SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Interdisciplinary Climate Studies
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1598908
This article is part of the Research TopicEnhancing Soil Health and Climate Resilience through Sustainable Agricultural PracticesView all 6 articles
Institutional dynamics in climate change adaptation: a bibliometric analysis
Provisionally accepted
- 1Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, India
- 2ICAR - Krishi Vigyan Kendra, TNAU, The Nilgiris, India
- 3VIT School of Agricultural Innovations and Advanced Learning, Vellore, India
- 4Department of Library Sciences, St. Stephen's College, Uzhavoor, Kerala, India
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Climate change poses significant challenges to agricultural and water sectors globally, threatening food security, water availability, and ecosystem services. This systematic literature review analyzes institutional dynamics in climate change adaptation, focusing on institutional challenges and enabling factors across different governance levels. Following PRISMA guidelines, 38 papers published between 2014-2024 were selected from Scopus and Web of Science after rigorous quality assessment. Bibliometric analysis revealed research concentration in Western countries and parts of Africa, with significant gaps in South Asian countries. Institutional barriers identified include governance fragmentation, resource limitations, knowledge gaps, and policy misalignments. Enabling factors include boundary organizations, collaborative governance frameworks, and multi-level institutional partnerships. The review also suggests the research gaps in understanding the informal institutional dynamics, power relations in adaptation governance, and practical implementation pathways for the conduct of institutional reform. These findings suggest that targeted interventions to strengthen climate adaptation policies in agricultural and water sectors require balancing formal and flexible approaches, particularly in climate-vulnerable regions.
Keywords: Adaptive governance, Environmental policies, Institutional barriers, reform in governance, Agricultural resilience, Water resource management, climate adaptation
Received: 24 Mar 2025; Accepted: 28 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Palanivelan, R, R, I, Manivasagam and P. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jaisridhar Palanivelan, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, India
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