ABSTRACT. This research examines the impact of three coordination dimensions on health sector adaptation to climate change in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta: cross-scale, cross-sectoral, and cross-boundary. While tasks are divided up between government ministries and departments in Vietnam, there is little collaboration on issues that span mandates. Similarly, while water flows in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta take resource management and health concerns across provincial boundaries, formal mechanisms for interprovincial collaboration are lacking. While decentralization efforts have sought to devolve authority and decision making to lower levels, there is continued state-centered top-down policy making, and this limits collaborative coordination across scales. All three of these issues inhibit health sector adaptation to climate change in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta, and though these coordination issues are recognized by the Vietnamese government, to date there has been little success in addressing them. The authors hope to stimulate further debate and discussion of coordination problems, and conclude that despite some significant challenges, the South West Steering Committee could play a facilitating role coordinating climate change responses in health and other sectors across the Vietnamese Mekong Delta. As an analysis of governance, this research is applicable to other areas and sectors in Vietnam, as well as to other parts of South East Asia.

Inclusive approaches have been applied in many areas, including human resources, international development, urban planning, and innovation. This paper is a systematic literature review to describe the usage trends, scope, and nature of the inclusive approach in the climate change adaptation (CCA) context. We developed search algorithms, explicit selection criteria, and a coding questionnaire, which we used to review a total of 106 peer-reviewed articles, 145 grey literature documents, and 67 national communications to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC); 318 documents were reviewed in total. Quantitatively, the methodology reveals a slight increase in usage, with a focus on non-Annex 1 countries, gender issues, and capacity building. Qualitatively, we arranged the key insights into the following three categories: (1) inclusion in who or what adapts; (2) motivating inclusive processes; and (3) anticipated outcomes of inclusive CCA. We conclude, with the observation, that many issues also apply to Annex 1 countries. We also argue that the common language nature of the word ‘inclusive’ makes it applicable to other CCA-relevant contexts, including government subsidies, science policy, knowledge integration and mobilization, performance measurement, and the breadth of the moral circle that a society should adopt.

The science‐policy interface in climate change adaptation became better managed over the past decades. However, the scientists and other knowledge producers, as well as policy makers still need to take bolder steps to more effectively engage with others to apply science and shape up policies. This paper aims to provide practical recommendations, intended to promote conversations between science and policy sectors to address climate change issues. Here, I used two different approaches to synthesize experiences and identify recommendations: a literature review and a case study. The paper stress main findings: (1) The linear communication model is still commonly involved in the science - policy dialogue and proved to be useful to increase the relevance of science and data products to decision makers. (2) When a gap between knowledge producer and knowledge user or decision maker exists, the need for a third party to specialize in bridging the gap become essential. (3) Indigenous people and knowledge must be involved in adaptation policy making based on legitimation local and traditional knowledge, designing the consultation process to broadly engage local and indigenous people, facilitating meaningful dialogues between traditional knowledge and science, and developing initiatives to strengthen skills and capacity of indigenous communities.