices to Plan for and Adapt to the Risks and Uncertainty Posed by Climate Change |publisher=World Resources Institute |date=2010 |url=https://files.wri.org/d8/s3fs-public/2023-01/wrr-2010-11-question-1-response-3.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{swanson2010harnessing, author = {Swanson, Darren and Roy, Dimple and Nair, Sreeja and Tyler, Stephen}, title = {{Harnessing Current Government Practices to Plan for and Adapt to the Risks and Uncertainty Posed by Climate Change}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, year = {2010}, url = {https://files.wri.org/d8/s3fs-public/2023-01/wrr-2010-11-question-1-response-3.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }