Climate Change Adaptation in Practice: Navigating Uncertainty in the Real World

Abstract Practitioners know temperatures and sea levels will continue to rise, but skillful projections of exactly how climate change will manifest locally are not available to help make decisions now. Despite this uncertainty, decisions that reduce risks and improve resilience to future climate change are being made. This chapter details tangible ways managers, stakeholders, and decision-makers are incorporating climate change in planning and decision-making efforts. We draw from real-world examples that encompass grazing management decisions under drought; assessing future risk to national forest roads; embracing uncertainty through water resource scenario planning; preparing mountain watersheds for increased fires; and incorporating climate in culvert size selection and urban waterfront planning. Through these examples, we show that the process of decision-making is as important as the decisions themselves. We share five key lessons: (1) uncertainty is a critical part of the decision-making process; (2) projections should be treated as plausible futures and not forecasts; (3) practitioners apply techniques to enhance coping capacity, increase adaptive capacity while minimizing the need for certainty; (4) stakeholder involvement is critical; and (5) sound decisions that embrace uncertainty about climate change are being made.