International climate adaptation assistance: Assessing public support in Switzerland

PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0317344 February 12, 2025 20 / 26 PLOS ONE Support for adaptation assistance in Switzerland In the context of Switzerland, as in other industrialized countries, climate mitigation has dominated climate change politics. To the extent that adaptation is discussed [95,96], it is in the context of vulnerabilities at the domestic level, exemplified in the case of Switzerland by concerns about mountainous regions and vulnerable sectors, or concerning most vulnerable sections of society. Climate policy proposals have thus focused primarily on mitigation objec- tives under the overarching international treaties including the UNFCCC, the Kyoto Protocol, and the Paris Agreement [97]. Our study suggests that as a consequence of the traditional focus and contestation of climate mitigation, questions of adaptation aid and finance have fallen on the sidelines of public attention at best, as indicated by the insignificant results in the absence of linkage to trade and alignment of Security Council votes. These findings are important, as they are likely indicative of a broader tendency of low pub- lic attention to international adaptation aid in industrialized countries. This raises questions about what kind of international platforms and domestic policies are needed to both increase the salience of adaptation aid and foster productive issue linkage for its ratcheting up. From a justice perspective, however, issue linkage could provide a double-edged response. Projecting

a strategic view of climate adaptation aid and international trade, security, and other strategic priorities of donor countries may increase the public support for, and volume of, adaptation finance. Yet, this might not be necessarily good news for climate justice, as the direction of aid is more likely to carry the imprint of the economic and foreign policy interests of donors. The issue linkage perspective thus raises questions for further research on what kinds of linkage ought to be fostered across international regimes and norms of justice, equity, and humanitari- anism, as means of amplifying the domestic resonance of adaptation aid policies. Finally, while we focus on adaptation, we recognize that some effects of climate change (such as desertification, salination, or the loss of land to sea level rise) are particularly hard to adapt to [98]. Hence, the 2015 Paris Agreement officially recognized (Article 8) that the subject of Loss and Damage needs to be addressed separately from adaptation. Future work could explore whether the emergence of Loss and Damage as an issue in its own right might strengthen or crowd-out support for climate adaptation. Supporting information S1 File. Survey. (PDF) S2 Fig. Descriptive statistics. (PDF) S3 Table. Baseline estimates. (PDF) S4 Fig. Interaction with age. (PDF) S5 Table. Interaction with age. (PDF) S6 Fig. Interaction with education. (PDF) S7 Table. Interaction with education. (PDF) S8 Fig. Interaction with income. (PDF)