Climate change is arguably the most important challenge facing the international community in our era. Its importance has been recognized in recent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and one of the proposed Sustainable Development Goals refers explicitly to the necessity of taking urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.1 Climate change adaptation is primarily a governance challenge (e.g. Meadowcroft 2009, Vignola 2011). International institutions have acknowledged that high-quality, effective governance is essential for the successful mitigation of climate change, for example through reductions in deforestation and forest degradation (e.g. FAO and ITTO 2009). However, the global governance frameworks and international climate processes have not progressed enough toward a solution, highlighting the need to implement measures at other scales (such as national, municipal, and landscape). Effective climate governance will require complementary actions in smaller settings and the participation of a wider range of formal and informal institutions (Busby 2010). Moreover, climate governance has evolved from being a problem essentially dealt with in the public realm by states, to one that also needs to be addressed in other spheres and through other instruments, such as public-private partnerships.

Climate change, Sustainable Development, adaptation, climate governance