Adapting to climate change by water management organisations: Enablers and barriers

Increasingly, combining top-down and bottom-up approaches to adaptation is being recommended due to the limitations of each. However, knowledge regarding how organisations operating at different scales can enhance adaptive capacity of other organisations operating at another scale is lacking due to the few studies of inter-organisational networks across scales. Social networks among actors are recognised as a key factor to enable adaptation. However, network studies generally focus on individual actors and rarely between public agencies/organisations. Moreover, the current literature is inadequate to understand the relationship between adaptation enabling characteristics, barriers and adaptation manifestation. The review demonstrates that research on understanding the emergence and sustenance of barriers is urgently required. Addressing these knowledge gaps will help to improve the design of adaptation strategies, thereby improving the ability of water management to address the ongoing challenges of climate change.