Mainstreaming climate adaptation: focusing on the water management of the third national climate adaptation plan of South Korea

Abstract The Government of South Korea has devoted efforts to mainstream climate adaptation in the national framework for a decade, and the recent National Climate Adaptation Plan (2021–2025) is a part of the continued institutionalizing endeavor to enhance adaptive capacity. To cope with climate threats, such as financial loss and death toll, confirmed at the 55th Session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2022, addressing a fundamental question of how to mainstream climate adaptations at the governmental policy level came to the fore. This study builds an analysis framework comprising three different domains of institutionalized mainstreaming–normative, organizational, and operational approaches–to understand how far climate adaptation has been institutionalized. Further, the framework is applied to analyze the extent to which an administrative project ‘I. Water Management' specified in the Detailed Implementation Programs has been mainstreamed. The analysis results indicate more rigorous inter/intra organizational governance and responsibility supported by regulatory provisions are much needed, inter alia, for the due course of institutionalizing climate adaptation. It can be quite challenging to achieving national climate adaptation in a timely manner when there is a lack of comprehensive integration of resilience institutions into national recognition, regulatory organization, and operational tools.