One way to make development pathways more resilient in the face of a changing climate has been through mainstreaming adaptation into government policies, planning and sectoral decision‐making. To date, many of the transferable lessons have taken the form of technical approaches such as risk assessments and toolkits. This article instead draws on evidence from South Asia to emphasise some of the more tacit and informal approaches used to influence adaptation policy. Despite their apparent significance in policy processes, such tactics are often neither planned for nor well reported in resilience‐building projects and programme documents. Using evidence to populate a typology of influencing strategies, this article looks particularly at the role of policy entrepreneurs who navigate the political complexity of both formal and informal governance systems to promote successful adaptation mainstreaming. It concludes with recommendations for adaptation and resilience programming that can more effectively harness the breadth of influencing strategies.

This report was produced jointly by the Clean Energy Solutions Center through staff at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) with additional contributions by many international experts. The following were instrumental in the development of this report: Report AuthorsTerri Walters (NREL), Neha Rai (IIED), Sean Esterly (NREL), Sadie Cox (NREL), and Tim Reber (NREL) Case Study AuthorsBangladesh Neha Rai (IIED), Maliha Muzammil (University of Oxford), Tasfiq Mahmood (International Centre for Climate Change and Development) Ethiopia Nanki Kaur (IIED), Lidya Tesfaye and Simret Mamuye (Echnoserve Consulting) Mali James Knuckles (Cass Business School) Mexico