Positioning Climate Change Adaptation in Collaborative Governance Research: A Systematic Literature Review

Climate change adaptation presents a complex governance challenge that demands collaborative action across organizational, sectoral, and geographic boundaries. While collaborative governance has been widely advocated as an institutional response, the literature specifically addressing its application in climate change adaptation remains fragmented. This article addresses this gap through a systematic review of 76 articles. Bibliometric analysis traces a gradual shift in the field from technical solutions toward governance-based approaches. Structural topic modeling (STM) reveals four thematic clusters: collaborative governance mechanism; urban adaptation and resilience; knowledge and information; and local and community-based adaptation. Content analysis further identifies three cross-dimensional patterns: research in low-income regions clusters around descriptive objectives, qualitative methods, and atheoretical designs; evaluative studies are scarce and concentrated around public-private partnerships; and lower-income regions are studied through a narrower range of policy domains and collaboration types than higher-income regions. These patterns reflect a deeper imbalance between the field’s descriptive breadth and its explanatory depth. Drawing on these findings, this review proposes an integrative framework organizing collaborative governance around drivers, process, and outcomes. Future studies should systematically examine drivers of collaboration, measure collaboration depth and its longitudinal dynamics, explore the issue-specific governance arrangements, and evaluate outcomes with attention to social equity and long-term climate effects.