Voluntary Collaboration for Adaptive Governance

Abstract

The Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact (SFRCCC) has been highlighted as a regional climate change governance exemplar for land use planning. After six years, we find the compact has given momentum to local climate change planning through the Regional Climate Action Plan and provides a foundation for adaptive governance for climate change adaptation. We also find aspects of the compact lacking in terms of representation, decision making, learning, and problem responsiveness. Efforts are now needed to scale down implementation and scale up governance and planning more systematically to address climate change adaptation needs at multiple levels.

Keywords

adaptive governance climate adaptation local county and municipality planning regional collaboration Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact urban climate action

Introduction

The Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact is a partnership of four counties (Broward, Miami-Dade, Monroe, and Palm Beach) and twenty-six municipalities within those counties to advance climate adaptation strategies. It was voluntarily created by Broward, Monroe, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties in 2009 to build regional capacity to respond to climate change (SFCCC 2014). The compact “represents a new form of regional climate governance designed to allow local governments to set the agenda for adaptation while providing an efficient means for state and federal agencies to engage with technical assistance and support” (SFCCC 2014). It is regarded as “one of the nation’s leading examples of regional-scale climate action” (Office of the Press Secretary 2014) highlighted by President Obama as “a model not just for the country, but for the world” (Office of the Press Secretary 2015).

The Compact epitomizes emerging trends in climate adaptation governance noted in the literature. It reframes global climate change problems, mitigation, and adaptation as local and particularly urban challenges (Romero-Lankao and Dodman 2011; Dodman and Mitlin 2013; Ayers and Dodman 2010). It provides (1) climate action leadership at the local (county and municipal) level in the face of limited state, national, and international frameworks; (2) support for the delivery of mitigation and adaptation actions (Carmin, Dodman, and Chu 2013; Dodman and Mitlin 2013); and (3) risk management in the face of catastrophic impacts of climate change to secure urban futures (Davoudi 2014; Romero-Lankao and Dodman 2011).

Several challenges confront the Compact’s approach to climate change adaptation. First, although climate change affects all places, South Florida is one of the most vulnerable areas worldwide in terms of assets exposed to property damage from coastal flooding due to climate change (Nicholls et al. 2007). A three-foot rise in sea level will submerge more than a third of South Florida, a significant problem for the 5.5 million people who predominantly live along the coast (Goodell 2013). The unique geology (porous limestone) and topography (minimal elevation change) of the region means that strategies explored elsewhere to manage the effects of sea level rise will not work; thus, innovative local solutions are needed (Goodell 2013).

Second, urban and environmental planning, which is shaped by relationships between planners and the environment in ways that make planning and action unique (Davoudi 2015), has had mixed success in achieving outcomes in South Florida. Decades of conflict over water management and coastal development have led governments to experiment with statutory, nonstatutory, and collaborative planning mechanisms to address problems. Plan quality has improved to deal with natural hazards (Brody 2003), local comprehensive planning and coastal development planning (Deyle, Chapin, and Baker 2008), transboundary natural resource problems (Brody, Highfield, and Carrasco 2004), and conservation outcomes (Pannozzo et al. 2015). Yet better plan quality has not translated into better outcomes. Implementation is limited by insufficient resources and power from uneven political commitment, a low tax culture, constantly changing rules, a one-size-fits-all comprehensive planning approach, and an overbureaucratization of plans (Deyle, Chapin, and Baker 2008; Dengler 2008; Gerlak and Heikkila 2011; Dengler 2007).

Third, Florida’s climate vulnerability and experience in addressing water and coastal development problems would suggest that the State Government has been slow to develop climate policy. Shi, Chu, and Debats (2015) find that the manifestation of climate change impacts can soften political barriers to act and may be associated with increased political commitment to climate change action. Florida, however, is currently a politically conservative state, with government employees reportedly discouraged from using terms like “climate change,” “global warming,” or “sustainability” in funding, policy, programs, or research (Korten 2015). Southeast Florida is in a more precarious situation than the rest of the state with respect to climate change impacts with sunny day (King tide) flooding, the failure of flood control canals, rapid beach erosion, and saltwater intrusion into drinking water supplies.

We examine the workings of the Compact in shaping the dynamics of planning for adapting to climate change in South Florida. We use a mixed-methods approach and the adaptive governance framework of Scholz and Stiftel (2005) and data from (1) interviews with key planning practitioners active in the Compact, (2) an analysis of the Compact’s Regional Climate Adaptation Plan (RCAP), (3) an examination of a report on RCAP implementation, and (4) a review of local comprehensive plans. We begin with a review of the adaptive governance and climate planning literature to establish the need for evaluating the impact of local planning in addressing climate conflicts and on adaptive governance challenges. Following a discussion of our methods and a review of the planning context in Florida, we describe the Compact and its impact on climate planning in the region. We analyze the Compact and identify adaptive governance challenges related to representation, decision making, learning, and problem responsiveness.

Literature Review

Adaptive Governance for Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation

Adaptive governance has emerged as a way to resolve complex climate change adaptation and mitigation conflicts (Brunner and Lynch 2010b; Birkmann et al. 2010). Born out of resilience thinking in the ecological sciences (Welsh 2014), adaptive governance concerns “the evolution of new governance institutions capable of generating long-term, sustainable policy solutions to wicked problems through coordinated efforts involving previously independent systems of users, knowledge, authorities and organized interests” (Scholz and Stiftel 2005, 6). It works within political frameworks by bringing “the critical users, experts, authorities and organised interests together into specialized negotiating frameworks designed to elicit mutually advantageous agreements” (Scholz and Stiftel 2005, 5). It enables complex urban climate adaptation and mitigation conflicts to be broken down into more scientifically and politically tractable problems and, ultimately, actionable local solutions (Brunner and Lynch 2010a). Adaptive governance (1) builds on existing resources, community interest and political will to address climate change (Brunner and Lynch 2010a); (2) incorporates actors at multiple levels to overcome adaptation and mitigation barriers (Amundsen, Berglund, and Westskog 2010); and (3) attempts to “scale out and scale up what works in practice” (Brunner 2010, 307).

The resilience literature outlines normative guidelines for adaptive governance structures and functions. It calls for (1) devolved management rights/power to promote participation in decision making, (2) networks of collaboration to build social capital among actors at multiple levels of government and improve capacity for action, (3) flexible governance arrangements to allow actors to respond to surprises, and (4) learning through governance networks (Folke et al. 2005; Dietz, Ostrom, and Stern 2003).

Resilience thinking has also been criticized for its isolation from “the critical social science literature” (Cote and Nightingale 2011), for failing to deal with issues of power (Davoudi et al. 2012), for a preoccupation with governance structures and functions and limited focus on individual political, historical, and cultural policy contexts (Cote and Nightingale 2011). Moreover, resilience thinking has been criticized for its co-option into neoliberalist governmentalities (Walker and Cooper 2011). It has steadily risen to prominence as a “structuring discourse” for government and governmental practice (Welsh 2014, 17) and resiliency strategies have been widely institutionalized around the world to adapt to climate change (Walker and Cooper 2011; Davoudi et al. 2012).

Spatial Planning Literature and Climate Action

The spatial planning literature offers insights into local and regional deliberations, forums, and plans for climate action to progress adaptive governance. It finds that spatial planning, natural hazards planning, and municipal climate planning decision forums can

create social and administrative networks that mobilize involvement in climate action (Biesbroek, Swart, and van der Knaap 2009);

link climate adaptation and mitigation into existing goals, plans, and programs into a policy “bricolage” to move climate action forward (Carmin, Anguelovski, and Roberts 2012);

provide opportunities to learn about climate adaptation, mitigation, and effective planning through experiences with property damage and local cultures of planning that can help to strengthen climate plan quality (Brody 2003); and

facilitate regional collaborative decision forums that cross local government boundaries and help local governments to coordinate policy and overcome barriers to adaptation at local, state, and federal levels (Dymén and Langlais 2013; Shi, Chu, and Debats 2015).

Despite these possibilities, this literature also finds it difficult to attribute the impact of climate plans on outcomes of spatial planning decisions (Millard-Ball 2013). Climate plans and regional decision forums can improve inter- and intraorganizational knowledge sharing about adaptation and mitigation conflicts, tradeoffs, and best-practice spatial planning (Millard-Ball 2013; Biesbroek, Swart, and van der Knaap 2009). However, their impacts in terms of coordinating independent decisions, in shaping preferences, and agenda setting remains to be seen (Millard-Ball 2013). Implementation appears more likely if (1) the preferences of those who are key to implementing outcomes and (2) conflicts associated with “coordination problems resulting from the interdependence of decisions” (Millard-Ball 2013, 16) are addressed in climate plans.

The adaptive governance and climate change spatial planning literatures have much to gain by being brought together. The adaptive governance literature has focused extensively on processes of decision making and structures of governance. The spatial planning literature has sought to determine plan quality and link plans to outcomes. The voluntary, collaborative arrangements of the SFRCCC, which seeks to engage in climate change planning and governance without authority to directly change spatial planning rules and regulations, provides an apposite case study. To describe what progress has been made, we bring these two literatures together to examine the Compact in meeting needs for adaptive governance.

Framework and Methods

To examine how the Compact has shaped the dynamics of planning to adapt to climate change, we consider the workings of the Compact against an adaptive governance framework. Scholz and Stiftel (2005) analyzed the implementation of adaptive governance for the management of Florida’s water resources. They found that while it shows great potential to address complex problems, there are five challenges that must be addressed in order to have an effective adaptive governance system: representation, decision processes, scientific learning, public learning, and problem responsiveness (Scholz and Stiftel 2005). We incorporate these challenges into a framework for evaluating the interplay of governance factors in planning and policy outcomes in the Compact. The framework’s strength lies in enabling the evaluation of complex governance mechanisms and interactions of stakeholders at multiple scales.

Our framework of adaptive governance challenges is used to integrate four primary data sources:

A categorical analysis of the 110 action items from the Compact’s Regional Climate Adaptation Plan (RCAP). Two readers independently categorized the 110 action items of the RCAP according to the five stages in the policy cycle (Althaus, Bridgman, and Davis 2007): (a) vision/objective setting, (b) analysis, (c) strategy development, (d) implementation, and (e) monitoring/evaluation.¹ The 110 action items were also grouped into the eight substantive areas of action.

An analysis of the self-reported outcomes from the 2014 Compact implementation survey (Moger 2015) integrating the consensus scores of the 110 action items into the self-reported outcomes from the municipal implementation survey. These served to classify local municipal effort against the five policy cycle categories and substantive areas of action.

Ten semi-structured interviews conducted between June 2013 and October 2015 with planning practitioners active in the Compact, including planners from the four counties party to the Compact (Broward, Munroe, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade), representatives from the South Florida Regional Planning Council, the South Florida Water Management District, The Nature Conservancy, Nova University, and the Everglades Task Force. These interviews explored the Compact’s structure and functionality, the role of different Compact actors, the relationship between the Compact and organizations at higher (state and federal) and lower (city and municipality) levels, relationships across regional planning initiatives (i.e., for regional planning, regional water management, and regional ecosystem restoration), and the impact of the Compact on planning and decision making.

A review of climate change amendments in the four county comprehensive plans party to the Compact and the Adaptation Action Area Amendment Document for Broward County.

Literature about environmental planning experiences in South Florida supplemented the analysis. Table 1 shows how the framework and data are integrated.

Table 1.

Methods Used to Analyze Adaptive Governance Challenges.

Adaptive Governance Challenges	Key Questions	Data	Contribution to Analysis
Representation	Who is involved?	RCAP Analysis and Implementation Survey Interviews	Who participated in the SFRCCC/RCAP development/ implementation? Who were the most engaged stakeholders? At whom were actions targeted? Who are the stated partners? What were the policy expectations about involvement and performance?
Decision process	How do authorities and stakeholders reach policy agreements?	Interviews	What were the processes for involving parties in decision making? What were the accountability mechanisms for decisions made? How do decision processes of the Compact relate to other arrangements of planning?
Scientific learning	How do policy makers develop and use knowledge effectively?	Interviews RCAP Analysis and Implementation Survey Literature review	What role did science play in plan development? Was other information used and how? In cases where there were conflicts or gaps, how were these resolved?
Public learning	How do resource users and the public develop common understandings for consensual policies and processes?	Interviews RCAP Analysis and Implementation Survey	How are communities and the general public involved in deliberations and using what processes?
Problem responsiveness	How well do decisions achieve climate change adaptation goals?	RCAP Analysis and Implementation Survey Interviews Comprehensive Plan Reviews	How well do plans and decisions address issues?

Source: Adapted from Scholz and Stiftel (2005).

The Context of Planning for Climate Change Adaptation in South Florida

To contextualize our analysis of the SFRCCC, we reviewed Florida’s experience with planning and climate change adaptation prior to SFRCCC’s creation in 2009. There are three elements of Florida’s growth management system that are important for understanding the role and impact of the SRFCCC: (1) it has been a hotbed of planning innovation, (2) there is a long history of advisory regional planning in the state, and (3) local comprehensive plans have an important role in shaping development outcomes in Florida.

Since the 1970s, the state of Florida has been an innovator in the areas of comprehensive planning, growth management, and coastal development policy (Chapin, Connerly, and Higgins 2007), although with only mixed success in terms of development outcomes (Ingram et al. 2009). Notably, Florida was one of the first states to require that all local governments develop and implement comprehensive plans, a planning mandate passed in 1975 and subsequently updated by the Growth Management Act of 1985. As part of this planning approach, local land development regulations must reflect the long-term vision established in comprehensive plans and infrastructure investments must be in alignment with the plan as well. Based on the “three C’s” of consistency, concurrency, and compact urban form, Florida’s growth management approach centered on a detailed, far-reaching comprehensive planning process, one that called for important roles for state, regional, and local agencies (Ben-Zadok 2005; Chapin, Connerly, and Higgins 2007). The state has also been a leader in coastal development regulation and steering development away from the coast through state policy and local comprehensive planning (Deyle, Chapin, and Baker 2008). Until major changes to state law in 2011, all of these local planning efforts were overseen by the Florida Department of Community Affairs (DCA), with authority to review, comment on, object to, and ultimately block local comprehensive plans, plan policies, and plan amendments. In 2011, the DCA was abolished and replaced by the Division of Community Development located in the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity. While the division has a greatly reduced staff and powers, it still has the authority to file objections to a local comprehensive plan amendment that is inconsistent with statewide interests.

Second, Florida has had a long history with an advisory approach to regional planning, eventually folded into the state’s growth management system. Originally established in the early 1970s by executive order, Regional Planning Councils (RPCs) were officially designated by the Legislature in 1980 and tasked with coordinating regional planning efforts around water, transportation, and housing, providing technical assistance to local governments and developing visions and plans for their regions (RuBino and Starnes 2008). However, unlike the state’s role in the comprehensive planning process, RPCs have no authority to shape local plans and land use decisions, and instead have relied on their technical assistance role and the power of persuasion in influencing local decision making. Regional planning in Florida takes the form of an advisory, agenda-setting body, with no real statutory and financial authority to influence local governments.

Third, local comprehensive plans have had a powerful role in shaping development outcomes. Many states require that local governments prepare a comprehensive plan, and a subset of these require that these plans be in alignment with land development regulations (the local zoning code, most notably). Through language in state statutes and key court decisions, comprehensive plans in Florida have achieved near constitutional status; any alterations to local land use policies and all development decisions must be consistent with the local comprehensive plan. Local comprehensive plans are a primary means to pursuing new policy directions, embedding policy change and redirecting development (Brody 2008; Deyle, Chapin, and Baker 2008).

Climate Change Policy in Florida: Little, But Hopefully Not Too Late

Florida has lagged behind many other states in developing a formal climate change policy. In the mid-2000s, then governor Crist created a climate change task force, held summits focusing on climate change and alternative energy issues, and developed a statewide climate change plan addressing both mitigation and adaptation issues. The state also began to develop guidelines for new comprehensive planning requirements that incorporated issues of climate change, energy supply and demand, and reductions in vehicle miles traveled. With the election of Governor Scott in 2010, the state halted all efforts to develop climate change policy and instead redirected the state’s planning apparatus toward economic development activity. Under Scott, climate change has had limited support for sea level rise adaptation.

As a result, local governments and regional planning bodies were left on their own to pursue initiatives in the area of climate change. In 2009, after the third statewide summit on climate change was canceled, the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Leadership Summit was organized with participation from a range of local, state, and federal officials; regional planning bodies; and representatives of a regional climate change group from Broward, Palm Beach, Miami-Dade, and Monroe counties (Feliciano and Prosperi 2011). At the end of the summit, commissioners from each county agreed on a plan to create a coordinated approach to climate change through a regional Compact, which was later approved by each county (Feliciano and Prosperi 2011).

Findings: The Voluntary SFRCCC Collaborative Arrangements and the Five Challenges of Adaptive Governance

The voluntary Compact collaborative arrangements provide a vehicle for Monroe, Palm Beach, Miami-Dade, and Broward Counties to work together to collect information, guide climate action and collectively lobby federal, state and regional planning agencies to support implementation of strategies to address climate mitigation and adaptation. Initially adopted by one county, the three other counties adopted the Compact as collegial bodies in 2010. It is operated by a Steering Committee of two representatives from each Compact County and a representative from a city in each of the four counties. The South Florida Water Management District and the South Florida Regional Planning Council provide information and support as ex-officio members of the Steering Committee.

The Compact sets out to build general agreement around recommendations for local governments and others to amend legislation, policy, and planning at multiple levels to take climate action. The Compact brings together elected officials and staff representatives from governments and nongovernmental organizations at multiple decision-making levels to integrate policies and build supportive coalitions to implement outcomes. The Compact’s governance is uniquely structured to achieve these organizational and policy objectives, and this helps the Compact address the five challenges of adaptive governance suggested by Scholz and Stiftel (2005).

Representation

Diverse stakeholders are represented in the workings of the Compact at multiple levels and in multiple ways. The Compact is primarily an instrument for local government to collectively organize, lobby and take action to address climate change. The signatory counties to the Compact are represented on the Staff Steering Committee by two high-ranking professionals, usually only one or two levels below the county chief executive. These signatory counties are the parties to the Compact.

Municipalities participate as partners to the Compact. Four of the more than one hundred municipalities in the region, one from each county, are represented by a professional representative on the Steering Committee (SFCCC 2014); however, they do not vote. The Steering Committee will soon broaden municipal representation by having two-year terms and rotating the municipal representatives that sit on the Committee.

The planners participating in the Steering Committee are engaging voluntarily. As one of the members characterizes the motivations of the group, “we are folks that were not assigned to do this. We’re there because of a particular interest or in some instances passion of the members of the committee. We are very much engaged and very much interested in seeing the development of meaningful policies and actions to address climate change, whether it be emissions or strategies to deal with sea level rise. Each member, whether from the leadership perspective or the individual perspective of the members have a vested interest in seeing it succeed” (interview, October 2015).

Other key partners include The Nature Conservancy and facilitators from the Institute for Sustainable Communities. These partners have provided regular ongoing technical, process, and advisory input to the Steering Committee and Compact working groups. Other municipalities, academic institutions, non-profit organizations and private sector interests participate collaboratively through information sharing and policy discussions that take place at annual summits and through Compact working groups. State and federal agencies including the Army Corps of Engineers, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency are involved in the work of the Compact through the information sharing, funding and other resources they provide to local and regional organizations that advance the Compact’s work. As an interjurisdictional and interorganizational collaborative, the Compact works through organizational and professional representatives rather than the public at large.

Decision Processes

The Compact’s voluntary decision processes have focused on building an agreed information base and making recommendations for coordinated government action to mitigate and adapt the region to climate change through the Regional Climate Action Plan (RCAP). The RCAP aims “to integrate climate adaptation and mitigation into existing decision-making systems and to develop a plan that can be implemented through existing local and regional agencies, processes and organizations.” (SFRCC Counties 2012a, vi). The Compact has no authority to introduce regulations or make investment decisions to implement strategies across the region and it has not changed local planning or land use decision-making requirements. As our interviewees note, the Compact is not a “legal organization” (interview, April 2014); rather, it functions through “an informal consensus” process (interview, April 2014). Local governments willingly contribute staff time and resources to collaborate on climate policy and planning through the Steering Committee and interorganizational cooperation.

The Steering Committee is the primary decision-making body of the Compact. Professionals from the Institute for Sustainable Communities facilitate the Steering Committee’s monthly conference call and an annual two-day retreat. At their retreat, the Steering Committee sets the agenda and work plan for the coming year that the Compact uses to allocate staff time and actions working groups and task forces. Standing working groups address the Built Environment, Transportation and Land/Natural Systems and others are developed as needed for products such as the Unified Sea Level Rise Projection, Regional Climate Action Plan, or Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory. The working groups operate using informal consensus-oriented processes, seeking general agreement rather than unanimity. Steering Committee members participate on all working groups.

While elected officials were central to the creation of the Compact, the Steering Committee purposefully excluded them because of Florida’s Sunshine Law.² This law applies when more than one elected official from the same board meets about topics that might necessitate action on the part of that board. Excluding elected officials has made the Steering Committee “nimble and accessible. If you start formalizing the structure where you need to start recording every minute, all your interactions need to be announced, and everything needs to be done publicly, it makes it more difficult to get your work done and be the most efficient” (interview, October 2015). Uniquely this has allowed the Steering Committee to work through climate policy issues in an open dialogic forum with limited political influence.

Although elected officials play a minor role in the Steering Committee process, their role in implementing the decision processes of the Compact is essential. Elected officials translate the work of the Compact into “policy action” and “provide endorsement, direction, and commitment of individual boards” of the Compact’s work through public processes (interview, October 2015). Another interviewee notes that “if it is only staff, then you very soon begin to lose that traction and momentum,” so the development of products from the Compact provide “important opportunities for elected leadership to commit through accepted work products to ensure their continued engagement” (interview, October 2015).

The Steering Committee reaches agreement on policy and products such as the unified sea-level rise projection and the RCAP that are translated into action by the relevant authorities in each county, municipality, or state government department. For example, the RCAP is adopted by the Steering Committee based on advice from working groups and provides an integrated regional framework for planning, decision making, and investment coordination for counties and other partners to implement. It identifies key actions, strategies, time frames, resources required, and priority areas to take climate action. Though the RCAP’s recommendations have no legal standing or adoption requirements, uptake by the Compact Counties and many municipalities has been high. All counties adopted the RCAP as a guiding document and by 2015 had amended their comprehensive plans to take climate change and sea level rise into account. The self-reported outcomes from the 2014 Municipal Implementation Survey (Moger 2015) provides information about where the efforts of the Compact have influenced climate action. As Table 2 shows, energy and fuel (40.2 percent) and sustainable communities and transportation (39.9 percent) are areas of relatively high levels of implementation across municipalities within Compact counties.

Table 2.

Municipal Implementation by Policy Area.

	Based on Total Population of Cities Answering Survey (%)
	Broward	Dade	Monroe	Palm Beach	Region
Agriculture	16.5	6.2	4.1	4.2	10.1
Energy and fuel	48.0	44.0	55.8	31.6	40.2
Natural systems	28.0	21.3	61.5	38.9	31.8
Public outreach	25.3	21.4	33.9	25.0	17.8
Public policy	25.8	18.6	45.1	20.6	24.4
Risk reduction and emergency management	39.6	19.1	69.3	30.0	31.2
Sustainable communities and transportation	42.6	35.8	55.2	31.2	39.9
Water supply, management and infrastructure	42.0	14.2	49.4	35.7	26.9

Note: Areas with the two highest implementation values are shown in bold.

This high level of uptake of the Compact’s planning and policy guidelines in local government decision processes appears to be the result of elements of collective action facilitated by improved interorganizational cooperation. Interviewees reported that the Compact had improved information sharing between planners and professionals at an operational level and this had improved planning, target setting, decision-making accountability, and the coordination of decision processes. For example, Steering Committee members communicate and share information outside of committee meetings openly and on an almost daily basis. Questions, concerns, or information requests from one member are often copied to all other members so that they are aware of ongoing conversations and developments. As one Steering Committee member notes, “I probably have three or four emails from members of the Steering Committee each day. They might not be directly to me, but they copy all of the other members of the Staff Committee. That level of communication is constant” (interview, September 2015). This has improved accountability and the transparency of local government land-use decision making and enabled professionals to share important information about progress and key lessons from the experience of what has and has not worked. In Monroe County’s comprehensive planning process, “we certainly looked at Broward’s climate change action plan and their comprehensive plan language associated with climate change as we have gone about creating a unique energy conservation and climate change element for the Monroe County comprehensive plan. That is definitely a natural benefit or function that the Compact has served. In a way, I think there is sort of peer support and peer pressure in a positive way. ‘If you can do it, we can do it and we can do it better’ type of thing” (interview, April 2014).

As another notes, “I attribute the fact that all of the counties addressed it to the fact that they are working together and there is almost peer pressure. Broward was saying ‘you know, when are you going to amend your comp plan?’” (interview, April 2014). Interestingly Broward was not only leading the way but was also drawing from other Compact partners to improve policies and decisions related to climate adaptation. Based on conversations and initial mapping of gaps as part of a living shorelines working group, Broward officials identified that “we had not been as successful as our neighbors in implementing new shorelines. They all average about 85% and we all average about 60% of the shoreline with living infrastructure features. So, we’re in the process of implementing into our land use plan a goal of establishing a 60-80% minimum for living shoreline infrastructure” and renewing investments in shoreline protection and rehabilitation from the county commissioners (interview, October 2015).

Although key regional, state, and federal agencies are not bound to participate in the Compact’s decision-making processes or implement recommendations of the RCAP, the collective weight of activity generated by the Compact’s governance structure gives momentum to climate action in the region helping to engage stakeholders at higher levels. Several interviewees noted that the Compact’s collective voice had increased their influence over decision making at state and federal levels. As one notes, “we represent 30% of the population of the State of Florida. If you think that climate change isn’t important in Tallahassee, then all you need to do is poll citizens in South Florida, which represents a large voting block in the state. Our unified voice is much stronger at the state and federal level” (interview, September 2015). By engaging willing local government adopters and improving the interregional transparency of planning activity, the counties, through the Compact, have been more successful in lobbying and securing resources and supportive policy at state and federal government levels compared to before.

Scientific Learning

The Compact was founded on a need to develop coordinated climate science for regional planning and building scientific data and closing knowledge gaps is a fundamental part of its governance. To facilitate consensus-based decision making, policy implementation, and learning-based reform, the Compact (1) collaboratively defined new planning baselines; (2) held annual summits, regional workshops, and improved communication between Compact Counties; and (3) monitored and reported implementation progress against climate action items.

The Compact set baselines for policy and planning including the unified SLR projection and baseline sector-specific greenhouse gas emissions (from 2005 to 2009) that informed the RCAP planning and target setting. Developed in collaboration with the academic, local, regional, state, and federal science community, these two data sets were fundamental to the adaptation strategies developed within the RCAP. The Compact counties, with technical support and data from the Florida Division of Emergency Management, South Florida Water Management District, and South Florida Regional Planning Council, used the unified projection to develop vulnerability assessments of one-, two-, and three-foot sea level rises (SRCCC Counties 2012a).

The Annual Southeast Florida Climate Change Summit and regional workshops hosted by the Compact engage stakeholders and government officials to exchange ideas and information to improve the understanding of climate problems and knowledge about action. The summits “share information and maintain interest” while the more detailed workshops build county and municipality capacity for action (interviews April 2014 and October 2015). Through the summits and regional workshops coupled with improved communication between Compact Counties, local governments are following the lead of innovators in the region confirming the Compact’s role in adaptive governance to trial, learn, and scale up and out what works in practice. One example is the Living Shoreline working group that is focused on “the role of natural features from coral reefs, to dunes, to mangroves, in shoreline protection, erosion control, etc.” (interview, April 2014). To enhance the science behind living shorelines and apply this knowledge into regional policy and investments the group has four objectives: serve as “a clearinghouse for best practices and information relevant to the issue”; identify “good examples of projects that have already been completed in the region”; get “a comprehensive idea of opportunities to do additional projects”; and “scale up based on what techniques work and are cost effective” (interview, April 2014).

The Compact Steering Committee and working groups have actively monitored, assessed, and reported the performance of the Compact over time, identifying several areas that require better data and knowledge to inform future climate action. One example is the need to track “changing attitudes of residents towards sea level rise issues” (interview, July 2013). The Compact’s subcommittees assess information gaps relevant to the local coastal social-ecological systems. The Institute for Sustainable Communities, on behalf of the Compact, has surveyed 104 municipalities in the four counties to identify local efforts toward implementing climate action such as recording climate-related ordinances, resolutions, regulations, and administrative policy information (Moger 2015). The results, shown in Table 2, were used to assess the extent of municipality uptake of RCAP recommendations across the region and the information is publicly available on the Compact’s website for peer-to-peer sharing (Moger 2015).

Public Learning

The Compact’s architecture does not focus on public learning about climate conflicts and policy deliberations. The general public is not directly involved in the work of the Compact. The governance structure of the Compact provides the opportunity for professionals to deliberate about climate impacts leading to their informed advice and recommendations for local government and others to consider adopting. The Compact hosts regional workshops to share information and lessons from the implementation experience between interested parties. As one member notes, “It’s easy to say an action level statement- “reduce emissions by 2020” or even more specific in the action plan, but the question is how? These workshops are designed to get at the how and who. So far the actual workshops have been productive” (interview, April 2014). Topics align to the climate action plan, including solar installation in condominiums, the integration of climate change into local comprehensive and transportation planning, climate change investments in stormwater management, water supply planning, and communicating with climate sceptics.

Broader public involvement in deliberations about planning policy for climate mitigation and adaptation occurs through local government planning processes. In adopting the recommendations of the Compact, local governments must engage with their citizens through local comprehensive planning and decision processes for transportation, hazard mitigation, water supply, or capital investment planning to secure resources to activate programs and initiatives. The Compact Counties have all adopted the baseline guidelines and the RCAP and amended their local comprehensive plans. We did not examine the extent of public learning about climate change in individual county or municipal planning processes. Local public learning processes and whether there is a causal relationship between these and the work of the compact warrants further attention.

Problem Responsiveness

Although measuring the outcomes of the six-year-old Compact in addressing climate change problems is a multidecade task, we can nevertheless observe some impacts. In forming the Compact, the counties intended to mitigate and adapt to climate change and agreed to dedicate staff and resources to develop and implement plans and strategies (SFCCC 2014).

The RCAP targets action by counties directly involved in the Compact and of stakeholders at higher decision-making levels. It reinforces the dual role of the Compact as an action-oriented and reform-focused policy collaborative. These multiple roles of the Compact are evident in the 110 action items. Most (56.4 percent) items focus on implementing action to address sustainable communities, transportation, and public policy within existing organizational capacity (Table 3). Of the 110 action items, 60 percent are achievable within existing organizational resources, 17 percent require additional resources, 10 percent require agency staffing, and 4.5 percent require no additional resources, with 8.2 percent unidentified. RCAP actions also target partner stakeholders and other organizations particularly at higher levels of government to negotiate policy support, legislative development, and resources to implement climate action. For example, 49.1 percent of the action items need legislative development to amend local government codes and ordinances or implementing legislation, and 9.1 percent involve coordinating a broader legislative package—one of the central agreements of the original Compact (SFCCC Counties 2012b).

Table 3.

Analysis of the 110 SFRCCC Regional Climate Action Plan Action Items.

	1. Vision/ Objective Setting		2. Analysis		3. Strategy Development		4. Implementation		5. Monitoring/ Evaluation		Total
Substantive Action Areas	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%
Agriculture	0	0.0	0	0.0	3	50.0	3	50.0	0	0.0	6	100.0
Energy and fuel	1	12.5	0	0.0	6	75.0	1	12.5	0	0.0	8	100.0
Natural systems	0	0.0	1	7.1	3	21.4	9	64.3	1	7.1	14	100.0
Public outreach	0	0.0	0	0.0	2	18.2	9	81.8	0	0.0	11	100.0
Public policy	0	0.0	0	0.0	2	15.4	11	84.6	0	0.0	13	100.0
Risk reduction and emergency management	0	0.0	0	0.0	0	0.0	6	85.7	1	14.3	7	100.0
Sustainable communities and transportation	0	0.0	1	3.0	14	42.4	18	54.5	0	0.0	33	100.0
Water supply, management and infrastructure	0	0.0	3	16.7	9	50.0	5	27.8	1	5.6	18	100.0
Total	1	0.9	5	4.5	39	35.5	62	56.4	3	2.7	110

Note: We followed the recommendations of Stevens, Lyles, and Berke (2014) and used two readers to independently categorize the 110 action items of the SFRCCC’s Regional Action Plan (SFRCC Counties 2012a) into the five stages in the policy cycle. Some action items were given multiple scores during the first assessment round because the action items were not discrete entities—these cases required further assessment. Overall the (independent) intercoders disagreed on 43 of 110 policy actions (39%). After the first round, the scores were discussed, with each conflicting score examined and a consensus score was assigned. A second round of scoring was then performed on the remaining items to reduce the multiple scores to a single score. The intercoders reached agreement on the scores for the 110 actions after the second round. We also grouped action items into the eight substantive categories from the RCAP. We integrated the consensus scores based on our analysis of the 110 Action Items (above) into the self-reported outcomes from the municipal implementation survey to classify local municipality effort against the five policy cycle categories.

The Adaptation Action Areas (AAAs) created by the Florida legislature in 2010 is one example of a key policy-level accomplishment of the Compact. Members of the Compact introduced the idea to legislative actors and helped get the law through in a year that otherwise was seen as a major attack on planning in the state. AAAs allow local governments to invest funds and develop land use regulations to enhance sea level rise adaptation efforts within the specified boundaries. Several municipalities and counties in South Florida have incorporated language into their comprehensive plans to designate or evaluate the applicability of AAAs. A second policy level achievement is the 2015 amendment to Chapter 163, which strengthens Florida’s Comprehensive Planning Law around flooding. It strengthens the coastal planning element requirement and mentions sea level rise as a consideration that must be taken into account in development and redevelopment rules (Ruppert 2015).

The RCAP Implementation Guide (SFRCC Counties 2012b) clarifies how local governments can accomplish the plan strategies. All Compact counties have adopted changes to their comprehensive land use plans to incorporate language on sea level rise. By drilling down into one county, we can unpack the extent of this action. Broward County has been a leading adopter of land use planning strategies to address climate change and adapt to the impacts of sea level rise. One county planner noted that Broward “adopted land use plan amendments that have approved policies requiring considerations of sea level rise in land use decisions. Moreover, we’ve incorporated sea level rise vulnerability and greenhouse gas mitigation into the capital improvement justification forms, so you can’t get money for a project unless you’re talking about how you’re dealing with greenhouse gases and if you’ve looked to see if the project is located in an area that’s vulnerable to sea level rise” (interview, July 2013). Broward has specific Priority Planning Areas for SLR in their comprehensive plan to guide capital project funding related to transportation, drainage, sewer, and water supply infrastructure. They also incorporated SLR vulnerability assessments into their port, airport, and parks management plans (interview, July 2013).

Across the region, interviewees note that some plan language is tentative and unspecific. Our review of the comprehensive plans concurs with this and finds that the plan language about climate change is uneven across the region. The Palm Beach County comprehensive plan recommends that climate strategies be further considered and best information about sea level rise and climate impacts be taken into account. Palm Beach County proposes to continue participation in the Compact to share technical expertise, to “consider the use of Adaptation Action Areas” as a planning tool and to “consider the use of mitigation strategies to increase energy efficiency and conservation.” There are no commitments within the plan to actively incorporate the recommendations of the RCAP into their development review practices.

In Miami-Dade and Monroe Counties, plans call for more finely grained analyses, mapping and strategy identification, noting the importance of continued information development and gathering. Monroe also recommends a new capital improvements element to increase urban resiliency, and both Monroe and Miami-Dade point to the need to consider impacts such as sea level rise in siting and designing public facilities.

The Climate Change Element in Broward’s comprehensive plan is the most thorough in building the resiliency of the human and physical environment to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The Broward County plan promotes resiliency through energy efficiency and greenhouse gas reduction through cleaner energy solutions: by mitigating, protecting, and adapting transportation systems, built environment, natural systems, and water resources and services; through interagency coordination, emergency preparedness, and disaster management; and by addressing social considerations, public health, and education. Although this plan also includes policies about information gathering and taking climate impacts into consideration, it has the strongest language and an amendment to create an AAA has been drafted to facilitate implementation.

Despite weak language in some plans, there was still the view that progress had been made. One observer remarked that “everybody can argue about how far they went . . . did they really bite the bullet on climate change? I think one thing is that they introduced the issue and it will be ongoing as they evolve” (interview, April 2014).

Initially, the Compact was focused on building foundations for implementing climate planning through data collection and analysis, developing guidelines, and recommending changes to planning documents. It has, however, become more focused on supporting climate action. When it comes to climate action, planners can feel “overwhelmed by the magnitude of the challenge” (interview, October 2015). The Compact addresses this by bringing experienced planners together in an inter-organizational network. As one observes, “I think the momentum has built in a stepwise fashion, from in the beginning of awareness raising and creating buy-in and political will to engaging the issues and identifying the vulnerabilities. Now we’re in the phase of identifying the solutions and their costs. This is where it gets hard but it’s worth it” (interview, April 2014). The Compact’s network of planners has had a positive impact on climate action where “participating in the Compact has been beneficial in progress we’ve made at the county level and at the regional level. I’ve been working in climate change issues almost exclusively since 2003 and was engaged before that. I know how hard it is to get things done. This regional collaboration has catapulted us forward in the progress we’ve been able to make” (interview, October 2015). Another adds that they “can avoid a lot of unnecessary time and process by taking advantage of high-quality work that our colleagues have produced. We share information and models very readily. Everyone adapts to them very quickly for their own application but we are constantly piggy-backing on each other’s successes and celebrating them” (interview, September 2015).

To enhance regional capacity for action, the Compact has organized implementation workshops on key strategies and a series of municipal government meetings “providing a lot of communication support to deliver the information to help move the cities into a position where they can help identify and fund the types of investments that are needed in their community” (interview, October 2015). As these efforts highlight, the Compact is responding to climate change by influencing the institutions that can directly invest in and implement mitigation and adaptation policy and planning. This is facilitated by the actors of the Compact. As one Steering Committee member explains, “The staff served as the glue. Elected officials come and go and the issues ebb and flow. Staff from the four counties has not changed that much. We really have built these tremendous relationships. We build on our strengths working together. We can call on each other when we want an outside perspective, want a backup on that issue, have a challenge of an issue, and want to determine how to move this issue forward. The working relationships that I have with my fellow staff in other counties are both personally and professionally rewarding” (interview, October 2015).

Discussion: The Promise and Limits of Voluntary Regional Collaboration

The SFCCC approach to collaboration, which situates the work of the Compact largely within and across local government planning arrangements, has helped to jump-start regional and local action of climate change issues in response to a lack of leadership at higher decision-making levels. The Compact has provided a forum for collaboration and multilevel governance through complex nested responses to climate problems. The combination of voluntary approaches, data sharing, and scientific coordination has helped to achieve some key aspects of adaptive governance, particularly related to community-based action and social learning at the local government level. When we consider the Compact against Scholz and Stiftel’s (2005) framework of adaptive governance, however, gaps are evident in processes for representation and decision making, learning, and problem responsiveness.

First local governments dominate representation on the Compact. The broader public, business, development, and insurance sectors are not significantly participating, and elected officials are not involved in the governance structure. Working Groups broaden the involvement by professionals, academics, nonprofits, and the private sector at an action level, while state/federal government, community, and elected officials engage through existing planning and policy decision-making forums. As a regional coordination body, the focus on engaging willing local government adopters adds momentum to the efforts of the Compact. For adaptive governance, however, key decision-making sectors and stakeholders with a role to play in implementing climate action in the region need to be more meaningfully and directly engaged. An integrated, multilevel, complex, and redundant institutional arrangement across multiple jurisdictions, sectors, and levels of government would have a stronger potential to mainstream climate adaptation.

Second, though the Compact provides a coordination mechanism to influence local government planning processes, it is a voluntary initiative with a limited ability to influence the decision processes of stakeholders at other levels. The compact is able to influence other governmental actors through information sharing, improved interregional transparency of planning and action, the legitimacy of the compact itself, and peer pressure. The objective of the Compact to work through existing planning tools helps with mainstreaming climate action as other actors are able to draw inspiration and planning strategies directly from compact publications. Implementation, however, depends on county and municipal decision processes and local approaches to public involvement, enforcement, monitoring and review, and politics. The foundations for comprehensive planning are strong in South Florida; nevertheless, the ability to prioritize climate action through development control and sustainability decisions varies across the region despite a shared commitment to the SFRCCC among counties and respected reputation of the compact’s quality of information and expertise among other municipalities.

Third, scientific and planning knowledge has played a strong role in the actions of the Compact, but the role of different forms of knowledge in learning is not clear. The political tractability of sea level rise, king-tide flooding, flood control, beach erosion, and saltwater intrusion into drinking water supplies in South Florida enabled a group of key elected officials from the four counties to forge the Compact. In most cases, this involved a key county commissioner who was able to bring along his/her constituencies and fellow board members. Coordinating climate science was a key factor underpinning the Compact formation to develop a robust knowledge and information base for local governments to make decisions and to develop a unified voice when seeking state and federal assistance. Scientific knowledge at an action planning level was key to setting baselines for the RCAP. Since its adoption, the Compact has hosted a range of workshops across the region to engage government officials in understanding climate problems and technical solutions. Social capital between the Compact’s planners has grown a stable and trusted network whose members collaborate regularly to share information and experiences to adapt local policy and planning mechanisms to make progress on the RCAP priority action items. The public and elected members are not directly involved in learning through the Compact. The RCAP actions do not focus on public learning, and public outreach is the lowest area of municipality implementation (see Table 3). Though some workshops have been held to engage the public on specific climate change issues, county and municipal planning processes provide the only avenue for the public to participate.

Finally, responding to climate change problems by reshaping development takes decades. Six years in the Compact has jump-started regional and local action, especially in the absence of consistent and meaningful state leadership. The Compact has been effective at promoting regional collaboration and in using data to drive local planning. The Compact has shaped regional discussions, data development (common SLR projections; vulnerability assessments), information exchange between local government planners, legislative coordination, and local comprehensive plan improvements. Tools and processes from Florida’s long experience of urban and environmental planning have been incorporated into mitigation and adaptation policy and planning through the Compact. For example, local comprehensive plans are the primary and most effective means of pursuing new policy directions, embedding policy change, and redirecting development in Florida. Any alterations to local land use policies and all development decisions must be consistent with the local comprehensive plan. Despite this, changes to county and municipal comprehensive plans have been modest. Yielding language puts climate change in the set of issues to be considered, but with no requirements that climate change be a primary factor that shapes land use decisions or infrastructure investments.

So far the SFRCCC and RCAP have had the greatest impact on reforming energy, fuel, and transportation standards through new development controls. More complex policy changes required in areas such as risk reduction and emergency management, water supply management, and infrastructure will require the coordination of actors and policy at multiple levels to achieve desired outcomes. Though the Compact uses collective lobbying and advocacy to influence the decision processes of state and federal government to secure resources and align policy arrangements, questions remain about whether this is enough to influence outcomes. Regional planning agencies have seen their importance decline over the past two to three decades, resulting in fragmented land use planning and policy decisions. Florida has had limited success with voluntary regional planning approaches in the past.

A major difference between the SFRCCC and other regional governance regimes is that the Compact was developed by local government officials interested in pursuing a climate change policy agenda rather than being guided by state policy or a regional planning body. The next several years will be an important time to see whether this locally derived voluntary collaboration can effect more substantial influence to implement climate action. Toward this end the information base to judge the impact of the Compact on local government outcomes requires further development. The self-reported implementation survey was a positive first step and should be expanded to include counties and other levels of government to monitor the impact of the Compact on planning processes and outcomes throughout the region.

Conclusion

The SRFCCC provides evidence that voluntary regional collaboration focused on spatial planning can be effective in influencing local land use planning to address climate change impacts. First, the partnership provides a forum through which local and regional actors can combine resources, technical capabilities and data to enhance the capacities of each of the participating local governments. Second, the Compact demonstrates that voluntary collaboration can yield agreement on baseline greenhouse gas emissions data, existing conditions, and sea level rise projections, which are necessary if local governments are to work collectively on climate change adaptation. Third, the development of the RCAP has yielded a framework for climate action to guide local policies and programs. The RCAP links climate adaptation and mitigation to a range of goals, plans and programs at multiple governance levels. Networks of learning have helped local government planners to share practices, make progress on local comprehensive plan amendments in accordance with the RCAP and coordinate lobbying at state and federal levels.

The Compact’s decision forums have allowed for deliberations that have helped to coordinate the efforts of previously independent systems of users, knowledge, authorities, and organized interests. This has mobilized climate action by strengthening administrative networks for collaboration regionally across local government boundaries. In the absence of the Compact, there would have been far less regional climate planning activity and interjurisdictional policy learning. Furthermore, the SFRCCC model does not undermine the existing authority and decision-making capacity of local governments.

Although the Compact provides value, it is not without shortcomings as an adaptive governance mechanism. Reflecting Florida’s longstanding tradition of advisory regional planning, the Compact provides only guidance to local governments without robust inducements or support from other levels for implementation. The Compact provides a forum to share experiences, guidance on policies and best practices, and technical assistance, but it does not require any actions by participating members. As the Compact controls no major resources of its own, it does not have the capacity to steer policy and practice through financial incentives. The compact brings many of “the critical users, experts, authorities, and organised interests together into specialized negotiating frameworks” (Scholz and Stiftel 2005, 5) for adaptive governance; however, its ability to resolve spatial planning, power, and resource conflicts associated with “coordination problems resulting from the interdependence of decisions” (Millard-Ball 2013, 16) across state and federal agencies; the business, development, and insurance sectors; and the local public remains to be seen. It does provide a starting point for adaptive governance for climate action through its innovative voluntary approach that builds on politically tractable local climate problems, existing resources, and local planning efforts to grow a local culture and practice focused on mitigating and adapting to climate change.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Karen Vella is a senior lecturer in Urban and Regional Planning at Queensland University of Technology. Her research interests include urban and regional planning, governance, natural resource management, sustainability, social resilience, the Great Barrier Reef, and mitigating and adapting to climate change.

William H. Butler is an associate professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at Florida State University. His research interests include collaborative governance, natural resources management, environmental planning and management, social-ecological resilience, sustainability, public participation, and community involvement.

Neil Sipe is a professor in Planning at the University of Queensland. His research interests include land use, urban form and travel behavior, natural resource management (NRM), disruptive transport technologies (autonomous vehicles, drones), and comparative international research on planning regulations and practice.

Tim Chapin is a professor of Urban and Regional Planning and interim dean, College of Social Sciences and Public Policy at Florida State University. His research interests are comprehensive planning, growth management, regional planning and visioning, and community resiliency.

Jim Murley is the Chief Resilience Officer for Miami-Dade County, Miami, Florida. His interests are sustainability and climate adaptation.

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