Climate change adaptation and scenario planning: framing issues and tools

Abstract

Climate change adaptation means that not only do we have difficult decisions to make, but we also need improved ways of making them. Although not new, scenario planning is one tool increasingly being used to improve thinking about climate change and adaptation, reflecting the way it usefully accommodates the mix of certainty and uncertainty, as well as realism and constructivism, which characterise the climate change issue. This paper provides an overview of climate change adaptation and scenario planning, emphasising the existence of conservative and radical approaches to each and the context of multiple epistemological ideals in modern governance. Overall, the paper highlights the framed, or socially constructed, nature of both adaptation and scenario planning and the implications of their intersection.