How Adaptive Policies are in Japan and Can Adaptive Policies Mean Effective Policies? Some Implications for Governing Climate Change Adaptation

It has been widely regarded that policies and institutions that are adaptive in nature can deal with climate change adaptation. However, verifying the veracity of this hypothesis is difficult due to the absence of long experience in climate change adaptation in most countries. This chapter is based on reviews and questionnaire survey on evolution of agriculture policies together with the issues need to be addressed over the decades. Interesting outcome of this study has been that indicators such as ‘timeliness’ of introduction of policies and ‘regular amendment’ of policies may not necessarily translate into effectiveness of policies since other factors, such as how stakeholders understand the issue based on which the policy was made, may also play a role among other topics discussed in this chapter.