The Role of Structured Decision-making in Community-based Adaptation: A systematic scoping review

Community-based adaptation (CbA) enables communities, especially marginalised communities to adapt and build resilience to the uncertainties climate change ensues. However, there are many barriers to the successful implementation of CbA. While existing literature has synthesised evidence on the types of barriers, there is currently no published evidence synthesis on how these barriers manifest as a CbA project progresses and how it affects the process of decision-making adopted in CbA. Uncertainty remains as to how to overcome these barriers to ensure successful CbA implementation with representative decision-making. This article argues that mapping when and how these barriers manifest in the CbA project cycle will help in overcoming them by facilitating their management through structured decision-making (SDM) processes. Therefore, through a review of peer-reviewed articles selected through a systematic database search, this article systematically scopes the literature to map the identified barriers to the typical steps of a CbA project cycle and explores how structured decision-making (SDM) processes (e.g., adaptive management) provide a way to navigate the heterogeneity within communities and multiple stakeholder interests, by engaging the community and coordinating amongst multiple decision-makers, bridging different interests, information required and values.