Step 4.1 Assessing adaptation options

Key message

You should now define a set of criteria to assess the information in your catalogue of adaptation options (Step 3.1). Assess all the options you identified in Step 3, using criteria based on their effectiveness at addressing your adaptation priorities and objectives (Step 2.4) – keeping in mind the adaptation principles highlighted at the beginning of this tool. It's important to develop and agree on these criteria with stakeholders in a participatory way, considering the guidance provided in MIP’s DIY manual on stakeholder and citizen engagement. Pay special attention to the needs of vulnerable communities. Record the assessment transparently to aid understanding and engage stakeholders. Their involvement helps ensure the measures taken are relevant, credible and legitimate.

Whenever possible, prioritise nature-based solutions, as they offer benefits across adaptation, biodiversity, and society. However, considering the scale of anticipated climate impacts, it may still be necessary to complement these approaches with other actions.

Your assessment criteria will usually cover the following areas:

• Effectiveness in reducing climate vulnerabilities and enhancing resilience. Adaptation options should meet the priorities and objectives of your climate risk assessment (Step 2.3).
• Efficiency in addressing the various potential futures and bringing about significant benefits. Assess whether the benefits of adaptation outweigh the costs, depending on the different future scenarios. Obtaining quotes can help you estimate costs (including the associated administration and maintenance expenses of adaptation options). Quantifying benefits can be challenging but this is crucial for assessing feasibility. Climate-ADAPT’s economic tools can help with assessing adaptation options. 
• Incremental vs transformative – Determine if adaptation options lead to incremental improvements or transformative changes to existing systems.
• Avoidance of maladaptation – Evaluate performance against broader objectives and ensure that adaptation measures do not inadvertently increase vulnerability to climate-related hazards.
• Policy coherence – Consider how your efforts align with national adaptation policies, plans and programmes.
• Interactions with other policy objectives – Identify co-benefits, potential synergies/conflicts with other policy objectives (e.g. regional or local development, environment and mitigation). Check sustainable adaptation.
• Just resilience – Identify who bears the costs of adaptation options and who benefits from them. Ensure that adaptation options distribute benefits across society in a socially just manner, addressing existing social inequalities.
• Political and cultural acceptability – Align adaptation measures with existing governance structures and ensure they are acceptable within the local political and cultural context.
• Urgency for action – Consider the urgency of implementing adaptation measures to prevent greater impacts, particularly when delays could exacerbate risks due to the speed or severity

of climate impacts.

Once the assessment criteria are agreed, it's time to evaluate all the adaptation options. You should decide the most efficient evaluation process for your local or regional authority. The factsheets created in Steps 3.1 and 3.2 contain the information needed to conduct your assessment. Assessing adaptation options ‘one by one’ is key, but it's equally important to evaluate them as a package or programme of measures. While individual measures may be efficient on their own, their effectiveness can diminish when combined.