Mainstreaming-Transformation Paradox: Sharing Learning to Advance Adaptation Theory and Practice

There is widespread recognition of the imperative to mainstream adaptation based on the need for adaptation to be an integral part of decision-making processes. Recognition is growing that climate risks will require transformational adaptation, including new management and decision processes. However, our experience in multiple contexts demonstrated that these imperatives are often profoundly incompatible. Practice and theory suggest that transformational adaptation agendas require many things to be in place before mainstreaming. These 'things’ encompass new types of knowledge and understanding and accounting for plural and dynamic values, and new formal and informal rules related to decisions and choices. These requirements indicate the need for deep social and institutional changes to incorporate transformational adaptation into policy and practice. These create unavoidable tensions and challenges to mainstreaming transformational adaptation, raising the question, “what are we mainstreaming into, the current or a transformed decision system”?To highlight these tensions and their gravity, we label the phenomenon the mainstreaming-transformation paradox . The paradox reveals that transformation is much more complicated than current guidance suggests and needs re-imagined theory and practices. Our attempts at navigating this paradox have primarily used pathways of incremental changes that build towards transformation. More strategies need to be developed and tested, including options that assist rapid and foundational changes. By identifying the paradox and our experiences, we seek to engage others by providing a focus for making sense of past experiences and clarifying associated tensions and challenges, leading to further understanding strategies, theories and practices needed to navigate this paradox.