NDLI: Planning for an unknowable future: uncertainty in climate change adaptation planning

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Woodruff, Sierra C.
Copyright Year	2016
Abstract	Uncertainty in climate projections poses a serious challenge to adaptation planning. Ignoring this uncertainty can cause adaptation plans and strategies to be ineffective and even maladaptive. As such, there is growing awareness that adaptation planning must adopt approaches that enable discovering, assessing, and addressing uncertainty. In this paper, I examine how uncertainty is managed in adaptation planning. Content analysis of 44 local climate adaptation plans in the U.S. indicates that most plans recognize uncertainty, however, very few employ approaches to address uncertainty. To better understand how uncertainty influences the planning process, I conducted informant interviews in three communities: Boulder, CO; Denver, CO and Salem, MA. These communities capture the variation across plans in content analysis scores, climate threats, and plan author. Interview results suggest that adaptation plans do not fully reflect how uncertainty is managed in the planning process. Rather than focusing on climate projections in the vulnerability assessment, which may reinforce planning for one future, communities in which interviews were conducted emphasized sensitivity and adaptive capacity. Interviewees also emphasized the importance of no-regrets strategies and an iterative adaptation process. Institutional barriers were viewed as a major challenge for adopting uncertainty approaches. For approaches, such as robust strategies and flexible strategies, to be more widely used, we must first breakdown the deeply embedded practice of planning for one future.
Starting Page	445
Ending Page	459
Page Count	15
File Format	PDF
ISSN	01650009
Journal	Climatic Change
Volume Number	139
Issue Number	3-4
e-ISSN	15731480
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Netherlands
Publisher Date	2016-10-04
Publisher Place	Dordrecht
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Atmospheric Sciences Climate Change/Climate Change Impacts
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Atmospheric Science Global and Planetary Change

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1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
5	Website/Portal (Helpdesk)	Queries regarding NDLI and its services	support@ndl.gov.in
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