This paper focuses on as assessment of laws and legal mechanisms to improve adaptive capacity of rural agricultural producers and communities to respond to climate variability and change, both floods and drought, in the future. Laws, and their mechanisms (regulatory, economic, and suasive instruments) can reduce exposure or vulnerability thereby building capacity to respond to anticipated increasing future variability in extreme climate events. However, there is also the possibility that the opposite impact may occur, and laws impede adaptation.
Utilizing a multi-level institutional analysis to analyze legal instruments (regulatory, economic, and suasive) and their impact on communities and rural agricultural producers though an analysis of drivers and impacts on actors through action situations, a comparative assessment of laws impacting vulnerability in relation to extreme events of drought and flood will be made. Two provincial jurisdictions (Alberta and Saskatchewan) with very different local and provincial governance systems will be compared. Alberta relies heavily on irrigated agriculture and allows water trading while Saskatchewan does not.
This assessment reveals that adaptation in respect of drought primarily resides within the realm on individual producers, or the private sphere. Conversely, adaptation in respect of flood primarily resides within the realm of the government, and specifically local government. The consideration of the roles of the public versus the private sphere in a considered, uniform manner allows for recommendations for improvements to these legal instruments. These recommendations will be made based on this analysis and informed by the principles of adaptive institutional governance.
Findings are based on part of a larger assessment of community vulnerability and adaptation to extreme climate events of drought and flood funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, NSERC, and IDRC.
