Editing IPCC:AR6/SROCC/Chapter-4 (section)

==== 4.4.4.2 Planning, Public Participation and Conflict Resolution in the Face of SLR ====

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'''Land use or spatial planning''' has the potential to help communities prepare for the future and decide how to manage coastal activities and land use taking into account the uncertainty, complexity and contestation that characterise SLR ( ''high confidence'' ; Hurlimann and March, 2012; Hurlimann et al., 2014; Berke and Stevens, 2016; King et al., 2016; Reiblich et al., 2017) Planners work with governing authorities, the private sector, and local communities to integrate and apply tailor-made decision analysis, public participation and conflict resolution approaches that can be institutionalised in statutory provisions, and aligned with informal institutional structures and processes carried out at various scales (Hurlimann and March, 2012; Smith and Glavovic, 2014; Berke and Stevens, 2016).

Planning can play an important role in crafting SLR responses, addressing several of the governance challenges identified above (Section 4.4.3). Planning is future focused and can assist communities to develop and pursue a shared vision, and understand and address SLR concerns in locality-specific ways (Hurlimann and March, 2012; Berke and Stevens, 2016). Planning can help articulate and clarify roles and responsibilities through statutory planning provisions, complemented by non-statutory processes (Vella et al., 2016). It can build social and administrative networks that mobilise cross-scale SLR responses, and facilitate integration of diverse mitigation and adaptation goals alongside other public aspirations and policy imperatives (Hurlimann and March, 2012; Vella et al., 2016). Planning can also facilitate the establishment of collaborative regional forums that cross jurisdictional boundaries and assist local governments and other stakeholders to pool resources and coordinate roles and responsibilities across multiple governance levels, such as the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact, USA (Shi et al., 2015; Vella et al., 2016). Regulatory planning can be used by governing authorities to steer future infrastructure, housing, industry and related development away from areas exposed to SLR (Hurlimann and March, 2012; Hurlimann et al., 2014; Smith and Glavovic, 2014; Berke and Stevens, 2016).

The extent to which planning is effective in reducing coastal risk, however, varies widely between and within coastal nations (Glavovic and Smith, 2014; Shi et al., 2015; Cuevas et al., 2016; King et al., 2016; Woodruff and Stults, 2016). Planning can fail to prevent development in at-risk locations, and may even accelerate such development, as experienced in settings as diverse as Java, Indonesia (Suroso and Firman, 2018), the Philippines (Cuevas, 2018), Australia (Hurlimann et al., 2014), and the USA (Vella et al., 2016; Woodruff and Stults, 2016). Planning has exacerbated sociospatial inequalities in cities like Boston, USA, Santiago, Chile, and Jakarta, Indonesia (Anguelovski et al., 2016). A study of vulnerability dynamics in Houston, New Orleans and Tampa, USA shows that vulnerability can be reinforced or ameliorated through adaptation planning and decision making processes (Kashem et al., 2016). Regulatory planning may be non-existent in some settings, such as informal settlements, or when used can paradoxically entrench vulnerability and compound risk (Berquist et al., 2015; Amoako, 2016; Ziervogel et al., 2016b). Planning practice is thus both a contributor to and an outcome of local politics and power. Recognising and navigating these challenges is key to realising the promise of planning for reducing SLR risk, and participatory planning processes that reconcile divergent interests are central to this endeavour (Forester, 2006; Smith and Glavovic, 2014; Anguelovski et al., 2016; Cuevas et al., 2016).

'''Public participation''' refers to directly involving citizens in decision making processes rather than only indirectly via voting. Citizen participation is commonplace in public decision making that addresses important societal concerns like SLR (Sarzynski, 2015; Berke and Stevens, 2016; Gorddard et al., 2016; Baker and Chapin III, 2018; Yusuf et al., 2018b). Practices sit along a continuum from manipulation to minimal involvement and more empowering and self-determining practices (Arnstein, 1969; International Association for Public Participation, 2018). Public participation draws on a wide variety of tailored engagement processes and practices, from ‘serious games’ (Wu and Lee, 2015) to role-play simulations (Rumore et al., 2016), and deliberative-analytical engagement (Webler et al., 2016).

There has been a proliferation of public engagement approaches and practices applied to adaptation in recent decades (Webler et al., 2016; Kirshen et al., 2018; Mehring et al., 2018; Nkoana et al., 2018; Yusuf et al., 2018a; Uittenbroek et al., 2019). Increasing citizen participation in adaptation and other public decision making processes shifts the role of government from a chiefly steering and regulating role towards more responsive and enabling roles, sometimes referred to as co-design, co-production, and co-delivery of adaptation responses (Ziervogel et al., 2016a; Mees et al., 2019). Engagement strategies grounded in community deliberation can help to improve understanding about SLR and response options, reducing the polarising effect of alternative political allegiances and worldviews (Akerlof et al., 2016; Uittenbroek et al., 2019). Public participation has also the potential to successfully include vulnerable groups in multi-level adaptation processes (Kirshen et al., 2018), promote justice and enable transformative change (Broto et al., 2015; Schlosberg et al., 2017).

It is widely recognised that authentic and meaningful public participation is important and can help in crafting effective and enduring adaptation responses, but is invariably difficult to achieve in practice (Barton et al., 2015; Cloutier et al., 2015; Sarzynski, 2015; Serrao-Neumann et al., 2015; Berke and Stevens, 2016; Chu et al., 2016; Schlosberg et al., 2017; Baker and Chapin III, 2018; Kirshen et al., 2018; Lawrence et al., 2018; Mehring et al., 2018; Lawrence et al., 2019; Uittenbroek et al., 2019). There is limited empirical evidence that public participation per se improves environmental outcomes (Callahan, 2007; Reed, 2008; Newig and Fritsch, 2009). Major factors determining outcomes are tacit, including trust, environmental preferences, power relationships and the true motivations of sponsor and participants (Reed, 2008; Newig and Fritsch, 2009). Difficulties in realising the anticipated benefits of public participation have been shown in coastal settings including Queensland, Australia (Burton and Mustelin, 2013), Germany’s Baltic Sea (Schernewski et al., 2018), England (Mehring et al., 2018), Sweden (Brink and Wamsler, 2019), and South Africa (Ziervogel, 2019). Research by Uittenbroek et al. (2019) in the Netherlands, for example, shows that public participation objectives are more probable if participation objectives and process design principles and practices are co-produced by community and government stakeholders. In some cities in the Global South, experience shows that a focus on building effective multi-sector governance institutions can facilitate ongoing public involvement in adaptation planning and implementation, and enhance long-term adaptation prospects (Chu, 2016b).

'''Conflict resolution''' refers to formal and informal processes that enable parties to create peaceful solutions for their disputes (Bercovitch et al., 2008). They range from litigation and adjudication to more collaborative processes based on facilitation, mediation and negotiation (Susskind et al., 1999; Bercovitch et al., 2008). Such processes can be used in the public domain to make difficult social choices. Whilst it may be impossible to eliminate controversy and disputes due to SLR, conflict resolution can be foundational for achieving effective, fair and just outcomes for coastal communities (Susskind et al., 2015; Nursey-Bray, 2017). Whereas some responses to social conflict (see definition in Section 4.4.3.3) can be destructive (e.g., resorting to violence), constructive approaches to conflict resolution (e.g., negotiation and mediation) can help disputants satisfy their interests and even have transformational adaptation potential (Laws et al., 2014; Nursey-Bray, 2017). Laws et al. (2014), for example, use the term ‘hot adaptation’ to describe adaptation efforts that harness the energy and engagement that conflict provokes; and create opportunities for public deliberation and social learning about complex problems like SLR. Such an approach has particular relevance in settings most at risk to SLR. Realising this potential is, however, challenging in the face of local politics and the differential power and influence of disputants. These realities have been accounted for in public conflict resolution scholarship and practice for many decades (Forester, 1987; Dukes, 1993; Forester, 2006), and lessons learned are beginning to be applied to adaptation (Laws et al., 2014; Nursey-Bray, 2017; Sultana and Thompson, 2017) and SLR response planning (Susskind et al., 2015). Conflict was turned into cooperation in some villages in floodplains in Bangladesh, for example, by facilitated dialogue and incentivised cooperation between local communities and government, with external facilitator assistance, leading to improved water security in a climate stressed environment (Sultana and Thompson, 2017). At a larger scale, the Mekong River Commission, with its water diplomacy framework, provides an institutional structure and processes, with technical support, and legal and strategic mechanisms, that help to negotiate solutions for complex delta problems and, in so doing, help avert widespread destruction of livelihoods and conflict (Kittikhoun and Staubli, 2018).

Many of the techniques used in planning, public participation and conflict resolution, at times together with decision analysis and support tools, are being applied in combination. In New Zealand, for example, a participatory approach was used to combine dynamic adaptive pathways planning with multi-criteria and real options analysis (Section 4.4.4.3.4) to develop a 100-year strategy to manage coastal hazard risk (Lawrence et al., 2019; see Box 4.1). Public participation thereby helped to shift communities towards a longer-term view and towards considering a wider range of adaptation options and pathways. Such combined approaches are also sometimes referred to as Community Based Adaptation, which involve local people directly in understanding and addressing the climate change risks they face (Box 4.4). These processes and practices are used in many settings, from small, isolated indigenous communities to large-scale coastal infrastructure projects in both the Global North and South. See Table 4.9 in Section 4.4.5 for illustrative examples.

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