Local level adaptation to climate change: Discursive strategies in the Norwegian context

Thus far, climate impacts and adaptation initiatives have not realized the added value of climate adaptation. Adaptation often appears as an afterthought, with an emphasis on technological solutions. Lacking is a consideration of the process of adaptation: how adaptations will be implemented, by whom and why. The aim of the paper is to show how climate adaptation can be further developed in Norway through a discourse approach. Three specific discursive strategies – a scientific–economic, communicative–economic, and scientific–communicative discourse – are presented. The paper portrays how specific institutions operating at the local level in Norway can convey or ‘carry’ these discourses and thus how actors, placed within these institutions, can use discourses as resources when planning for climate adaptation. There is clearly a need for further studies that aim to demonstrate how insight from discourse analysis can be used as a tool for planning. The present paper is a step in this direction.