Why do formally similar multi-level governance arrangements produce different governance outcomes in urban climate and transport policy? This article examines variation in governance performance across three metropolitan regions in Norway operating under the national Urban Growth Agreement (UGA) framework and pursuing the shared objective of zero growth in private car traffic. Drawing on participatory observation of steering group meetings, three rounds of elite interviews, and document analysis, the study analyzes how polycentric governance operates in practice. Building on the Institutional Analysis and Development framework and Carlisle and Gruby's concept of enabling conditions, it argues that variation in governance performance is explained less by whether enabling conditions are present than by how they are configured across decision arenas. The findings identify three governance configurations: one characterized by structured bargaining and distributive tensions, one by stable coordination supported by technical expertise and consensus-oriented procedures, and one by consensus-constrained adaptation shaped by territorial balancing. The findings show that institutional configurations of enabling conditions shape adaptive capacity, institutional fit, and redundancy in polycentric urban climate governance systems.
]]>The circular economy (CE) is now a cornerstone of global environmental policy. However, current debates often frame CE as a future-oriented strategy to be adopted or scaled, implicitly assuming that emerging economies and the Global South are starting from strictly linear conditions. Drawing on practice-oriented and institutional perspectives, this paper reconceptualizes CE as a set of already-operating, economically rational practices—such as repair, reuse, and informal material circulation. We argue that the central governance challenge in these contexts is not the introduction of CE from scratch, but understanding how existing circularity is recognized, reorganized, or displaced during institutionalization. By synthesizing research across capability, governance, transition, and justice-oriented framings, we illustrate how dominant models neglect everyday circularity as “informal” rather than constitutive of the system. We develop a practice-based translation perspective to distinguish between practices of CE and CE in practice, elucidating how these processes shape value creation and power relations. Ultimately, this paper posits that emerging economies are not merely “catching up,” but are analytically informative settings for understanding circular governance under constraint. We conclude by outlining implications for transformative and mission-oriented innovation policy.
]]>An emerging consensus calls for transformative climate governance. However, what instigates and sustains transformative pathways remains unclear. This study characterises the existence, quality and structural underpinnings of transformative governance capacities in local government climate change response in Aotearoa New Zealand, applying a well-established conceptual framework for transformative governance to existing literature. Results show that some local authorities have started to develop ‘stewarding’, ‘unlocking’, ‘orchestrating’, and ‘transformative’ capacities, focusing on adaptation more than mitigation. This evidence stems from a small number of urban centres and regional areas with a strong presence of indigenous (Māori) communities. Most evidence points to the development of ‘stewarding capacity’, showing that local governments are building an evidence base around understanding climate risks in collaboration with communities and knowledge partners. Beyond biophysical monitoring, however, there was limited evidence of monitoring and learning. Literature documenting ‘unlocking capacity’ shows that local governments have tried a variety of activities to overcome resistance to change. However, the literature also points to limited efforts to identify the drivers of unsustainable practices, few mechanisms for challenging vested interests and existing incentive structures, and a need for stronger accountability mechanisms in decision-making. Results underscore a lack of co-ordination and empowerment of actors to engage in adaptation or mitigation. Overall, capacity development was enabled by applied research projects, with ad-hoc local government-led initiatives and state government incentive schemes also playing a role, and was constrained by a wide range of institutional, regulatory, economic, and social factors - consistent with a country at the formative stages of decentralised climate policy implementation. We contextualise the findings in relation to international literature and practices, pointing to opportunities to further develop local government capacity for transformative governance.
]]>While REDD+ prioritizes carbon sequestration, its narrow focus often overlooks forest-health linkages critical to community well-being. This paper examines the holistic model of Health in Harmony (HIH) and Alam Sehat Lestari (ASRI), which integrates forest conservation with healthcare through radical listening—a decolonial community engagement approach that centers indigenous expertise and challenges historical injustices. In Indonesian Borneo (2007–2017), Radical Listening revealed that lack of healthcare access was a primary driver of logging. Community-defined interventions, from livelihood trainings to healthcare-for-conservation programs, led to a 70% reduction in forest loss, a 67% drop in infant mortality, and significant reforestation accompanied by the return of endangered wildlife. Recent RL sessions across Papua and West Papua (2021–2024), engaging 346 participants from 29 communities, surfaced context-specific priorities from healthcare to Indigenous-led restoration, confirming the replicability of HIH-ASRI's approach. We argue that Radical Listening functions as a governance innovation that (1) identifies deeper systemic leverage points by diagnosing root causes; (2) enables the design of non-market, holistic natural climate solutions (NCS) that simultaneously restore ecosystems and advance health equity; and (3) advances procedural and epistemic justice by redistributing authority to indigenous communities. This paper offers a scalable, community-led framework for reorienting climate and conservation policy toward safeguarding planetary health in Southeast Asia and beyond.
]]>Despite decentralization, Indonesian local governments persistently fail to deliver environmental outcomes. This article asks: why do institutional architectures systematically disable ecological responsiveness despite formal mandates? Introducing ecological institutional failure (EIF), the study develops a diagnostic framework moving beyond capacity-centric explanations. Based on document analysis of planning documents, budgets, and performance evaluations across five regencies, Sleman, Banjarmasin, Kutai Kartanegara, Sumbawa, and Wakatobi, the research identifies three mechanisms reproducing failure: symbolic compliance (performative commitment without substantive change), structural disjunction (fragmented mandates misaligned with ecological imperatives), and inertial governance (ritualized activity simulating motion without transformation). Rather than lacking resources, local governments exhibit overproduction of forms that obscure systemic inaction. Drawing on institutional theory and ecological governance literature, the article reframes governance failure as strategic maintenance of bureaucratic comfort zones, contributing to debates on environmental governance in the Global South.
]]>The ongoing rise in CO2 emissions driven by energy-intensive industries highlights the urgent need for targeted policy interventions, with national strategies playing a crucial role in the low-carbon transition. However, the factors that shape the ambition of industrial decarbonisation policies remain poorly understood. Previous research suggests that this sector presents significant challenges for policymakers. In this study, I argue that a deeper understanding of the state-industry dynamics that influence policymaking is essential to explain the variation in policy ambition across countries. By analysing the policy output of 29 OECD countries from 1990 to 2022, the findings reveal that corporatism and left-leaning governments positively influence policy output—especially in the case of hard policies. Together, the results highlight the independent roles of institutional coordination and partisan orientation in shaping industrial climate governance.
]]>Since China updated its nationally determined contributions in 2021, achieving carbon peaking before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060—the so-called “dual carbon” goals—has become the new guiding principle of China's climate governance. However, few studies have examined the implementation of China's dual carbon goals, particularly the variation at the subnational level. To bridge this knowledge gap, we investigate the strategies to implement the dual carbon goals in three Chinese cities with different economic and institutional conditions: Changji, Huzhou, and Guangzhou. Drawing on data from policy documents, media reports, and field interviews, we identify distinctive governance models adopted by the three city governments, shaped by their respective local contexts. Based on our inductive case studies, we propose a political economy framework that highlights three key factors—economic structure, local government commitment and prior experience, and the influence of non-state actors—to explain variation in net-zero implementation across Chinese cities. By unpacking the dynamics of local adaptation and innovation in net-zero governance, our study contributes to the theoretical debate on polycentricity in China's climate governance.
]]>This article extends (de)politicisation theory to elucidate power dynamics in polycentric governance. It develops an original analytical framework to empirically investigate how governmental, societal and discursive (de)politicisation processes emerge within and across decision-making centres. The framework focuses on dimensions of technocracy, pluralism, power and authority and ‘fire alarms’ and political sanctions associated with issue salience. It restores analytical focus on power asymmetries and links these asymmetries to the conditions under which polycentric governance becomes either merely formal (many centres) or substantive (centres with authority, resources, visibility and horizontal linkages). Using a longitudinal case study of climate governance in Birmingham (United Kingdom), we illustrate how waves of politicisation and depoliticisation operate to (re)distribute power with tangible implications for local climate change mitigation and net zero agendas and pathways for delivery. We conclude that delivering ‘net zero’ implies the need for deliberate strategies to strengthen substantive polycentricity in UK domestic climate policy and governance.
]]>This article aims to contribute to the ongoing scholarly reflection on the intersection between law and (plastics) production. It builds on the importance of ‘design’ for a more sustainable plastics economy by examining the role of law in bringing life cycle considerations into the design phase. It uses examples of legal instruments from two jurisdictions, Canada and the European Union (EU), because of their demonstrated leadership in regulating product life cycles, categorising them according to whether they ‘require’ life cycle considerations to be taken into account in the design phase or whether they ‘enable’ this through the generation and sharing of relevant life cycle information across the supply chain. Overall, the article concludes that plastics design measures have focussed more on prescribing certain design choices (e.g., content requirements, product prohibitions) than requiring ‘smart’ redesign by industry; and that existing ‘enabling’ measures are not sufficiently ambitious (e.g., polymers having thus far been excluded from REACH registration).
]]>Ensuring vertical policy consistency is essential for achieving China's “dual carbon” goals and energy transition, yet it is complicated by a top-down, multilevel governance system. A comprehensive understanding of consistency between national and provincial renewable energy policy mixes remains a key research gap. This study addresses this gap by developing an analytical framework that conceptualizes consistency as a unidirectional relationship focusing on the provincial-level response to central directives. We analyzed 398 renewable energy policy documents to assess vertical policy consistency across three key interactions: national-provincial strategies, national-provincial instruments, and national strategies-provincial instruments. Our findings reveal a truncated spectrum of policy interaction: inconsistency is absent, and divergence consistently manifests as weak consistency. While we observed strong consistency at the strategic level, significant substantive implementation gaps emerged at the instrument level. This non-linear relationship is rooted in China's unique central-provincial dynamics—specifically the tension between centralized political control and provincial economic decentralization. Provincial governments often employ feigned compliance to balance rigid top-down mandates with regional economic interests. These findings refine Western-centric policy mix theories for unitary systems. We demonstrate that the weak consistency and dynamic of feigned compliance are typical governance features across China's broader energy industries and public policy sectors. Consequently, the theoretical and practical focus should shift from preventing negative interactions to addressing the substantive implementation gaps caused by selective implementation.
]]>Policy coherence is widely regarded as essential for achieving sustainable development, climate targets, and reducing inequality, as reflected in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Recent scholarship has moved beyond technocratic approaches, drawing on comparative politics, particularly the “3 I's” of ideas, interests, and institutions, to highlight the inherently political nature of coherence. Yet even these studies often treat coherence as binary, easily observable, and intrinsically beneficial. Building on a coherence literature focused on discourses and frames, this paper challenges these assumptions by examining how policy (in)coherence is constructed and contested. Focusing on policy implementation in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's coal heartland, we analyse two cases before and during the 2022 energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine: the commissioning of the Datteln IV hard coal plant in 2020, and the clearance of the village of Lützerath for mining in 2023. Drawing on 28 semi-structured interviews with German energy, climate, and environmental experts, alongside policy and media analysis, we find that (in)coherence is greatly constructed and contested under shifting political and economic pressures, instrumentalised and legitimisatised by different actors to advance their interests, and profoundly shaped by temporal dynamics. Given recent findings that challenge the 2030 Agenda's assumption that policy coherence reduces inequalities, we also explore how (in)coherence is perceived to shape multidimensional inequality in the Energiewende more broadly. Here, we find that (in)coherence is most prominently perceived to cause delays in climate mitigation, disproportionately affecting youth, low-income households, migrants, and activists. In this context, (in)coherence is not merely technical, political nor constructed, but fundamentally a matter of justice, shifting the analytical focus from whether policies and their implementation are coherent to how, and for whom, coherence matters.
]]>The bioeconomy has become an increasingly popular concept in European Union (EU) policy, promising sustainable growth, job creation, and reduced environmental impacts. Yet its meaning remains contested, ambiguous, and politically charged. This study critically examines how EU bioeconomy policy narratives prior to 2025 construct this concept and how the extended peer community makes sense of, negotiates, and critiques these narratives through a boundary object lens. By combining narrative analysis with in-depth interviews and an exploratory workshop, we identify nine distinct policy narratives. While many reproduce the familiar bio-resource storylines, others fall within the Eco-Retreat option space or frame the bioeconomy primarily as a policy-making exercise, revealing greater complexity than previous studies suggest. The findings show a clear discrepancy between the EU's open-structured narratives and the more grounded, discipline-specific interpretations of practitioners and experts. Members of the extended peer community both appropriate and challenge the concept; some embrace its flexibility and coalition-building potential, endorsing its environmental sustainability, social benefits, and growth prospects, while others question its scope, plausibility, and credibility, pointing to overlooked trade-offs, unrealistic expectations, and unresolved normative commitments. Using the boundary object lens, the bioeconomy is seen as enabling political convergence across diverse interests, albeit at the expense of conceptual clarity. While this ambiguity supports broad alignment, it may also mask underlying conflicts and limit transformative potential. The study argues that embracing rather than smoothing over discord could strengthen the robustness and legitimacy of future bioeconomy governance, while acknowledging that this might be politically difficult.
]]>Mangroves are critical resources in sustaining coastal communities by providing essential ecosystem goods and services. Occurring within the interface of land and sea, they serve as critical ecological zones shaped by dynamic interactions between terrestrial and marine systems. Using qualitative policy analysis of legal instruments, policy documents, and peer-reviewed literature, the study investigates how nested governance arrangements influence mangrove management. The findings show that mangrove governance across the three contexts takes hybrid forms shaped by historical trajectories and legal pluralism. Although participatory mechanisms such as CREMAs in Ghana, Joint Forest Management in Tanzania Mainland, and Community Forest Management Agreements in Zanzibar formally recognise community involvement, authority remains unevenly distributed due to fragmented institutional mandates and unclear tenure arrangements. As a result, mangrove governance is constrained by overlapping institutional responsibilities and weak enforcement. These findings suggest that reforms should prioritise integrated land–seascape approaches, stronger coordination across sectors, and greater statutory support for local institutions to sustain mangrove ecosystems.
]]>This article examines jurisprudence from key African and Latin American human rights bodies regarding the right to a healthy environment, with a focus on recent jurisprudence (2023–2025). It identifies a growing trend of an ecocentric interpretation of the right, which acknowledges that the environment and the life forms within it hold intrinsic value, independently of human beings. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has expressly confirmed its ecocentric reading of the right, and African institutions such as the African Court of Human and Peoples' Rights and the ECOWAS Court of Justice have implied a similar shift away from a traditional anthropocentric interpretation. This conceptual shift raises important questions for environmental litigation, including its potential to facilitate environmental standard-setting and to broaden legal standing. While some scholars argue that ecocentrism could support litigation on behalf of nature itself, others suggest it may better address diffuse and widespread environmental harm, such as climate change, where identifying specific victims is difficult. Despite its promise, the ecocentric approach remains constrained by existing procedural frameworks and human-centred treaty language, leaving its practical impact still uncertain.
]]>The degradation of natural resources, driven by rapid urbanization and population growth, presents profound challenges to biodiversity and sustainable development. This study proposes a strategic framework for adaptive governance of natural resources, emphasizing the integration of institutional capacity, leadership, and institutional work. Employing Social Network Analysis (SNA), the research investigates governance structures within Fars Province, Iran. The results showed that the network had moderate density (0.497 on a scale of 0 to 1, where 1 indicates complete connectivity), a clustering coefficient of zero (0.000), indicating no triadic closure, and high external centralization (55.57%, meaning more than half of the network's power is concentrated in external actors). These characteristics reflect weak inter-organizational coordination, fragile cooperation, and excessive reliance on a few dominant institutions. The average path length of 2.047 steps further indicates slow information flow and limited responsiveness. These structural weaknesses collectively impede effective resource management. The proposed framework advocates for polycentric governance, enhanced institutional connectivity, decentralization of authority, and the incorporation of adaptive governance principles to bolster resilience and responsiveness. By synthesizing theoretical insights with empirical evidence, the study offers actionable strategies to improve natural resource governance, thereby contributing to sustainable environmental management and social equity. This study underscores the necessity of a holistic approach that addresses the complexities of socio-ecological systems, providing a comprehensive roadmap for policymakers and practitioners.
]]>This Note argues that § 922(g)(6) is constitutionally vulnerable as applied to veterans discharged solely because of their sexuality. It introduces the concept of "stigmatic disarmament" to describe how discriminatory military policies and federal firearms law interact to exclude this group from Second Amendment protections. Under Bruen, the government's reliance on "dangerousness" as a unifying historical principle cannot justify disarming individuals whose status reflects moral condemnation rather than any demonstrated risk of violence. By identifying this gap in the historical record, this Note contends that § 922(g)(6), as applied in this context, lacks a valid constitutional foundation and invites further scrutiny of status-based firearm prohibitions.
]]>External nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) play a pivotal role in rural environmental governance, yet little is known about how they navigate multilevel institutional barriers to enhance villages' self-organized ecological governance. This study examines an environmental NGO in rural China to uncover the mechanisms through which exogenous actors activate endogenous governance capacity. Findings show that the NGO strengthened grassroots governance by enhancing actor interaction and performance through three interrelated mechanisms: a system-integration mechanism leveraging multichannel embedding, an agenda-setting mechanism combining community-space cultivation with embedded deliberation, and a capacity-absorption mechanism linking technical and conceptual support with trust-building. Effective intervention also depended on professional and ethical conditions—professionalism in balancing human–nature tensions, and ethical engagement rooted in community-based affective governance and individual self-realization. Moreover, the NGO employed legitimacy strategies to resolve integration dilemmas, fostered villager agency through people-centered approaches, provided alternative livelihoods to mitigate human–wildlife conflict, and promoted village organizational structures and equitable benefit-sharing. Collectively, these mechanisms enhanced the adaptability and resilience of village self-governance under institutional diversity and external shocks. The study offers practical insights for context-sensitive rural development initiatives, such as China's “Ten-Thousand Villages” program, and contributes to theoretical understanding of modernized, adaptive environmental governance in state-centric, resource-constrained settings.
]]>While a coherent policy mix is a fundamental prerequisite for successful energy transitions, existing frameworks predominantly rely on static evaluations. This horizontal approach fails to capture the deep temporal dynamics and physical inertia inherent in socio-technical regime shifts. To address this gap, we conceptualize a five-stage dynamic policy chain and track South Korea's macro-systemic transition trajectory (2000–2022) across three key sectors (industrial, transport, and residential/building) using a dynamic cross-correlation function (CCF). Here we demonstrate that South Korea's upstream policy inputs suffer from severe structural friction, creating an “illusion of innovation.” Although technology-push policies induce simultaneous patent generation, these intangible outputs fail to translate into downstream physical deployment. Rather, actual deployment stages reveal highly divergent temporal trajectories. Notably, the transport and residential/building sectors exhibit substantial negative lags and reverse causality, revealing that rigid physical inertia forces policies to merely react rather than lead. Consequently, the mechanical tautology between expanding energy demand and carbon emissions remains unbroken over two decades, illustrating how deeply entrenched the carbon lock-in remains. To dismantle these structural bottlenecks, policymakers must shift from static policy combinations to “dynamic sequencing”—precisely orchestrating the timing of interventions to match the distinct paces of different sectors.
]]>Contaminants of emerging concern, including pharmaceuticals and industrial chemicals, threaten water quality globally. In the European Union (EU), until the adoption of the revised Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive in 2024, a regulatory gap had left the member states and the municipalities in them without binding removal standards. Nonetheless, cities in the German state of Baden-Württemberg had voluntarily upgraded wastewater treatment plants to include a fourth purification stage. This study investigates whether institutionalized peer learning forums—wastewater treatment plant neighborhoods (WTPNs)—drove this diffusion in the absence of a legal mandate. We hypothesize that epistemic learning within WTPNs is the primary diffusion mechanism. Using Cox regression models (N = 14,636 municipality-years, 2009–2022) combined with six expert interviews, we find that membership in a WTPN containing a prior adopter increases a municipality's upgrade probability substantially. Qualitative evidence confirms that this effect operates through structured epistemic learning, including “teacher”–“student” role differentiation, designated contacts, and iterative knowledge exchange. We conclude that formalized learning institutions can drive voluntary environmental innovation even without regulatory mandates, and recommend strengthening such forums as EU member states implement the revised Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive.
]]>Conventional fisheries assessments, traditionally based on production and structural models, have shown limitations in addressing the complexity of fisheries. Holistic approaches that integrate ecological, social, and governance dimensions are increasingly promoted under the ecosystem approach to fisheries (EAF) and the social-ecological systems (SES) framework. This study compares four frameworks: (1) Fishery Improvement Projects with the Social Responsibility Assessment Tool (FIP-SRAT), (2) Rapfish, (3) Principles for Investment in Sustainable Wild-Caught Fisheries (PIS), and (4) Healthcheck, evaluating their objectives, indicators, and alignment with Ostrom's SES subsystems and EAF. A total of 179 specific indicators (132 social, 47 ecological) were consolidated into 29 integral indicators and classified by SES subsystems. Analyses included similarity testing (ANOSIM) and cluster analysis. Results show no significant differences between frameworks overall, but strong differences between social and ecological components and among subsystems, with social indicators predominating. Three integral indicators, definition of responsibilities, evaluation of governance mechanisms, and targeted population assessment, were common to all frameworks. Literature review revealed uneven application: FIP is most widely implemented, particularly in Latin America, while PIS lacks published case studies. Although each framework emerged from distinct institutional and geographic contexts, all contribute to advancing EAF principles by addressing dimensions absent in conventional assessments, such as human rights, equity, and governance quality. However, differences in metrics and indicator coverage may limit comparability. These findings highlight the potential and challenges of integrating social and ecological dimensions in fisheries assessment, and the need for adaptive, context-sensitive frameworks to support fisheries sustainability.
]]>Forest governance in South Asia is shaped by long-standing conflicts between state control and forest-dependent communities, a legacy of colonial policies that were intended to marginalise Indigenous rights. Within these conflicts, women play a central but often overlooked role as primary users of many non-timber forest products (NTFPs) and carriers of traditional ecological knowledge from generations. This review examines postcolonial women-led forest rights movements in South Asia through the lens of political ecology and intersectionality by drawing on case studies such as Baiga, Dongria Kondh, and Khasi tribes of India, community forestry user groups in Nepal, collaborative forest management initiatives in Bangladesh, and the current situation in Bhutan and Sri Lanka. We find many similarities across these diverse countries and contexts including entrenched gender norms, caste hierarchies and customary tenure systems that intersect to constrain women's participation in decision-making in local social forestry bodies, even in situations where legal frameworks intend to promote inclusivity and equity. Women have often emerged as leaders of grassroots mobilization by defending customary rights and resisting deforestation by challenging timber and mining industries, at times being actively supported by their male counterparts. Some studies also suggest that when women secure leadership in local forest governance, both forest health and community well-being improve significantly. However, these gains still remain fragile as they are often undermined by multiple factors, including inefficient bureaucracy, elite capture, and market pressures. We also find evidence of how tokenistic inclusion of women in local forest governance bodies contrasts with transformative outcomes achieved through forest rights movements. The studies examined by us emphasize the need to revisit local forest governance models and move beyond quotas to rethink the distribution of power and resources more equitably among men and women at the grassroot levels.
]]>Intensifying wildfire regimes and expanding human settlements into wilderness areas have heightened concerns about the wildland–urban interface (WUI) due to the associated increase in fire risk. However, the WUI presents broader social-ecological challenges that go beyond wildfire risk and remain understudied. We assessed two WUI governance systems to identify challenges and opportunities for implementing adaptive governance and facilitating transdisciplinary approaches to WUI planning and management. Our approach considers WUI areas as complex social-ecological systems and the challenges of WUI planning and management as a wicked problem. Specifically, we focus on collaboration and participatory processes within WUI governance, recognizing their potential to integrate broader perspectives and facilitate the co-production of knowledge that characterizes transdisciplinary approaches. Results from policy analysis and semi-structured interviews suggest that WUI governance systems in Colorado (US) and Neuquén (Argentina) present a mix of opportunities and challenges for advancing adaptive governance and facilitating transdisciplinary approaches to WUI management. Reflexive policies (flexible and adaptable) based on minimum standards and legal sunsets (periods for policy revision and adaptation) emerged as adaptive governance enablers in both systems. However, ambiguity in the definition of social-ecological boundaries and the way in which participatory processes are currently implemented represent important challenges to adaptive governance and transdisciplinary approaches to WUI planning and management. We suggest that, to advance a more comprehensive management of WUI areas, WUI governance systems (including actors, legal frameworks, processes, etc.) should emphasize collaboration and participatory processes, facilitating active forms of community participation and the co-development of WUI management objectives.
]]>This study examines how farmers perceive and respond to climate policy risk in the context of drought and argues that understanding such responses is as important as understanding farmer reactions to the biophysical impacts of climate change. Drawing on a 5-year longitudinal case study in California's Tulare Lake Basin, we analyze farmers' climate risk perceptions, adaptive behaviors, and responses to water governance policy through an integrated theoretical framework. We organize our analysis around three propositions: that climate risk perception is institutionally mediated; that adaptive capacity is socially structured; and that perceived policy legitimacy mediates the relationship between risk awareness and adaptive action. Our findings show that farmers consistently attribute water scarcity to governance failures rather than biophysical climate change, effectively decoupling drought experience from climate attribution, and that perceived procedural fairness, institutional flexibility, and governance responsiveness are stronger predictors of adaptive engagement than biophysical risk exposure or individual climate change beliefs. Findings of the analysis underscore the need for procedurally just and contextually sensitive natural resource governance frameworks to support agricultural resilience in water-stressed regions.
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