Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Do extreme weather events open windows of opportunity for adopting climate change adaptation policies, as John Kingdon and others have theorized, or do they represent barriers to addressing long-term governance challenges? The question was posed in 2007 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR4 2007: 733). This puzzle remains unanswered despite the growing number of adaptation policy examples worldwide. This paper applies the Multiple Streams Approach (MSA) developed by Kingdon (1984), Zahariadis (2003, 2015) and others to one of the leading examples of adaptation policy change, policy and governance changes in response to Australia’s recent extreme drought (see AR5 2014: Box 25-2). This revelatory case illustrates how policy entrepreneurs opened a non-traditional window of opportunity for policy reform by linking the urgent, short-term crisis of extreme weather with the long-term challenge of adapting to future climate change. Kingdon’s underutilized concept of “partial couplings” illuminates the coupling logic involved. Findings suggest that although extreme weather events serve to bolster efforts to adopt climate adaptation policies, the strategy raises important questions about the durability of reforms aimed at long-term governance. Understanding how adaptation policies evolve can help societies avoid lurching from one climate crisis and disaster response to the next, at the cost of great human suffering.

This paper is part of a larger study that explores climate change adaptation governance from multiple theoretical perspectives. This in-depth analysis of the case of Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin draws on fieldwork undertaken in June through August, 2013 and supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1310954. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.