This section leads you through the process of thinking about the adaptation challenges faced and the approaches and methods involved for addressing them. The section is structured into five subsections standing for the five stages that define the adaptation learning cycle. The subsections are further broken down into more specific tasks that may be relevant depending on the specific adaptation situation (AS).
Note that the structure of the pathfinder differs from the structure of the Toolbox, because the pathfinder is organized according to adaptation challenges while the Toolbox is organized according to methods. There is no one-to-one correspondence between adaptation challenges and methods, which means that methods may be applicable to several different adaptation challenges and vice versa, an adaptation challenges may be addressed by several different methods. Guidance on how to apply a particular method is reserved for the Toolbox. This whole section can be seen as a decision tree for you to traverse in the process of addressing adaptation. The first decision is at which stage to enter the adaptation learning cycle. This leads you to the corresponding subsections. Within these subsections, more specific entry points and decision trees are given, leading to the tasks that need to be addressed and the methods applicable. When a method has been identified, a link is given to a more comprehensive description of methods and tools in the Toolbox.
To illustrate this with an example, consider that you analyse an adaptation challenge from a point of view of a coastal manager faced with sea-level rise. The first methodological decision you are facing is at which stage to enter the adaptation learning cycle. If you do not already have an understanding of the climate risks and are not confronted with a particular problem or decision, you would enter at the first stage in the adaptation learning cycle in order to identify vulnerability and impacts. This would, for example, lead you to the task of impact projection. Having identified this critical task to be addressed, you would then be guided to the Toolbox, and the subsection in which methods for impact projection are described in detail and examples are given to show how they have been applied. Alternatively, you may already have identified a particular decision or problem such as, for example, by how much to raise sea dikes. In this case, you would enter the learning cycle at the stage of "appraising adaptation options" and would further be guided along the decision trees in this subsection to more specific tasks and eventually to applicable methods, which then are further detailed in the Toolbox.
