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Relative costs of options?
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Relative costs of options?

When actors has a low adaptive capacity, they will not adapt on their own. You must then consider incentives to encourage adaptation in form of providing resources through economic incentives or training, or by considering options to regulate adaptation. Which type of option you chose is determined by its relative costs; tasks and methods for making these decisions are considered in the Pathfinder's section on Appraising adaptation options. If they are low, it may be appropriate to regulate a solution because the transaction costs of finding a consensus may be higher than the value of desired outcomes. If the relative costs are high, it may be more appropriate to provide economic incentives to influence action, as regulation may lead to conflicts.

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When an actor has a low capacity, they will not adapt on their own. The public actor must then consider either incentives to encourage adaptation in the form of providing resources through economic incentives or training, or they may consider measures to regulate adaptation, for example, by legislating building codes in coastal zone or establishing parks for natural resource conservation. Further, potential capacity may be increased by physical measures such as infrastructure provision. Which type of measure a public actor might consider is determined by the relative costs of the measure; tasks and methods for making these decisions are considered in the Pathfinder's section on Appraising adaptation options.

If the relative costs of an option are low, it may be appropriate to regulate a solution because the transaction costs of finding a consensus may be higher than the value of desired outcomes.

If the relative costs are high, it may be more appropriate to provide economic incentives to influence action, as regulation may lead to conflicts.

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References AP home Glossary

This section is based on the UNEP PROVIA guidance document

Criteria checklist

1. You want to identify adaptation measures.
2. Your focus is on public actors and on individual actions.
3. Either (i) the actors' potential capacity is low, or (ii) private actors are not adapting autonomously and adaptation would conflict with private interests.
4. As a next step you are faced with the question whether the relative costs of options are low or high.