Unpacking climate adaptation policy and diffusion at the local level: Evidence from the State of Hessen

Adaptation to some level of climate change has become unavoidable. Policy innovations and their diffusion are thus urgently needed in order to cope with a range of new and in their scale often unprecedented challenges, such as heavy precipitation, drought, heat waves or floods. The local level plays a crucial role in this adaptation process, as municipalities usually select, prepare, and implement adaptation policies. While municipalities have traditionally been strongly involved in managing risk and disaster response (e.g., through fire departments, health offices and so forth), significant additional efforts are needed in order to govern climate change adaptation beyond business as usual. But local adaptation policies and processes are rarely conceptualized and measured in comprehensive ways and often remain underexplored beyond big cities, especially in large-N comparative perspective. This contribution addresses these gaps. To this end, it uses novel data collected through a survey administered to all 443 municipalities and counties of the State of Hessen in Germany. With only one large and a few mid-sized cities, but over sixty percent of the population living in rural areas, the State of Hessen not only represents Germany’s administrative and settlement structures rather well, but it is also an active climate adaptation policy maker and innovator at various governance levels. Selecting from the survey, the contribution first presents substantial patterns of local adaptation policy making beyond big cities and metropolitan areas. Second, it works towards insights about potential drivers and barriers of diffusion in municipal adaptation policy making. The results advance our understanding of the nature of local adaptation policy (or the lack thereof) and the potential of diffusion mechanisms for enhancing adaptation policy making at the municipal level.