Climate adaptation pathways for agriculture: Insights from a participatory process

Climate change presents significant risks and opportunities for agriculture. Agricultural producers are likely to be adversely affected by changes in higher mean temperatures, more frequent extreme climatic events, and an increase in inter-annual weather variability, with implications for established management practices. While probabilities of future change in key climatic variables become more refined, significant uncertainties remain, complicating efforts at adaptation action on the ground. Adaptation pathways planning allows stakeholders to consider a range of possible futures, identify and evaluate adaptation options, and sequence them over time. The aim is to have a robust plan that is flexible enough to deliver desired outcomes regardless of how the future unfolds. We developed and applied a pathways approach to support regional adaptation planning in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand, a premier food- and wine-producing region, where changing land use, competition for freshwater, and climate change, are presenting challenges to agricultural producers and rural communities. Working with a range of stakeholders from local government, community and the region’s diverse agricultural sectors, comparative case study analysis in two catchments is used to identify values relating to productive landscapes, likely impacts of climate change and potential adaptation options at the local level. Actions for key areas of decision making were evaluated and sequenced over time, providing the basis for a regional adaptation pathway. The results highlight the complex interaction between climatic and non-climatic drivers of change at the local and regional scale, and the need to closely consider trade-offs and synergies in any adaptations. With adaptation rapidly emerging as a priority for policy-making and practice, the results can help inform and empower stakeholders to implement actions towards climate adapted futures, and demonstrate the utility of pathways approaches for local- and regional planning