to which these standards correspond, such as the protection of urban landscapes or risk management linked to open spaces.

Finally, we cannot overlook the existence of implicit routines, habits and standards that influence the operation of organizations, firms and households. These routines and standards cannot be modified upon a simple decision. On the contrary, their evolution will require different actions in terms of information dissemination and education (particularly within professional development). In some cases, these standards and habits are highly inert. In others, they can be extremely rapidly modified, like in the case of smoking in public places. In addition to public standards, other economic instruments such as taxation may motivate economic agents to modify their routines. For example, regulations concerning the property tax system have a particular importance since they can lead to different types of land use and different levels of natural risk exposure.

# **2.2.3 Adaptation of institutions**

**A third type of public adaptation measure concerns institutions.** The typology established by the 2003 World Development Report of the World Bank attributes three essential functions to institutions within the context of environmental change: identifying early warning signs of changes and crises, balancing the interests of the different stakeholders, and being capable of credibly implementing the solutions it proposes (World Bank, 2003).

**Identification of the early warning signs** of the impacts of climate change has already been discussed in the section concerning information processing.  It is of utmost importance since the earlier these signs are identified, the wider the panel of adaptation measures available to the community will be.  Within this context, it is necessary to verify, on the one hand, that existing institutions do a good job of collecting relevant information to identify the signs linked to climate change, and on the other, that this information is cross-referenced and processed in time to provide ample warning that can be put to good use.  If necessary, particularly at the regional level, new institutions or new arrangements can be created.  New information technologies provide tools at this time to carry out these operations, e.g., via satellite imaging or the creation of decentralized systems to monitor the state of ecosystems, inspired by the medical monitoring network model, in order to provide additional support for existing institutions.

**The ability to produce well-balanced arrangements is critical since existing institutions may be subject to increasing pressures as a result of climate change.** For example, water distribution among users may become even more conflictual in the future than it is today. Similarly, the impacts of climate change may create tensions between public-private partners (PPPs) as a result of the emergence of unforeseen risks in the initial arrangement<sup>(16)</sup> .  Within this context, it may prove necessary to review existing institutional arrangements, or even to create new ones.  For example, by exacerbating tensions between supply and demand on the electrical power grid, climate change may require a greater degree of cooperation between European stakeholders in the sector.

The **credibility of arrangements and the ability of institutions to enforce them** is a general problem that is not specific to adaptation to climate change. In contrast, given that a high degree of uncertainty exists about climate change damages and the fact that information is rapidly increasing, arrangements must be sufficiently **flexible** to be able to adapt to new circumstances if they are to be sustainable. The definition of "adaptive" standards (see the preceding section) is an example of the way in which this flexibility can be integrated into

> 16 In this case, the literature emphasizes the importance of the flexibility of contracts to allow beneficial re-negotiations for both parties in the event of a change in circumstances (see e.g., Cochran (2009) for the case of transportation infrastructure).  However, we must also be careful not to allow climate change to become a pretext for opportunistic re-negotiation demands on the part of firms, a frequent problem in public-private partnerships (PPP) (Irwin, 2007).

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