Table 2.

Examples of identified research focus areas in relation to different adaptation phases/contexts

Adaptation phase/context	Researched links (selected examples)	Related gaps
Response and response preparedness	Mindfulness-based interventions to increase psychological resilience: e.g., psychological first aid, and integration of care in disaster relief work, self-care after disasters	Lack of research on response preparedness Organisations are generally unequipped to provide assistance to increase psychological resilience, such as mindfulness-based approaches, for disaster victims and emergency workers (e.g., Ehrenreich and Ellicot 2004; Carroll et al. 2009) Lack of coherent, systematic monitoring of the impact of climate/natural hazards on people’s health and well-being and associated support to mitigate and manage the effects (Carroll et al. 2009) There is a need for a more complex analysis of, and response to, the psychosocial processes following a disaster (Cox and Perry 2011)
Recovery and recovery preparedness	Recovery of sense of self, meaning, and community Compassion-based organisational responses to assist disaster-affected employees Post-traumatic stress reduction during recovery Role of communities of faith and faith-based organisations during disaster recovery Well-being, health, cultural and religious values and their impact on communities’ recovery Importance of mindfulness for post-traumatic growth	Lack of research into recovery preparedness (e.g., to prepare for the return to work following hazards/disasters) Potential role of nature-based adaptation for recovery and vulnerability reduction has, so far, hardly been discussed (e.g., regarding psychological and physical health) Longer term studies (e.g., on the effects of mindfulness on post-traumatic growth) are missing (Shiyko et al. 2017) The urgent drive for recovery and rebuilding can obscure important social-psychological processes needs that can undermine long-term sustainability and community resilience (Cox and Perry 2011)
Development (adaptive capacity and proactive risk reduction)	Adaptive behaviour: ability to generate varied responses to the same stimuli and decreased automatic and habitual responses Reduced cognitive rigidity and increased creative thinking crucial for climate change context and associated uncertainty Social justice Role of change agents	The health effects of climate change receive a little attention from climate scientists (Costello et al. 2011) While there is a consensus that risk is socially constructed, there are hardly any studies that look into the issue of mindfulness and social justice in climate adaptation
Vulnerability and climate change context	Well-being, health, cultural, and religious values and how they impact the ways communities interpret risk and climate change, and how they approach risk reduction Impact of disasters on people’s well-being, which becomes an issue of vulnerability, e.g., in relation to health, family cohesion Social justice, pro-social responses Degradation of mindfulness as an aspect of people’s vulnerability facing climate change, linked to indigenous knowledge Visible environmental degradation (e.g., through climate hazard) impacts health and is associated with increased physical illness and declining mental health, e.g., provoking depressive symptoms and a loss of sense of place, which, in turn, can be addressed by mindfulness	The health effects of climate change have received relatively little attention from climate researchers (Costello et al. 2011) The abstract nature of climate change makes it non-intuitive and cognitively effortful to grasp (Markowitz and Shariff 2012) While there is a vast amount of literature that confirms the importance of emotion, affect and power for risk perception, risk assessment, risk and communication, and action-taking (e.g., Slovic 1999), potential approaches to address these aspects (such as mindfulness) have been little studied