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Centring Power in Climate Adaptation Politics Through Cross-Scale Governmentalities: A Systematic Review of High-Income Countries

Garland, Joshua LU ; Scown, Murray LU and Boyd, Emily LU (2026) In Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 17(2). p.1-10
Abstract
With sea-level rise and increasingly frequent extreme weather events threatening communities, ecosystems and built infrastructure alike, climate change adaptation is pressing. This remains true in high-income countries where research capturing power dynamics underpinning adaptation continues to develop with implications for how policy and exclusion can be understood. Through a systematic review, the state-of-the-art concerning climate adaptation politics in high-income countries is analyzed, identifying n = 31 articles from Scopus and Web of Science. Key literature findings include a dominance of technical-scientific narratives with possible consequences for community exclusion and an implicit acknowledgement of actor network importance.... (More)
With sea-level rise and increasingly frequent extreme weather events threatening communities, ecosystems and built infrastructure alike, climate change adaptation is pressing. This remains true in high-income countries where research capturing power dynamics underpinning adaptation continues to develop with implications for how policy and exclusion can be understood. Through a systematic review, the state-of-the-art concerning climate adaptation politics in high-income countries is analyzed, identifying n = 31 articles from Scopus and Web of Science. Key literature findings include a dominance of technical-scientific narratives with possible consequences for community exclusion and an implicit acknowledgement of actor network importance. This review expands conceptually around power dynamics relevant to narratives and inclusivity in adaptation politics through a governmentality framework that could usefully foreground the identification and analysis of cross-scale power dynamics implicitly identified by the literature, but which remain open to more explicit development. Governmentality could thereby facilitate enhanced understandings of adaptation power, politics and networks, which research and policy have recognized as important yet been slow to address within high-income countries possessing climate vulnerabilities. (Less)
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author
; and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
in
Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change
volume
17
issue
2
article number
e70057
pages
1 - 10
publisher
John Wiley & Sons Inc.
external identifiers
  • scopus:105036175163
ISSN
1757-7799
DOI
10.1002/wcc.70057
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
b15c956d-d7d2-413a-9c8c-5565bd53107f
date added to LUP
2026-04-21 08:53:40
date last changed
2026-04-26 04:01:47
@article{b15c956d-d7d2-413a-9c8c-5565bd53107f,
  abstract     = {{With sea-level rise and increasingly frequent extreme weather events threatening communities, ecosystems and built infrastructure alike, climate change adaptation is pressing. This remains true in high-income countries where research capturing power dynamics underpinning adaptation continues to develop with implications for how policy and exclusion can be understood. Through a systematic review, the state-of-the-art concerning climate adaptation politics in high-income countries is analyzed, identifying n = 31 articles from Scopus and Web of Science. Key literature findings include a dominance of technical-scientific narratives with possible consequences for community exclusion and an implicit acknowledgement of actor network importance. This review expands conceptually around power dynamics relevant to narratives and inclusivity in adaptation politics through a governmentality framework that could usefully foreground the identification and analysis of cross-scale power dynamics implicitly identified by the literature, but which remain open to more explicit development. Governmentality could thereby facilitate enhanced understandings of adaptation power, politics and networks, which research and policy have recognized as important yet been slow to address within high-income countries possessing climate vulnerabilities.}},
  author       = {{Garland, Joshua and Scown, Murray and Boyd, Emily}},
  issn         = {{1757-7799}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  month        = {{04}},
  number       = {{2}},
  pages        = {{1--10}},
  publisher    = {{John Wiley & Sons Inc.}},
  series       = {{Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change}},
  title        = {{Centring Power in Climate Adaptation Politics Through Cross-Scale Governmentalities: A Systematic Review of High-Income Countries}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/wcc.70057}},
  doi          = {{10.1002/wcc.70057}},
  volume       = {{17}},
  year         = {{2026}},
}