PhD: The potential for transformative adaptation

More and more cities and municipalities struggle with complex climate challenges that must be solved locally. The need for climate change, climate adaptation and climate action to be able to handle the consequences of climate change and the loss of biological diversity has never been greater. Climate adaptation is often about finding technical and concrete solutions to crises such as torrential rain and sleet. At the same time, it is an area that requires holistic thinking and collaboration across disciplines and sectors. Many solutions will require major changes in how we think, interact and how we see the world. An important theme in the thesis is: what is actually healthy climate adaptation and how do we do it?

The thesis specifically looks at how different actors in Bergen municipality and Tromsø municipality work with planning blue-green infrastructure as part of their local climate adaptation strategies. Climate adaptation, and especially stormwater management, have in recent decades been characterized by more wholesome thinking where one works to move underground infrastructure in water pipes up to the ground in open solutions with green elements and better space for infiltration and digestion of water. Blue-green infrastructure in climate adaptation requires more land than underground water pipes and means that water and sewage which throughout history have been hidden away underground is politicized and actualized in climate policy, land management and urban development. The change also means that one can see a development of collective blue-green value sets where holistic thinking is an ideal in local spatial planning, also among actors who have storm water management as their primary goal. This dissertation's main contribution to the climate change and climate adaptation literature is how it empirically shows the potential for collective value development in climate adaptation work, as well as how some types of physical urban infrastructure can create space to implement new ways of thinking and working with local adaptation.

About the PhD Candidate:

Hanna Kvamsås (b. 1986) is a trained social geographer with a master's degree from the University of Oslo. She has been a research fellow at the Department of Geography at the University of Bergen, associated with the Center for Climate and Energy Transition (CET) and SpaceLab, as well as Climate, Environment and Sustainability at NORCE Health and Society. The thesis has been linked to the Hordaklim, HordaPlan and R3 projects at NORCE Klima. The director is Professor Håvard Haarstad and the director is Professor Simon Neby. Kvamsås now works as a researcher at NORCE.