There is an overwhelming and urgent need to adapt to the impacts of climate change now and for centuries to come. In light of the persistent and pervasive threat of climate change and only limited success in adaptation implementation to date, it may be timely to consider alternative adaptation paradigms. Current planned anticipatory adaptation theory relies to a large degree on the ability to predict future trends in both climate and society, and on the absence of complexity in societal interactions - including decision-making processes. However, it is clear that uncertainty and complexity are ubiquitous in climate science and societal systems. Consequently, climate change adaptation planning and implementation is riddled with wicked problems to which there are still few practical solutions.

Here, we introduce a new framework for thinking about climate change adaptation inspired by evolutionary biology. Living organisms and entire ecosystems have the capacity to autonomously adapt to unforeseeable and uncertain changes to their environment across a range of time scales, from minutes and days to millions of years. In other words, they thrive despite uncertainty and complexity. We propose that enabling mechanisms of evolutionary and biological adaptation should also apply to societal climate change adaptation.

We discuss examples of how biological adaptation can contribute to climate adaptation research and planning and outline a number of particularly promising research areas to encourage discussion and exploration of evolutionary and biological adaptation processes for interdisciplinary transfer and implementation in societal adaptation to climate change.