Towards a thick understanding of the barriers to national climate adaptation policy process: the cases of South Korea and the United Kingdom

The world is already committed to some climate change which makes climate adaptation an important response strategy. Despite the substantial progress of national climate adaptation policies, the adaptation deficit is getting wider. Barriers to adaptation have been pointed out as a reason for the adaptation deficits and analysed for about 20 years. However, previous studies have provided a limited understanding of the barriers, especially at the national level, and the research results have rarely been used in real-world adaptation policy processes. This thesis provides a thick understanding of barriers to national climate adaptation policy processes through a systematic literature review, empirical analysis using case studies, and theoretical analysis.
Through a systematic literature review, this thesis identifies eight categories of barriers to national climate adaptation policy and its process in previous studies. It also clarifies three critical limitations of earlier studies. Based on the Korean case, this thesis finds 49 factors (16 barriers, 14 origins, 19 influences) related to barriers to the national climate adaptation policy process in Korea and draws a barrier map that shows all relationships between the identified factors. This thesis identifies eight key common barriers to the national climate adaptation policy processes through a comparative analysis of the Korean and UK cases and presents potential common causal mechanisms of the barriers, with a common barrier map of the national adaptation policies. By applying a multi-loop learning theoretical framework, it analyses the social learning levels of the national climate adaptation policy of Korea and the UK. Potential solutions to address the identified barriers to national climate adaptation policy processes are suggested based on the wicked problem and social learning theory.
This thesis contributes valuable theoretical and methodological advancements to our understanding of the barriers to adaptation and practical understanding of the barriers to adaptation within the adaptation process and potential solutions to these barriers.