Understanding coastal governance and climate adaptation processes through social conflicts: Theoretical and methodological approaches

This article explores the emerging subject of social conflicts related to climate adaptation by applying insights from conflict studies to coastal climate adaptation governance. It proposes an analytical lens for examining the meanings and effects of social conflicts within evolving governance systems exposed to climate adaptation dynamics, illustrated through coastal examples. Drawing on evolutionary governance theory, systems thinking, and post-structuralist perspectives, it conceptualizes conflict as an inherent feature of governance that reveals interdependencies and deep-rooted injustices, reshapes institutions and social organization, and can foster collective learning when approached with appropriate ethical safeguards. The paper examines the potential productivity of social conflicts as diagnostic moments that expose the political, ethical, and structural dimensions of governance and climate adaptation trade-offs. Building on this perspective, it develops a reflexive and flexible framework that enables researchers and practitioners to trace conflict trajectories across governance systems, identifying their productive, transformative, and constraining effects. The framework unfolds through three iterative evolutionary phases—conflict emergence, conflict management, and conflict post-management—combining discourse analysis, system mapping and comparative analysis, and is supported by a conflict mapping template and a toolkit and guidance for conflict analysis. The article concludes by reflecting on the implications of this perspective for rethinking good governance and justice in coastal climate adaptation—not as the absence of conflict, but as the capacity to engage with conflict as a driver of adaptive and reflexive transformation.