Dichotomy or Continuum? A global review of the interaction between autonomous and planned adaptations

Adaptation to climate change is often conceptualized as either/or, as a dichotomy, with adaptation responses being categorized as either planned (formal and structured) or autonomous (organic, self-organized, everyday). There is recent anecdotal and theoretical evidence on the existence and importance of the interplay between autonomous and planned adaptation, however examination of this interaction has been limited to date. We use a global database of 1,682 peer-reviewed articles on adaptation responses (from the Global Adaptation Mapping Initiative, GAMI) to systematically examine autonomous and planned adaptations, both quantitatively and qualitatively, with an emphasis on how these types of adaptations interact with one another. We propose a third category, mixed adaptation, which demonstrates characteristics of both autonomous and planned types, and which recognizes nuances in how organization, external support, formality, and autonomy manifest in the fuzzy space between the two. We find that more than one-third of articles reporting on adaptation responses fall into this mixed category, with cases across sectors and world regions. We develop a qualitative typology of mixed adaptation that identifies nine ways that autonomous and planned adaptation interact and influence each other both positively and negatively. Based on these findings, we argue for more nuanced examinations of the interplay between autonomous and planned adaptation, and for conceptualizing adaptation planning as a continuum between the two rather than a dichotomy. This has implications for research design, which often do not explicitly consider the interactions between autonomous and planned, rather focus on either/or. This additionally brings questions to policy norms in the era of the Global Stocktake, where most indicator frameworks focus on planned adaptation, thus missing huge swaths of effective and equitable adaptation, occurring in the form of mixed and autonomous adaptation.