Climate change adaptation (CCA) is a vital strategy for river basin water
management which binds together environmental, agricultural and human water
requirements in an uncertain future climate. Policy makers face a difficult
task balancing demand and supply for conflicting water requirements,
especially to justify present day economic costs for future benefits, like in
CCA. No-regret adaptation options, applicable in both, current and future
uncertain conditions, provide a way of dealing with these issues. However,
determination of such options needs to be based on an integrated assessment of
hydrologic, environmental, social, economic and institutional characteristics
to be suitable in the future. Here, a three step process for determining no-
regret options is presented, having been applied to the Kangsabati River basin
in India. Firstly a participatory approach is used to identify potential CCA
options, followed by a Multi Criteria Analysis (MCA) to determine the no-
regret and suitability characteristics for the region. This approach was
replicated at three levels; community, district and state (sub-national),
targeting different stakeholders. Finally, hydrological modeling using Water
Evaluation And Planning (WEAP) model, of the high ranking adaptation options
show the expected efficacy in hydrologic terms. MCA generated no-regret
options show importance of currently promoted soil and water conservation
measures, like afforestation and check dams and the need for future focus on
cropping pattern change. Evaluation criteria important to different
stakeholders were also determined in the process, a valuable by-product useful
for future water management. Present and future scenario based modelling of
CCA options provides comparability in terms of suitability, scale of impacts
and costs. Such assessments can be valuable tool-set for policymakers to make
evidence based decisions on choice of adaptation measures and their spatio-
temporal applications to improve water availability in an uncertain climate
