An Approach to Implement Climate Change Adaptation with the Role-play Simulation—Implications from a Case in New England Region—

Abstract

Some local governments have begun to formulate local climate change adaptation strategies since the Government has issued the national climate change adaptation strategy and the Paris Agreement has reached settlement in 2015. As climate change impacts differ according to regions, downscaled climate model and impact assessments have been getting developed in each region. However, the scientific evidence tends to mismatch in formulate local climate change adaptation strategies in various aspects. Accordingly, it is important that trans-disciplinary approach to integrate the top-down expert knowledge that scientists could provide and the bottom-up local knowledge that the stakeholders and citizens would have. We introduce the role-play simulation as one of the approaches in this paper. We derive implications from a case in New England Region by literature survey and interview. The observed results demonstrate as follows; i) the results obtained from the role-play simulation that the participants are limited to a small number of stakeholders are consistent with those of the poll by random sampling from the general publics, ii) it provides an opportunity not to formulate just an administrative plan but to frame reducing long term risks and working out specific solutions for realizing sustainable community.