How do communities make difficult decisions about climate adaptation when there are competing priorities, uncertainty and deeply held values?
Originally developed as a flexible engagement tool for resilience practitioners, the methodology was adapted in partnership with the COASTR Network for its 2025 Annual Conference, using realistic coastal erosion, flooding and infrastructure disruption scenarios to explore how communities respond to increasing climate risks.
So why this tool?
Climate adaptation decisions are rarely based on scientific evidence alone.
Communities must balance competing priorities including public safety, heritage, finance, identity, infrastructure and environmental change. Traditional consultation approaches often struggle to capture these social and emotional dimensions, making it difficult to build understanding and trust.
The Adaptive Futures Decision Lab provides a structured way for practitioners to:
- Explore complex climate adaptation scenarios through facilitated role-play
- Strengthen community engagement and participatory decision-making
- Understand how trust, identity, emotion and power influence resilience planning
- Develop confidence in facilitating challenging conversations
- Test adaptation pathways in a low-risk learning environment before engaging with communities.
So what did we find?
The workshops demonstrated that successful climate adaptation depends as much on people as it does on technical evidence.
Participants found that:
- Adaptation decisions are shaped by trust, identity, lived experience and perceptions of fairness.
- Well-facilitated disagreement can lead to stronger, more legitimate decisions.
- Role-play encourages more open discussion of contentious issues such as managed retreat, compensation and community change.
- Inclusive facilitation helps ensure quieter voices are heard alongside more dominant perspectives.
- The people involved in adaptation discussions directly influence the solutions that emerge.
Rather than seeking consensus, the AFDL demonstrates that effective resilience planning is built on creating processes where people feel heard, understand different perspectives and can work towards practical compromise.
Who is this report aimed at?
We hope this report will be particularly valuable for:
- Climate adaptation practitioners
- Local authorities and resilience partnerships
- Community engagement professionals
- Emergency planning and resilience teams
- Policymakers
- Researchers working in climate resilience and adaptation
- Coastal resilience practitioners
- Anyone designing participatory approaches to complex environmental decision-making
The Adaptive Futures Decision Lab Case Study explores the methodology in detail, including the workshop design, coastal adaptation scenarios, participant insights, key lessons learned and recommendations for future climate resilience practice.
