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

Maskell, G.; Shukla, R.; Jagannathan, K.; Browne, K.; Ulibarri, N.; Campbell, D.; Franz, C.; Grady, C.; Joe, E.T.; Kirchhoff, C.; Madhavan, M.; Michaud, L.; Sharma, S.; Singh, C.; Orlove, B.; Nagle Alverio, G.; Ajibade, I.; Bowen, K.; Chauhan, N.; Galappaththi, E.; Hudson, A.J.; Mach, K.; Musah-Surugu, J.; Petzold, J.; Reckien, D.; Schauberger, B.; Segnon, A.; van Bavel, B.; Gornott, C. (2025) Dichotomy or continuum? A global review of the interaction between autonomous and planned adaptations. Ecology and Society 30(1): 39 p. ISSN: 1708-3087

Adaptation to climate change is often conceptualized as a dichotomy, with responses being either planned (formal and structured) or autonomous (organic and self-organized, often known as “everyday adaptation”). Recent literature on adaptation responses has highlighted the existence and importance of the interplay between autonomous and planned adaptation, but examination of this interaction has been limited to date. We use a global database of 1682 peer-reviewed articles on adaptation responses to systematically examine autonomous and planned adaptations, 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. Exploring the patterns of interplay from a large database of adaptation responses offers new insights on the relative roles of both autonomous and planned adaptation for mobilizing adaptation pathways in locally relevant, scalable, effective, and equitable ways.