Speakers
Description
Purpose:
This presentation presents a protocol, ideas and framework to advance knowledge and research about how built and social infrastructure has co-benefits for climate change and health equity. The focus is to identify the systemic conditions that support best practice governance behind planning and delivery of climate adaptive infrastructure to enable equity.
Background
There are urgent and critical gaps in knowledge about how to create institutional change necessary for developing climate-focused policies and programs that generate positive health and equity impacts (Haines et al., 2020, Heenan et al., 2023). The 2023 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report confirms with ‘high confidence’ that climate change is impacting ‘human health, livelihoods, and key infrastructure’ and these ‘impacts are concentrated amongst the economically and socially marginalised’(IPCC, 2023). The research protocol presented responds directly to IPCC’s recommendations to focus on local institutional responses to the climate crisis (IPCC, 2023). Equity requires a focus on climate justice and institutional transformation.
Innovation in the context of international advances
Infrastructure for climate adaptation and equity requires connections across sectors (Harris et al., 2020), and integration across planning, measurement and evaluation (Giles-Corti et al., 2021, Australian Council of Social Services, 2022). Climate action is nested in a multi-scaled complex system, with each level influencing another. The IPCC recommends, with ‘very high confidence’ that effective climate mitigation and adaptation combine government, civil society, and the private sector, prioritising risk reduction, equity and justice, integrating decision-making processes, finance and technology, and actions across governance levels, sectors, and timeframes (IPCC, 2023). ‘Governance’ dynamics are at the centre of institutional effectiveness (Sharma-Wallace et al., 2018). However, our prior research has revealed the tendency for policy sectors to work in separate sectoral silos that limits effective collaboration and holistic approaches necessary to address equity and risks institutional policy inertia that obstructs, rather than supports, action (Morrison and Van Den Nouwelant, 2020, Harris et al., 2020, Harris et al., 2022, Harris, 2022). From this scholarship we present a novel institutionally focused framework.
Methodology
The research advances knowledge about the working dynamics of complex systems involved in policy change mixing new institutionalism, realism, qualitative comparative analysis and systems analysis methodology. The protocol responds to recent scholarship (Byrne and Callaghan, 2022) connecting realist analysis with systems approaches to understand and explain the conditions and mechanisms involved in complex and messy interventions (Shearn et al., 2017, Fletcher et al., 2016, Koorts et al., 2021), including equity across different localities and population sub-groups (Fletcher et al., 2016). Our previous research has demonstrated the validity of mixing realism and institutional approaches to investigate policy systems (Harris, 2022). Here we add particpatory systems mapping to facilitate local policy action (Penn and Barbrook-Johnson, 2019).
Research design
The protocol has five phases. First builds evidence of multiple case studies (Yin, 2012). Second compares cases broadly for their similarities and identify the essential cross case findings, using Qualitative Comparative Analysis (Sager and Andereggen, 2012). Third uses these findings to develop a cross-case systems map. Fourth uses participatory systems design to build context specific systems responses to that evidence, based on the additional experience of local experts and policy makers. Fifth, across the research, is critical realist analysis using relevant theoretical insights to explain the data and provide a narrative explaining the systems maps.
The protocol provides future researchers with a comprehensive suite of methods and approaches to compare multiple case studies of climate adaptive governance and systems change in the face of the climate crisis.
References
ACOSS 2022. Fair, Fast and Inclusive Climate Change Action.
BYRNE, D. & CALLAGHAN, G. 2022. Complexity theory and the social sciences: The state of the art, Routledge.
FLETCHER, A., et al 2016. Evaluation, 22, 286-303.
GILES-CORTI, B., et al. The Medical Journal of Australia, 214, S17-S21.
HAINES, A., et al. BMJ, 368, m1103.
HARRIS, P. 2022. Illuminating Policy for Health: insights from a decade of researching urban and regional planning.
HARRIS, P., et al 2022. Health & Place, 73.
HARRIS, P., et al 2020. Health Policy, 124, 591-598.
HEENAN, M., et al 2023. The Medical Journal of Australia, 218, 196-202.
IPCC 2023. Synthesis Report: Summary for Policymakers.
KOORTS, H., et al 2021. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition Physical Activity, 18, 1-16.
MORRISON, N. & VAN DEN NOUWELANT, R. 2020. J Australian Planner, 56, 73-82.
PENN, A. & BARBROOK-JOHNSON, P. 2019. www.cecan.ac.uk/resources [Accessed January 2025].
SAGER, F. & ANDEREGGEN, C. 2012. American journal of evaluation, 33, 60-78.
SHARMA-WALLACE, L., et al 2018. Journal of Environmental Management, 222, 174-184.
SHEARN, K., et al 2017. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 16, 1609406917741796.
YIN, R. K. 2012. Case study research: Design and methods, Sage.
| Keywords | Governance; institutions; policy; practice; infrastructure; equity |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
