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.

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 procedure exists for the creation and appraisal of CRDP that fully acknowledges interactions and integrates adaptation, mitigation, and sustainable development over time. Taking the established Dynamic Adaptive Pathways Planning (DAPP) approach as a starting point, this paper presents a novel and stepwise approach for climate resilient development adaptive pathways planning, or in short: CRDAPP. Key novelties of this approach are: a) visioning to design CRD strategies while dealing with complexity, b) performance and target tipping points to sequence measures, and c) AMD interaction typologies to build and evaluate pathways. We illustrate the approach through a qualitative example 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 CRDP provide insights into the range of options for Cork on how to combine mitigation, adaptation, and sustainable development actions over time, in order to work toward different future states of the city. Herewith, the CRDP concept is operationalised and turned into a systematic stepwise approach that can support decisionmakers to integrate adaptation, mitigation, and sustainable development action over time and under uncertainty into their planning processes.