Institutions for climate change - A method to assess the inherent characteristics of institutions to enable the adaptive capacity of society

This paper addresses the question: How can the inherent characteristics of institutions to stimulate the adaptive capacity of society to climate change from local through to national level be assessed? On the basis of a literature review and several brainstorm sessions, this paper presents six criteria: Variety, learning capacity, space for planned and innovative autonomous action, leadership, availability of resources and fair governance.