The role of citizen engagement in climate adaptation: A systematic review and framework on sustainable stormwater management.

Abstract

In recent years, the impacts of climate change have become increasingly apparent. Hence, the demand for effective adaptation strategies continues to grow. Among these strategies, sustainable stormwater management has increasingly gained attention as a solution to manage stormwater impacts and enhance climate resilience. Stormwater management has evolved from an engineering concern toward an integrated socio-environmental process that emphasizes sustainability, resilience, and community engagement. Citizen engagement has become a critical component of this shift, influencing the design, acceptance, and long-term performance of stormwater systems. Despite a growing number of studies engaging citizens in climate adaptation strategies, a synthesis of citizen engagement initiatives in sustainable stormwater management is lacking. This study addresses this gap by systematically reviewing how citizen engagement is conceptualized and how it contributes to the specific case of sustainable stormwater management. Using the PRISMA methodology, we analyzed 41 peer-reviewed studies focusing on: (1) the types and contributions of citizen engagement and (2) the stages at which citizen engagement occurs in sustainable stormwater management. The results highlight that citizen engagement serves as a key driver for improving climate resilience by enhancing adaptive capacity, increasing inclusiveness in decision-making, and fostering ownership and trust. However, our review also reveals that citizen engagement is concentrated in the early foundational stages of problem definition and knowledge co-production, while participation across the full stormwater management cycle remains limited. There are trade-offs among citizen engagement levels in terms of outcomes, such as building trust, decision-making and social learning. From the results, we derive a Stage-Based Citizen Engagement Framework that recommends types of citizen engagement at different stages of sustainable stormwater management and adaptation planning processes in general. Future research can build on our framework to develop creative approaches for engaging citizens in an inclusive manner across all stages in climate adaptation.