Adaptive Planning Approaches for Coastal Climate Adaptation: Process and Key-elements.

Abstract

The paradigm of Adaptive Planning and Management provides several methodological approaches for designing robust adaptive plans to cope with uncertain future changes, namely the Adaptation Pathways' method (APs). These approaches, particularly those containing APs, have captured increasing interest in the field of coastal climate adaptation as useful for guiding its planning and management. While these approaches have been tested in several research cases, there are still few real cases of application into coastal spatial planning instruments. Furthermore, the lack of implementation of coastal adaptation actions in urbanized coasts worldwide, so-called adaptation gaps, points to the need of investigating to what extent these Adaptive Planning approaches containing APs are being applied in coastal plans. A deeper analysis of cases of application of these approaches in coastal plans is required to understand how adaptive plans are being crafted. This article focusses on the two major cases of application of APs-based Adaptive Planning and Management approaches into planning and management instruments - the Thames Estuary 2100 Plan and the Delta Programme - to identify what elements were essential to design an adaptive plan and operationalize an Adaptive Planning and Management approach, including ingredients that the plan had to meet to be robust and adaptive. Our results suggest that at least five elements are required to craft and deliver a robust adaptive plan and accomplish a real Adaptive Planning and Management.