Adaptation to Climate Variability and Change: What Is Optimal and Appropriate?

Adaptation is intricately linked with non-climatic developments and takes place in a dynamic societal context. The identification of optimal and appropriate adaptation strategies is therefore fraught with difficulties. Particularly the identification and quantification of adaptation benefits faces a number of uncertainty-related and methodological caveats. This paper explores these caveats and discusses their implications for policy and funding. It concludes that the quantitative assessment of future adaptation costs and benefits should play a less significant part in determining the optimality or appropriateness of adaptation options and hence in the allocation of adaptation funds. Instead, one could assess the economic value of an adaptation project to today’s society and identify no-regret adaptation options, which would help to reduce vulnerability to both contemporary climate variability and anticipated climate change. Moreover, strengthening adaptive capacity and raising awareness should serve to create an enabling environment for adaptation.