Adaptation Pathways

Planning for climate change requires a shift from what are usually considered normal and traditional planning approaches with one final outcome, towards another that considers multiple possible outcomes. Approaches such as ‘adaptation pathways’ can help us think through and plan for multiple possible futures.

Adaptation pathways is a planning approach addressing the uncertainty and challenges of climate change decision‐making. It enables consideration of multiple possible futures, and allows analysis/exploration of the robustness and flexibility of various options across those multiple futures.

What is adaptation pathways planning?

NRM planning needs to be able to justify, prioritise and implement actions, while at the same time recognise and allow for future changes in; climate, environment, values (both social and economic), knowledge, socio‐political environment, and climate modelling systems. Adaptation Pathways acknowledges these and allow NRM planners to plan for change and allow for uncertainty. The Southern Slopes Climate Change Adaptation Research Partnership (SCARP) has come up with a list of advantages of adaptation pathways when compared to other existing NRM planning processes. An Adaptation Pathways approaches can allow NRM planners to:

  • Adopt strategic rather than reactive planning rather than being driven by current policies, conditions and issues, adaptation pathways encourage creative forward thinking about potential and desirable futures.
  • Develop an adaptively robust strategy that facilitates to short‐term actions, leaves options open, and provides a guiding framework for monitoring the robustness of specific options across possible futures. Sequencing such actions identifies when, why and how to change course and sets the foundations for a ‘living’ plan.
  • Use vulnerability assessments for action planning to address underlying drivers of those vulnerabilities. 
  • Adopt a social learning approach to adaptation through co‐learning among decision‐makers, researchers and other stakeholders, issues and problems can be discussed in order to define a greater array of potential options and actions. Adopting a learning approach to planning, aids in greater insights into the current situation and can facilitate identification of more innovative transitional and transformational pathways.
  • Facilitate discussions with and among stakeholders about possible adaptation options and pathways preferences.
  • More readily recognise potential maladaptive actions - undesirable outcomes can result from a narrow focus on simple cause‐effect relationships or assumptions that individual approaches or policies are ‘right’. Using a pathways approach can help identify when an option or pathway may shut‐down future options, thus reducing plan robustness.
  • Support best practice in regional NRM ‐ existing good practice helps to reduce vulnerabilities to climate change impacts, and using pathway planning allows NRM planners to commit to short‐term actions within a larger framework that guides the robustness, including flexibility, of future actions.

The video below provides a summary and a case study to how adaptation pathways can be applied.

Adaptation Pathways consists of five core components (Figure 1 below). As the pathways approach is designed to be adaptive this process can also be flexible. For example, instead of a linear approach that is usually adopted in NRM, a more reflective, adaptive approach can be used.