Presentations at Adaptation Futures 2025

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The Chair of Human Geography and Human Environment Relations presented its work in a number of talks at this year’s Adaptation Futures conference in Christchurch (New Zealand), 13-16 October 2025

This conference is the main global conference on climate change adaptation. Leading scholars and practitioners from across the world come together with the shared goal of promoting accelerated and sustainable adaptation through knowledge-based approaches. Prof. Garschagen was part of the scientific program committee.

Six researchers of the Human Geography team presented their work on topics related to adaptation roles, finance, tracking, justice and capacity in various sessions and organised and participated in scientific panels:

• Matthias Garschagen, Panel on the “IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Cities”

• Matthias Garschagen and Deepal Doshi, Panel “Who Enables Equitable Adaptation? Negotiating Roles, Responsibilities and Accountability in Transformative Change”

• Deepal Doshi and Matthias Garschagen, Panel “Role of Adaptation Finance in Enabling Equitable and Effective Adaptation to the Impacts of Climate Change: Challenges, Gaps and Opportunities”

• Matthias Garschagen, Knowledge Café “Adaptation Pathways and Scenarios for Climate Change Research: Insights From Health, Water, Agriculture and the Coast”

• Bethany Liss, Paper Presentation “Integrating Climate-Just Managed Retreat in National Adaptation Planning: Insights From a Review of Submitted NAPs”

• Jan Petzold, Paper Presentation “Challenges and Opportunities for Inclusive Climate Change Adaptation for People With Disabilities – Lessons From Mumbai and Jakarta”

• Annika Schubert, Paper Presentation “High Adaptive Capacity, Low Action: Unpacking the ‘Capacity-Action Gap’ in an Affluent Region of the Global North”

• Anne von Streit, Paper Presentation “Tracking Adaptation of German Municipalities: Actions Implemented, Gaps and Limitations”

The next Adaptation Futures conference will be held in Cancun (Mexico) in 2027.

In advance of the Adaptation Futures conference, Deepal Doshi, together with Pia Treichel from IIED and University of Melbourne, organized a workshop to convene a Special Issue on Adaptation Finance. The aim of the workshop was to invite researchers working on topics related to adaptation finance to present ideas for articles that they would like to submit to such a Special Issue to showcase conceptual, methodological and empirical advances in adaptation finance scholarship. The Special Issue intends to make a timely contribution to both the upcoming Seventh Assessment cycle of the IPCC which for the first time has a dedicated chapter on Adaptation Finance in Working Group II as well as to the growing body of practice-based literature, against a dynamically evolving political landscape of adaptation finance. The workshop took place in a hybrid mode with participants joining both in person and online. Participants included leading scientists and practitioners from across the globe who had come for the Adaptation Futures conference. The workshop was kick-started by a panel discussion with Matthias Garschagen from LMU Munich, Marcus Johannesson from the Adaptation Fund, Rui Lopes from UNIDO and Savio Rousseau Rozario from ICCCAD. This was followed by nine presentations over the course of the day, covering a diverse range of topics from blended finance, effectiveness of climate finance, locally led adaptation, the role of research, implications of the Global Goal on Adaptation and its indicators, governance, private sector in adaptation finance and urban adaptation finance. The next step will be to approach journals that fit to the topics and start the curation of the Special Issue.