This playbook[1] is a result of collaborative exploration, design and testing of the approach among the Southern Slopes Climate Change Adaptation Research Partnership (SCARP) research team and Natural Resources Management (NRM) planners from the nine agencies in the Southern Slopes region of Australia [2]. It should be considered a working document that will evolve and change through application and learning.

This playbook presents an approach to climate change adaptation planning known as adaptation pathways – ‘an analytical approach to planning that explores and sequences a set of possible actions that are based on external developments over time’ (Haasnoot et al. 2013:485).  It guides users through five broad activities or ‘plays’ that make up an approach to pathways planning. It provides a brief description of each activity and directs the user to relevant sections of the supporting Southern Slopes Information Report (Wallis et al. 2014), which provides greater detail on each activity, including links to relevant resources and literature.

The five key activities of this approach to pathways planning are:

• Define objectives for pathways (Section 2.1)
• Understand the current situation (Section 2.2)
• Analyse possible futures (Section 2.3)
• Develop adaptation pathways (Section 2.4)
• Implementation, monitoring, evaluation, reporting, improvement (MERI) and learning (Section 2.5)

This playbook does not describe how to write or implement NRM plans or strategies for adaptation. Rather, it guides users through a process for identifying adaptation measures that can be used to draft an adaptation plan. This is not a prescriptive approach. Rather it seeks to reflect and support the typically non-linear, ‘juggling’ nature of NRM planning.