A new paper “Adaptation pathways to inform policies and practice in the context of development” has just been published in the journal Environmental Science and Policy. The paper, led by Ted Sparkes, with Edmond Totin, Saskia Werners, Russell Wise, James Butler and Katharine Vincent, is an output of an extension phase of the Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia.

Adaptation pathways are a decision-focused approach to account for future uncertainties and complexities in planning and implementation of adaptation actions. While the pathways approach for adaptation planning has received great interest from both climate scientists and practitioners, there has been little specific guidance on how to implement them and how to sustain the resulting outcomes. Examples of pathways approaches exhibit diversified methods for different decision contexts. This initial paper is part of a special issue on adaptation pathways. It uses the learning framework presented in one of the special issue papers to categorise the remaining case studies that are each presented in their own papers, and concludes with some critical research gaps.