Towards operationalising climate resilient development pathways

Abstract

The concept of climate resilient development pathways (CRDPs), introduced through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, presents a transformative framework for integrating climate adaptation, mitigation, and sustainable development. Despite its potential, practical guidance for implementing CRDPs remains limited. This study addresses a significant gap in practical implementation by developing and testing an operational approach to CRDPs within a bounded system—the UK wheat supply sector. While CRDPs offer a comprehensive way of orienting development towards climate resilience, the operationalisation of the concept requires pragmatic choices appropriate to the participants and context, which revealed several learning points. The mapping of multiple future pathways, as advocated in the literature, was constrained by decision-makers’ limited tolerance for uncertainty and their need for actionable policy recommendations. In addition, the process necessarily assumed the continuity of a market-led system, which constrained the range of potential directions of change. Key domestic and global system interconnections could not be fully accounted for because of the study’s bounded scope. Finally, fragmented ownership of required actions across the system highlighted a lack of guidance on mechanisms for ongoing monitoring and re-orientation within dispersed management systems. The developed methodology proposes a transferable approach for participatory pathway design that integrates stakeholder visioning, iterative co-production, and reflexive engagement. While the documentation of the unresolved challenges provides new insights into the realities of operationalising CRDPs, highlighting that operationalisation is not just a methodological challenge, but also a governance and system challenge.