Including overshoot risks in long-term evidence-based adaptation planning

As climate change intensifies, it is essential to take a wide range of climate scenarios and their consequential impacts into account for adaptation planning. Overshoot scenarios, during which global warming will temporarily exceed the 1.5°C Paris Agreement target before it is brought down again in the following decades, are increasingly likely under current emissions trajectories. They would result in complex risks such as limits to adaptation and irreversible impacts and stress the need to prepare long-term adaptation solutions under deep uncertainty.

Here, we introduce the latest version of the Overshooting Proofing Methodology, a policy instrument or self-assessment tool designed to guide adaptation planners and policy-makers to integrate overshoot risks into planning processes. We will present novel insights from its initial use with key stakeholders at city and regional levels, highlighting its applicability in varied contexts along with a range of climate data related challenges. We also reflect on how adaptation pathways can allow to adequately plan a sequence of adaptation measures over time based on information collected through this tool. This work provides insights on key data gaps, capacity building needs and avenues for future robust adaptation solutions, policy-making and research.