Designing Proactive Adaptation Pathways in PEI with Climate Data

The Adaptation Challenge

Historically, the approach to climate change has been predominantly reactionary, as sectors were primarily responding to extreme weather events. These interventions were often small-scale, reflecting the immediate pressures and resource limitations experienced by individuals, businesses, and organizations. The shift from such reactive measures to more strategic, future-oriented planning, while necessary, can seem daunting considering current resource constraints.

Fortunately, our understanding of the future consequences of climate change is growing, providing a vast pool of information that is increasingly available to all. This knowledge, paired with innovative strategies for proactive adaptation, is inspiring organizations and sectors to make more ambitious, long-term plans. Adaptation pathways is one such strategy helping to build resilience and adaptation capacity in a changing climate.

What are Adaptation Pathways?

When building adaptation pathways, there can be dozens of decision points, based on different observable indicators of change (see Table 1). This idea is similar to the interactive book series “Choose Your Own Adventure”. When new situations pop up, the reader must make choices that determine the final outcome of the story. When a threshold for one of the decision points is reached, it prompts a choice: do nothing, advance along the current pathway, or transfer to a different pathway.

Each pathway is a series of possible, manageable adaptation actions. Multiple parallel pathways offer flexibility, allowing decision-makers to decide which actions line up best with their goals, capacity, strengths, cultural norms, and so on. Decision-makers can commit to one pathway, pursue multiple pathways at once, or switch back and forth. For example, a farmer might use an indicator of yield loss due to drought stress and a threshold of 10% loss. Once the threshold is reached, they could choose between making no changes or at least one of the following pathways:

• Pathway 1: collaborating with experts → adopting new precision irrigation technology → investing in new equipment
• Pathway 2: training staff on new opportunities → recruiting new customers → diversifying operations to create new revenue streams
• Pathway 3: planting drought-tolerant varieties → recruiting new customers → trialing new crops

Growing the scale and complexity of actions within a pathway over time makes adaptation more manageable. This also allows for a better match between the complexity and intensity of adaptation actions and the type, timing, and severity of climate change impacts. The flexibility of multiple options and pathways also helps organizations and sectors keep up with the dynamic nature of climate change and leaves them with outs if unexpected issues occur.

Where Does Climate and Hazard Data Come In?

Choosing observable indicators of change that are relevant and sensitive is key. These indicators could include changes in regulations, commodity pricing, and operational constraints. This is also where climate and hazard data come into play, and why sites like ClimateData.ca are so important. Table 1 provides examples across different sectors.

Table 1: Sample observable indicators, sample threshold levels, and relevant adaptation options.

It is important to remember that a thorough plan necessitates a diverse and extensive set of indicators. These should extend beyond climate and hazard data to account for a multitude of impacts such as heat stress, emergence of invasive species, and coastal flooding. Indicators should also take into account shifts in regulations, the availability and expense of insurance coverage, among other factors. The specific thresholds applied for each will vary, depending on the decision-maker’s context and their level of risk tolerance.

Projected climate data provides decision-makers with a timeline for implementing necessary actions, enabling them to prepare resources and strategies in advance. It’s essential to continually monitor and assess the effectiveness of these adaptation measures. Regular updates with the most recent climate data projections, impact information, and adaptation options contribute significantly to the long-term success of these initiatives.

How Will This Approach be Used?

CLIMAtlantic is currently supporting different organizations in the use of adaptation pathways. Not only will this approach help them with proactive planning, it comes with other advantages as well.

As part of the PEI Federation of Agriculture’s sectoral adaptation plan, CLIMAtlantic is supporting the co-development of adaptation pathways for each commodity group, which will then be reviewed together to identify partnerships and shared investment opportunities at the sectoral level. Without this critical step, producers may inadvertently create competition for capacity, resources, and expertise.

The PEI Government’s climate change coordinators are working across departments to implement the provincial Climate Adaptation Plan. CLIMAtlantic is supporting the capacity building of the coordinators to take on this work. Adaptation pathways are being used to explore how certain actions can open up future possibilities whereas others may lead to an entrenched pathway that limits options and flexibility.

References

[1] Kadim, I., Mahgoub, O., Al-Ajmi, D., Al-Maqbaly, R., Al-Mugheiry, S., Bartolome, D. (2004). The influence of season on quality characteristics of hot-boned m. longissiumus thoracis. Meat Science, 66, 831-836.

[2] Grimmer, B.J. (2017). Climate Friendly Guidelines for Canadian Beef and Sheep Ranchers. https://sencanada.ca/content/sen/committee/421/AGFO/Briefs/2017-04-06-CanadianSheep_e.pdf

[3] Duchene, L. (2017). Industry-academia project in Atlantic Canada explores impacts of climate change. Global Seafood Alliance.