Dynamic adaptive policy pathways: A method for crafting robust decisions for a deeply uncertain world

By Marjolijn Haasnoot, Jan H. Kwakkel, Warren E. Walker, J. Maat. 2013

1,528 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A new paradigm for planning under conditions of deep uncertainty has emerged in the literature. According to this paradigm, a planner should create a strategic vision of the future, commit to short-term actions, and establish a framework to guide future actions. A plan that embodies these ideas allows for its dynamic adaptation over time to meet changing circumstances. We propose a method for decisionmaking under uncertain global and regional changes called ‘Dynamic Adaptive Policy Pathways’. We base our approach on two complementary approaches for designing adaptive plans: ‘Adaptive Policymaking’ and ‘Adaptation Pathways’. Adaptive Policymaking is a theoretical approach describing a planning process with different types of actions (e.g. ‘mitigating actions’ and ‘hedging actions’) and signposts to monitor to see if adaptation is needed. In contrast, Adaptation Pathways provides an analytical approach for exploring and sequencing a set of possible actions based on alternative external developments over time. We illustrate the Dynamic Adaptive Policy Pathways approach by producing an adaptive plan for long-term water management of the Rhine Delta in the Netherlands that takes into account the deep uncertainties about the future arising from social, political, technological, economic, and climate changes. The results suggest that it is worthwhile to further test and use the approach.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Management Science and Operations Research, Ocean Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c3a45601bd463d8a7f9811cb97e940c833231fe6

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In Global and Planetary Change

In Management Science and Operations Research

In Ocean Engineering

Citations in the corpus

A systematic review of dynamics in climate risk and vulnerability assessments (2017, background): “For example, the ‘pathways approach’ emphasises flexibility and the need for continuous monitoring and adjusting of the adaptation action as circumstances change (Burch et al 2014, Haasnoot et al 2013, Stafford Smith et al 2011, Wise et al 2014).”
The food‐energy‐water nexus: Transforming science for society (2017, background): “…many recent breakthroughs have occurred related to adaptation pathways for coevolving human demands, innovative management policies, and adaptive infrastructure investment [Haasnoot et al., 2013; Dittrich et al., 2016; Kingsborough et al., 2016; Zeff et al., 2016; Hermans et al., 2017].”
Tools and methods in participatory modeling: Selecting the right tool for the job (2018, background): “Both Adaptive Management (Holling, 1978; Williams and Brown, 2012) and Dynamic Adaptive Policy Pathways (DAPP) (Haasnoot et al., 2013) are decision-focused structuring and modeling methods that clearly di ﬀ erentiate actions, system uncertainties and evolution, and stakeholder objectives early in…”
Adapt or Perish: A Review of Planning Approaches for Adaptation under Deep Uncertainty (2013, methodology): “The Dynamic Adaptive Policy Pathway approach [65].”
From tools to toolkits in policy design studies: The new design orientation towards policy formulation research (2015, background): “…how policy experiments can help reveal the possibilities of re-design (Hoffman, 2011) or how building temporal properties into tool mixes – ‘adaptive policy-making’ (Swanson et al, 2010) – can make designs more flexible or resistant to shifting conditions (Walker et al, 2010; Haasnoot et al, 2013).”
An uncertain future, deep uncertainty, scenarios, robustness and adaptation: How do they fit together? (2016, background): “Consequently, these multiple strategies can be thought of as providing adaptive pathways for responding to different plausible futures (e.g. Beh et al., 2015a, b; Haasnoot et al., 2013; Haasnoot et al., 2012).”