A Systematic Literature Review of Inclusive Climate Change Adaption

Inclusive approaches have been applied in many areas, including human resources, international development, urban planning, and innovation. This paper is a systematic literature review to describe the usage trends, scope, and nature of the inclusive approach in the climate change adaptation (CCA) context. We developed search algorithms, explicit selection criteria, and a coding questionnaire, which we used to review a total of 106 peer-reviewed articles, 145 grey literature documents, and 67 national communications to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC); 318 documents were reviewed in total. Quantitatively, the methodology reveals a slight increase in usage, with a focus on non-Annex 1 countries, gender issues, and capacity building. Qualitatively, we arranged the key insights into the following three categories: (1) inclusion in who or what adapts; (2) motivating inclusive processes; and (3) anticipated outcomes of inclusive CCA. We conclude, with the observation, that many issues also apply to Annex 1 countries. We also argue that the common language nature of the word ‘inclusive’ makes it applicable to other CCA-relevant contexts, including government subsidies, science policy, knowledge integration and mobilization, performance measurement, and the breadth of the moral circle that a society should adopt.