Views of the frontiers in climate change adaptation economics

The shift from framing climate change adaptation as vulnerabilityimpacts to adaptation pathways is also a shift from a predict-and-provide approaches to understanding dynamic processes. Studies of the economics of adaptation relying only on the comparative statics of reference and climate impacts scenarios ignore the more challenging frontier of representing decision processes and uncertainty. The logic of the shift to dynamic-pathway approaches is widely accepted in principal. Effective analytical tools are only beginning to appear. Further case studies are required to explore the matrix of uncertainty in future climate conditions against the range of metrics for valuing impacts in decision processes. WIREs Clim Change 2012, 3:161170. doi: 10.1002/wcc.157