Projecting the adaptation solution space to inform a climate-resilient Europe

Climate adaptation is essential to reduce the risks of climate change and to ensure long-term resilience. As climate risks increase, so does the need for climate adaptation, supported by risk-informed decision-making and policy. Modelled projections of future climate and socioeconomic scenarios increasingly guide climate policy and decision-making, however, current modelling frameworks often lack a nuanced representation of adaptation. At the same time, adaptation planning and decision-making requires approaches able to develop flexible and adaptive management strategies that account for uncertainties and reflect specific adaptation objectives, such as adaptation pathways. These are flexible and robust sequences of adaptation options that span the adaptation solution space which is a multidimensional space within which adaptation is enabled and implemented. 

By projecting constraints on the adaptation solution space under future climate and socioeconomic scenarios, our research explores the link between global climate modelling and adaptation pathways approaches. Projecting dimensions of adaptive capacity allows for the identification and anticipationof possible barriers to adaptation, and establishing of enabling conditions that lead to a wider adaptation solution space. As biophysical and socio-economic changes constrain the range of adaptation options available in the future, we assess the potential adaptation uptake along a set of different climate and socioeconomic scenarios for European regions. We use a range of socioeconomic indicators as proxies for the potential for the uptake of specific adaptation options. Based on the statistical analysis of the observed implementation levels, we project and map the potential uptake of several adaptation options into future along the Shared Socioeconomic Scenarios, and additional stress-testing scenarios. Our study focuses on Europe using a variety of risks, including heat-related health impacts, and wildfire risk to forestry. 

This research bridges top‑down climate modelling with bottom‑up adaptation planning to assess how socioeconomic conditions can shape the future adaptation solution space. This approach helps to assess socioeconomic limits to adaptation and the future adaptation solution space, and further enables a more nuanced representation of adaptation in climate impact studies. The results can inform local adaptation planning in terms of outlining the availability of individual adaptation options as part of adaptation pathways development, as well as identifying key socioeconomic factors in constraining adaptation uptake potential. Addressing such constraints in adaptation policy on different levels can widen the solution space, and ultimately, inform climate-resilient planning and decision-making.