Both uncertainty and the variety of stakeholders, interests and values associated with climate change often make the issue a wicked problem, prone to conflict and controversy. Accordingly, the governance of adaptation to climate change involves puzzlement over widely diverging knowledge claims and problem definitions. In addition governance involves power play for support to get things done. This puzzling and powering gets shape in a constant interplay of ideas and interests, which can be at least partly grasped through the concept of interactive framing. This paper centres around the research questions how these puzzling and powering dynamics look like, and whether or not they lead to controversy, apathy or action in the climate adaptation governance of the Dutch Delta Programme ‘Lake Ijssel’. By conducting frame analyses of network meetings, (intermediary) policy documents and interviews with network members we analyse how stakeholders in this ad hoc governance arrangement puzzle and power over possible routes and preferable destinations for climate adaptation. We conclude that national civil servants and experts powered themselves a central role in the governance network by framing the climate adaptation puzzle in a non-political or technical form. Although this depoliticized framing downplayed initial controversy among a wide variety of stakeholders, we show how the framing created apathy among local decision-makers who where essential for political action. We discuss how this depoliticized framing of the climate adaptation puzzle may result in ‘bystanders’ in the governance process, who might withdraw the ad hoc governance network turning into lobbyists in backstage political networks.
