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Dispersed Capacity and Weak Coordination: The Challenge of Climate Change Adaptation in C anada's Forest Policy Sector
Author(s) -
Rayner Jeremy,
McNutt Kathleen,
Wellstead Adam
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
review of policy research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.832
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1541-1338
pISSN - 1541-132X
DOI - 10.1111/ropr.12003
Subject(s) - adaptation (eye) , climate change , business , climate change adaptation , environmental resource management , national forest , resource (disambiguation) , public administration , economics , political science , forestry , geography , ecology , computer science , computer network , physics , optics , biology
Abstract Constitutional and institutional legacies were combined to create a very decentralized forest policy sector in C anada. Where coherent policy requires a national response—as is the case with adaptation to climate change—the critical challenge is to locate the relevant decentralized policy capacity and steer it toward meeting national objectives. While there is some evidence that significant policy capacity exists in provincial forest and resource management departments, climate change adaptation has led to an expansion of departmental mandates that is not being addressed by better coordination of the available policy capacity. The relevant federal agencies are not well represented in information networks and forest policy workers report lower levels of internal and external networking than workers in related policy subsectors.