Deciding how and when to adapt to climate change is a difficult problem, involving multiple actors and problem frames, deep uncertainty, and contested goals. Numerous decision-making strategies have been developed to reduce uncertainty, evaluate options under multiple future scenarios, or create decision pathways in an effort to overcome barriers that prevent adaptation decision-making from being a 'rational' process: a careful and objective evaluation of how alternative options perform under future conditions. Other fields, such as cognitive science, economics, and psychology, have explored alternatives to rational decision-making such as heuristics, and applied adaptation research has illustrated the role of context in shaping decision-making. This article reviews recent research on adaptation decision-making strategies and highlights gaps that future research should address to inform practice. While decision-making methods and tools have proliferated, there is still a lack of research on how adaptation strategies are selected in practice and a need for research on the meta decision-making question: How should decision-makers choose which decision-making process to use?
Siders, AR; Pierce, AL
Deciding how to make climate change adaptation decisions
Current Opinion In Environmental Sustainability