Climate adaptation has to be achieved in domains in which climate is not a primary and hot issue. Practices of adaptation to climate change emerge in a variety of micro governance systems in which sets of actors act and interact around their own core-issues like agriculture, flood protection, water supply and urban development. While those engaged in climate research often urge for an abrupt, climate goal oriented and controlled processes of adaptation, aiming to prevent a further catastrophic event, actors in the variety of micro governance systems are much more in favour of their own developments, mainly prepared to accept small adjustments to the desires of climate adaptation. Climate adaptation in a variety of micro systems, where nobody is in charge, enhances specific leadership challenges. At the same time, leadership has to develop a panorama of the future, helping to prevent actors from annihilating each other or shift the burden to other places or future generations.
Against this background this paper seeks to analyse the leadership of adaptation to climate change. In doing so, it addresses three questions: 1) Which leadership approaches enhance processes of incremental, but on-going adjustments? 2) Which strategies do leaders, that apply these approaches, use to scale up micro system adaptations, in search for an adaptive capacity on a higher level and in order to churn small steps into long term transformative change? 3) How and to what extent does leadership bring long-term change desires with respect to climate adaptation and short-term actions together.
To answer these questions the paper combines Complexity Leadership Theory (CLT) with emerging theories on climate adaptation. Leadership models in CLT are focussing on fostering creativity, learning and adaptability as important concept and are looking for organizing principles to increase them.
