To achieve climate resilient societies, climate adaptation, mitigation, and sustainable development (AMD) are all necessary. The concept of “climate resilient development pathways” (CRDP) recognizes this as intertwined challenges. However, no systematic approach exists for the creation and appraisal of CRDP that integrates adaptation, mitigation, and sustainable development over time, and addresses the interactions between these policy objectives. Building upon Dynamic Adaptive Pathways Planning (DAPP), this paper presents a decision analysis approach for integrating CRDP policy objectives in Climate Resilient Adaptive Pathways Planning, or CRDAPP. Key additions in this approach are: a) using visioning to design CRD strategies for managing pathways complexity; b) introducing target points for sustainable development and climate mitigation action setting, to help sequence measures into alternative pathways, alongside traditional performance thresholds; and c) defining types of adaptation, mitigation and development interactions to systematically evaluate actions and pathways. We test the approach in an illustrative case study in Cork City, Ireland. The CRDAPP steps are carried out for the city, with multiple pathways designed and critical decisions over time identified. The resulting CRDAPP analysis provides insights into the range of options for Cork on how to combine mitigation, adaptation, and sustainable development actions over time, to work toward different future states of the city. CRDAPP can support decisionmakers to better align adaptation, mitigation, and sustainable development action into their planning processes.

While adapting to future sea-level rise (SLR) and its hazards and impacts is a multidisciplinary challenge, the interaction of scientists across different research fields, and with practitioners, is limited. To stimulate collaboration and develop a common research agenda, a workshop held in June 2024 gathered 22 scientists and policymakers working in the Netherlands. Participants discussed the interacting uncertainties across three different research fields: sea-level projections, hazards and impacts, and adaptation. Here, we present our view on the most important uncertainties within each field and the feasibility of managing and reducing those uncertainties. We find that enhanced collaboration is urgently needed to prioritize uncertainty reductions, manage expectations and increase the relevance of science to adaptation planning. Furthermore, we argue that in the coming decades, significant uncertainties will remain or newly arise in each research field and that rapidly accelerating SLR will remain a possibility. Therefore, we recommend investigating the extent to which early warning systems can help policymakers as a tool to make timely decisions under remaining uncertainties, in both the Netherlands and other coastal areas. Crucially, this will require viewing SLR, its hazards and impacts, and adaptation as a whole.

Climate Resilient Development Pathways (CRDP) is a promising concept for cities to integrate climate change mitigation and adaptation to achieve sustainable development for all. Although CRDP aims to leverage synergies and co-benefits while limiting trade-offs between a city’s many objectives, there is no framework or approach for planning and implementing CRDP. A structured approach is needed to move from theory to practice. In this perspective paper, we outline three functional elements, or building blocks, for a CRDP planning framework. The building blocks are (1) identifying and evaluating interactions between adaptation, mitigation and sustainable development, (2) addressing time and uncertainty in planning, and (3) delivering specialized information for CRDP. These building blocks are informed by practice, drawing lessons from literature on recent efforts to integrate climate adaptation and mitigation in European cities, and from our experiences with adaptive pathways planning and climate services development. As cities and scholars are turning their attention to CRDP planning, the building blocks can help focus priority areas for development, informed by practice.

In the process of transitioning into resilient urban areas, cities face a wide variety of challenges in relation to adaptation, mitigation and sustainable development. Commonly these challenges are addressed in a merely isolated fashion, or only two out of the three objectives are tackled simultaneously. It is pivotal to take a systemic approach over time in order to maximise synergies and minimise trade-offs between these different policy objectives. Climate Resilient Development Pathways (CRDPs) aim to integrate adaptation, mitigation and sustainable development into flexible pathways over time, while considering (deep) uncertainties regarding climate change, as well as other sources of uncertainty. Climate resilient development pathways seek to support integrated planning and implementation of climate action. Currently no comprehensive framework exists for operationalising CRDPs. There is a need to develop a methodology for the practical pursuit of climate resilient development pathways.

This research presents a novel approach to operationalise climate resilient development pathways, using the well-established method for adaptation pathways, so-called “dynamic adaptation policy pathways (DAPP)”, as a starting point. The CRDP process starts by envisioning multiple desirable futures and understanding the decision context and current policy objectives and actions for adaptation, mitigation and development. Thereafter the synergies and trade-offs are assessed between the different climate actions, as well as tipping points are identified – meaning points in time when new actions will be required. Consequently, alternative actions are co-developed for the future to pursue desirable pathways. The final outcome is a pathways map, as well as an implementation and monitoring plan. An urban case-study to demonstrate the applicability of climate resilient development pathways is presented for the city of Cork in Ireland.

CRDPs can be created for different climate-related impacts such as flood and heat, as well as for a wide variety of development issues. The main target groups of the approach are decision makers and/or (urban) planners, although a wider engagement is recommended for different steps during the co-creation process of the pathways. Climate resilient development pathways support integrated climate action planning, interlacing adaptation, mitigation and sustainable development through designing flexible pathways over time that provide insights into the range of options to achieve resilient urban futures.

Adaptive pathways planning is an approach that maps the solution space over time to inform decision making under uncertainty. Since its first applications to climate change adaptation in the ’10s several studies and practical applications have used and extended the approach and discussed its benefits, limits, and complexity. What have we learned from a decade of adaptive pathways studies? This paper elaborates lessons learned on the use, value and weaknesses of adaptive pathways approaches for decision making using a set of guiding questions related to the decision context, the methods used, and contributions to decision making. Based on our experience and literature review, we find that: a) adaptive pathways analyses have been applied widely and are moving from theory to practice; b) an adaptive pathways analysis can be tailored and typically follows a staged approach; c) methods include narratives, impact models, and stakeholder participation tools; d) the complexity of adaptive pathways as a result of multiple actors, values, hazards, and actions at various scales for different purposes is a challenge, and this is increasingly considered through various extensions and combinations with other approaches. Ways forward to address weaknesses and current challenges include: accounting for coevolution between multiple actors across different scales (e.g., through interactive and multilevel pathways) and combining an adaptive pathways analysis with visioning and backcasting approaches for transformative adaptation and operationalizing climate resilient development pathways. To enable further applications in practice, it is important that experiences are shared and governance issues (e.g. long-term planning and funding) addressed.

Decision-making under uncertainty is important for managing human-natural systems in a changing world. A major source of uncertainty is linked to the multi-actor settings of decisions with poorly understood values, complex relationships, and conflicting management approaches. Despite general agreement across disciplines on co-producing knowledge for viable and inclusive outcomes in a multi-actor context, there is still limited conceptual clarity and no systematic understanding on what co-production means in decision-making under uncertainty and how it can be approached. Here, we use content analysis and clustering to systematically analyse 50 decision-making cases with multiple time and spatial scales across 26 countries and in 9 different sectors in the last decade to serve two aims. The first is to synthesise the key recurring strategies that underpin high quality decision co-production across many cases of diverse features. The second is to identify important deficits and opportunities to leverage existing strategies towards flourishing co-production in support of decision-making. We find that four general strategies emerge centred around: promoting innovation for robust and equitable decisions; broadening the span of co-production across interacting systems; fostering social learning and inclusive participation; and improving pathways to impact. Additionally, five key areas that should be addressed to improve decision co-production are identified in relation to: participation diversity; collaborative action; power relationships; governance inclusivity; and transformative change. Characterising the emergent strategies and their key areas for improvement can help guide future works towards more pluralistic and integrated science and practice.

Sea-level rise amplifies the frequency of extreme sea levels by raising their baseline height. Amplifications are often projected for arbitrary future years and benchmark frequencies. Consequently, such projections do not indicate when flood risk thresholds may be crossed given the current degree of local coastal protection. To better support adaptation planning and comparative vulnerability analyses, we project the timing of the frequency amplification of extreme sea levels relative to estimated local flood protection standards, using sea-level rise projections of IPCC AR6 until 2150. Our central estimates indicate that those degrees of protection will be exceeded ten times as frequently within the next 30 years (the lead time that large adaptation measures may take) at 26% and 32% of the tide gauges considered, and annually at 4% and 8%, for a low- and high-emissions scenario, respectively. Adaptation planners may use our framework to assess the available lead time and useful lifetime of protective infrastructure.

De kamerbrief Water en Bodem sturend (vanaf nu WBS, zie Harbers, 2022) markeert een trendbreuk. De overkoepelende gedachte is dat ruimtegebruik veel meer passend moet worden bij de water- en bodemcondities, in plaats van het uitgangspunt dat het natuurlijk systeem plooibaar is naar de wensen van de mens. Een ander belangrijk uitgangspunt is dat er niet afgewenteld mag worden; niet op toekomstige generaties en niet van privaat naar publiek. De ‘trendbreuk’ is hierbij overigens niet zozeer dat de principes van water en bodem sturend nieuw zijn, maar dat we er, zo is de belofte, nu echt iets mee gaan doen in de ruimtelijke ordening (zie ook het interview met Liz van Duin).

The need for explicitly considering equity in climate change adaptation planning is increasingly being recognized. However, evaluations of adaptation often adopt an aggregated perspective, while disaggregation of results is important to learn about who benefits when and where. A typical example is adaptation of rice agriculture in the Vietnam Mekong Delta (VMD). Efforts focused on flood protection have mainly benefitted large-scale farmers while harming small-scale farmers. To investigate the distributional consequences of adaptation policies in the VMD, we assess both aggregate total output and equity indicators, as well as disaggregated impacts in terms of district-level farming profitability. Doing so requires an adequate representation of the multisectoral dynamics between the human and biophysical systems which influence farming profitability. We develop a spatially explicit integrated assessment model that couples inundation, sedimentation, soil fertility and nutrient dynamics, and behavioral land-use change and farming profitability calculation. We find that inter-district inequality responds in a non-linear way to climatic and socio-economic changes and choices of adaptation policies. The patterns of who wins and who loses could change substantially when a different policy is implemented or if a slightly different uncertain future materializes. We also find that there is no simple ranking of alternative adaptation policies, so one should make trade-offs based on agreed preferences. Accounting for equity implies exploring the distribution of outcomes over different groups over a range of uncertain futures. Only by accounting for multisectoral dynamics can planners anticipate the equity consequences of adaptation and prepare additional measures to aid the worse-off actors.

Shallow coastal ecosystems have high ecological value and contribute to flood protection. Their stability is, however, sensitive to the amount and rate of future sea level rise (SLR), their ability to trap sediment which allows them to grow with rising sea level, and human response to SLR. So far, studies have focused on assessing SLR impacts using resource-intensive tools. Here, we present an approach for a first-order assessment and easily accessible ‘barcode’ visualization to rapidly assess potential impacts of both SLR and adaptation strategies on coastal ecosystems in a spatially explicit way. Our approach relates habitat types (ecotopes) to water level, morphology and salinity, allowing users to determine shifts in spatial arrangements of ecological zones under different SLR rates and strategies. We illustrate this approach for a transect in the Dutch Wadden Sea. We find that beyond a critical rate of SLR, major changes in ecotope distribution are projected to occur as this part of the Wadden Sea starts to drown due to insufficient sediment import. Even larger impacts arise from adaptation strategies. Closing the barrier islands will turn the Wadden Sea into a freshwater lake-system with the absence of intertidal areas, infilling of channels and bank erosion. A strategy that allows for inland migration of the shoreline, results in a deep tidal basin with large subtidal habitats, and a shifted intertidal zone. Our case study shows that the barcoding approach provides a rapid, quantitative and spatially explicit overview of the potential implications for coastal ecosystems under different SLR scenarios, adaptation strategies and time horizons. This can then be used to screen adaptation strategies before going into a more comprehensive analysis. The barcode visualization allows for easy dissemination of potential ecological impacts to a broad community.

To deal with large uncertainties about future climate and socio-economic developments, planners in deltas are adopting an integrative and adaptive planning approach referred to as Adaptive Delta Management (ADM). Bangladesh has used the ADM approach for the development of its adaptive plan; Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100 (BDP 2100). The success of policy strategies in an adaptive delta plan critically depends on a specific adaptation of livelihoods of local communities (Community Livelihood Adaptation; CLA), especially in an agriculture-oriented society like Bangladesh. For example, while triple rice cropping might be evaluated as a robust strategy in all futures considered, its success eventually depends on whether farmers’ will actually make that choice, which is deeply uncertain. In this paper, we use literature review, insights from interviews and field observations to examine how the uncertainty in CLA impacts (adaptive) delta management. We study two historical cases of livelihood adaptation of farmer communities confronted with salinization and waterlogging in the polders of southwest Bangladesh since the 1960s. We conclude that historically the uncertainty about CLA in polders has been ignored in the development of policy plans, leading to the failure of anticipated policy outcomes. We recommend planners in Bangladesh and other deltas worldwide to take account of CLA as uncertainty when developing long-term adaptive plans.

A wide variety of tools and approaches for supporting the making of decisions under deep uncertainty have been put forward, but we lack a comparative overview. This chapter presents a taxonomy of approaches and tools for supporting decisionmaking under deep uncertainty. The taxonomy is based on a decomposition of the tools and approaches into a set of common building blocks. Analysts can use the taxonomy for designing context-specific approaches to support DMDU.