What would successful adaptation to climate change mean in the various physical, ecological, socio-economic, institutional and cultural contexts that characterize coastal communities? And how can communities measure their progress towards successful adaptation, both in the near term and as climate continues to change?

Anticipation of climate change impacts in coastal regions has elevated adaptation to climate change on federal, state and local agendas. However, to decide on a particular course of action and garner the necessary political and social support to commit scarce resources to climate change adaptation, resource managers and planners must define goals, assess trade-offs among different options and agree with their stakeholders on a preferable strategy. Thus, they increasingly ask one big and difficult question: What would successful adaptation look like?

Unfortunately, defining “successful” adaptation to climate change is far from easy and attempts to do so often raise more questions than they answer. Is the goal of adaptation to avoid negative impacts of climate change? (In which case, how do we measure bad things that didn’t happen?) Is it to make things better for all, or for a certain place, population or ecosystem? (If so, which, and who decides?) At what point in time shall we evaluate ‘success’? (If it’s soon, how do we do so, given that little climate change has actually occurred? If it’s later, what do we assume about future climate, given the significant uncertainties about future trajectories?) And, what criteria shall we use -- economic, social, ecological, psychological, legal, procedural? (Again: who decides?)

There are multiple reasons for thinking about, defining, communicating and measuring successful adaptation to climate change. Perhaps the most obvious is to ensure that adaptation efforts reach their goals of minimizing risks and costs, protecting the most vulnerable and supporting social equity, or ensuring the longevity of our social, physical and ecological systems. Less-obvious reasons include: communicating a positive vision for the future to the public; coordinating objectives among multiple stakeholders; and maintaining accountability to funders, donors and the public.

To bridge the gap between theory and practice, we engaged practitioners and multi-disciplinary scholars in an iterative, collaborative exploration of successful adaptation outcomes, processes, mechanisms and metrics in the context of the coastal environment of the U.S. west coast, i.e., the states of Washington, Oregon and California.

We conducted literature reviews through both the scientific literature and the policy/planning literature to ground the project in the most advanced thinking on this topic to date. We then hosted a series of five workshops designed to elicit expert and practitioner feedback on the basic question – what is successful adaptation? – from a range of perspectives. The first workshop included experts and scientists from multiple disciplines to explore how the academic community answers this question. This was followed by three practitioner workshops, one in each state, to let the practical context of coastal management emerge in thinking about success. Each practitioner workshop was preceded by semi-structured interviews of each participant to get a better sense of their work and thinking around successful adaptation. The capstone workshop brought together representatives from each of the four previous workshops to synthesize the gathered insights and work through remaining questions.