Strategic decision-making in climate risk management: Designing local adaptation pathways

Current political and academic discourse revolves around how society can become more resilient against natural hazards – not just by introducing smart technical solutions, but also by improving local decision-making processes. Against this background, pathways examines the long-term development of decision-making arenas in which local adaptation policy evolves.

Pathways paints a comprehensive picture of how local adaptation pathways were developed in the past, how these pathways led to specific decisions at specific points in time, and which impacts these choices had on community development with respect to the choices and pathways not taken. Pathways learns from the past to inform the future with the aim to provide capacity building at local level. By understanding how earlier decisions enabled or constrained later decisions, pathways offers policy guidance for making robust decisions in local climate risk management.