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This chapter focuses on how one can place climate change and adaptation actions in a wider context of societal change. It examines ways of conceptualizing the societal context for adaptation actions and illustrates how it plays out in different regions and substance areas in Europe and how this information can be used in reflecting on possibilities for adaptation at different levels. It places adaptation to climate change in the frame of Representative Concentration Pathways and Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, taking into account regional differences within Europe. The adaptation pathways are used as a central concept that helps to understand the range of available actions and the sequence of actions that can be taken under different scenarios of climate change and societal development. The chapter stresses the need to broadly understand the factors that affect adaptation challenges and that determine what one needs to consider in outlining future adaptation action.

This chapter aims to provide up-to-date quantitative estimates of the costs and benefits related to adaptation strategies for different sectors in Europe. This is done by critically evaluating modeling frameworks and contexts applied to adaptation and by describing new developments achieved in sectoral assessment models (water, agriculture, ecosystems, and health). Robust methodologies have been applied to deal with uncertainty and an advanced discussion is included on the challenges learnt to better address the upscaling issue from bottom-up adaptation processes. Costs and benefits are explored with respect to present and future climate scenarios, different socioeconomic development pathways and different adaptation strategies. In all models, the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways 2 (“middle of the road”), 3 (“fragmented world”), and 5 (“market-driven development”) are considered for comparative assessment as well as the climate scenarios according to remote concentration pathway 4.5 (average climate change) and 8.5 (high climate change) at 2050 (also see Chapter 2: Storylines and Pathways for Adaptation in Europe).