Climate Governance and Institutional Capacity: Lessons from Local Government Adaptation Strategies

Climate adaptation has become a critical governance challenge for Indonesia, a highly vulnerable archipelagic country exposed to flooding, coastal inundation, drought, extreme rainfall, land subsidence, and other climate-related risks. While national policy frameworks increasingly recognize the importance of climate-resilient development, the effectiveness of adaptation depends largely on the institutional capacity of local governments to translate policy commitments into sustained governance practices. This article examines climate governance and institutional capacity in Indonesian local government adaptation strategies. Using a qualitative policy analysis approach, the study analyzes policy documents, planning frameworks, and institutional arrangements related to local climate adaptation. The analysis is guided by five dimensions of institutional capacity: regulative, administrative, fiscal, coordinative, and participatory capacity. The findings show that climate adaptation has increasingly entered local development discourse, but its institutionalization remains uneven. Adaptation is often recognized in planning documents, yet implementation is constrained by fragmented bureaucratic mandates, limited fiscal resources, uneven technical capacity, weak integration of climate-risk data, and inconsistent community participation. The article argues that the main challenge of local adaptation in Indonesia is not merely the absence of climate policies, but the gap between policy recognition and institutional implementation. Strengthening local climate governance therefore requires moving beyond project-based adaptation toward adaptive institutional capacity embedded in planning, budgeting, coordination, and participatory governance systems. The article contributes to climate governance literature by offering an institutional capacity lens for understanding local adaptation in decentralized governance settings.