Both research for adaptation and research on adaptation are needed to inform society’s response to climate change impacts

Adaptation research is in high demand, as the need to adapt to unavoidable impacts of climate change is increasingly evident. However, this growing body of knowledge is not necessarily leading to better adaptation policies or actions.

There are several known bottlenecks that hinder the uptake of adaptation research in policy and practice, such as a mismatch between the spatial and temporal scale of the data and information provided, and the scales at which most decision-makers operate.

An even greater, more fundamental problem with adaptation research – and with the growing field of climate services, which aims to develop high-quality climate information and ensure it is applied effectively to policy and practice – is that it is based on a supplier– customer model that fails to account for the complexity of adaptation decision-making.

To increase the effectiveness of research for adaptation, a strong effort is needed to fund and conduct research on adaptation, to explain how and why adaptation decisions are made or not made, and to determine what works and what does not work, and why.

Adaptation researchers could also learn from medical research, which has matured into a range of welldefined disciplines. Medicine could serve as a model for how knowledge and information is effectively translated, used and transformed, and how academic, public and private actors all specialise to be complementary and synergetic.

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Adaptation Futures Discussion Briefs

Drawing on insights from Adaptation Futures 2016: Practices and Solutions, these discussion briefs examine unresolved or evolving issues in adaptation research, policy and practice. In the spirit of the conference, they aim help policy-makers, practitioners and researchers, international processes, projects and initiatives to digest and act upon state-of-the-art adaptation research. The series is also intended as input into the agenda of the Global Centre of Excellence on Climate Change Adaptation, announced by the Government of the Netherlands at the Marrakech Climate Change Conference (COP22), as a legacy of Adaptation Futures 2016. Any views expressed here are solely those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the conference co-hosts.