Why these 9 countries?
They were selected to capture significant contrasts in governance systems, development contexts and exposure to climate risk — the diversity needed for a credible North-South comparison.
Does this only concern agriculture?
Agricultural adaptation is the empirical case study; the model and results on procedural instruments are designed to be generalized to climate governance more broadly.
How many procedural instruments will be studied in total?
At least 4 per country — at least 2 national (WP2) and 2 local (WP3) — in the 9 countries, i.e. a basis of at least 36 cases for the comparative analysis.
Why focus on procedural instruments rather than the content of climate policies?
The content of the plans already receives attention; the procedures used to design, decide and adjust policies over time are where implementation most often gets bogged down, and they are rarely studied empirically.
What is the "institutional innovation assessment model" (Objective 2)?
A structured framework, built from the analysis grid and research protocol of WP1, to compare procedural instruments between countries on a common basis.
Why is governance so important in the face of the "super perverse" climate problem?
Climate change is a “super-perverse problem”: time is running out, those responsible must also solve it, no central authority can impose a solution, and short-termism hinders long-term action. Under these conditions, the incremental and short-sighted implementation of climate plans repeatedly fails, transforming risk into tragedy as delays accumulate. Since states already have climate plans, what is lacking is not more content but the capacity of governance to design, decide on, and adjust these plans quickly and reliably enough—which is why APIICC focuses on governance itself, and more specifically on the procedural instruments that determine whether implementation moves forward or stalls.
Why focus on "niches" of innovation for climate governance through innovative procedural instruments?
Rather than waiting for a single, system-wide overhaul of governance, institutional innovation in climate governance tends to emerge first in circumscribed “niches”—specific national or local procedural instruments where new ways of designing, deciding, or adjusting policies are experimented with. These niches matter because they are where the dichotomy between strengthening authority and opening up governance can truly be tested and overcome in practice, and because the innovations that work at this scale are the ones that can then be scaled up or replicated elsewhere. Since procedural instruments remain seldom studied empirically, examining these niches closely—as APIICC does through more than 36 national and local cases—is what allows the project to build the empirical grounding needed to understand what makes institutional innovation successful and to derive governance recommendations from it.