In today’s rapidly changing world, decision-making is challenged by uncertainties from climate change and socio-economic development. For example, regions like the Western U.S. face increasing wildfire risks, and need strategies to manage forests, plan cities, and respond to emergencies. To address these challenges, "pathways thinking" is emerging as an approach helping decision-makers develop flexible strategies that remain effective under various plausible futures. Pathways thinking emphasises making decisions today while keeping options open for the future. Recognized by the IPCC, this method is essential for tackling complex climate adaptation and resilience issues.

This course will combine learning about theoretical concepts with applying these with various methods for the development of adaptation pathways in real-world challenges. Our goal is to give participants enough knowledge of tools and concepts so that they can apply pathway thinking in small groups to tackle different climate resilience challenges in case studies. In doing so, participants will apply scientific methods to understand and map the decision-context of their case, assess associated risks and opportunities, map the adaptation solution space and both design and evaluate appropriate adaptation pathways.

This is a highly interdisciplinary course, involving both qualitative and quantitative methods tailored to the experience level of the course participants. Participants will spend a significant amount of time working in groups on case studies independently and thus requires motivation to work together and self-organization. As the course lecturers are international (IT and GER), all activities in the course will be in English. We thus recommend being comfortable talking and working in English.