Uncertainty is a debated issue in climate research, in research on the governance of climate adaptation, and in research on the social limits to adaptation. As a contribution to this debate, a constructivist discourse research approach is chosen to analyse and interpret how stakeholders handle uncertainty related to climate change knowledge. Four diverse conceptualisations of how uncertainty is handled serve as the discourse analysis framework: rational discourse, no-regret discourse, blissful discourse, and formative discourse. This framework is applied to analyse and interpret interviews of diverse stakeholder groups from a local governance adaptation network. In this network, conflicts between irrigation farmers, water authorities and nature conservation are negotiated. For most interviewees, uncertainty about climate change knowledge is not judged as problematic. This paper elaborates on why this is so and provides tentative assessments for each discourse type.
Gottschick, M
How stakeholders handle uncertainty in a local climate adaptation governance network
Climatic Change