Abstract for: Borrowed Time: A New Archetype of Silent Fragility and an Interactive Policy Tool for Climate Adaptation

Monitoring and evaluation frameworks for climate adaptation are built on linear Theory of Change logic, yet the social-ecological systems they assess are governed by feedback, accumulation, and delay. Programs generating positive early indicators simultaneously erode the adaptive capacity determining long-run welfare, a process invisible to standard monitoring until collapse is already underway. Existing frameworks cannot see the structural processes they most need to track. We derived the archetype from two source cases, Nepal and Myanmar, using fieldwork, group model building, stakeholder causal loop diagrams, thematic coding, and a system dynamics model for each case in Vensim, then a grounded-theory and thematic analysis synthesis into one summary model. We cross-validated this archetype on a third case, Bhutan, chosen because its surface structure differs most from the source cases. The synthesis yields a 13-loop archetype we call Borrowed Time, in which aspiration-driven transitions erode traditional adaptive capacity faster than new livelihoods replace it, producing overshoot and collapse. The same structure reproduces each case's behavior. It also yields two early-warning indicators, Recovery Potential and the Safe-Rate Bound, and three design principles, delivered in an interactive simulator following methodology of a serious game like EN-ROADS. The archetype shows that "diversification reduces vulnerability" holds in some contexts and reverses in others, so the same policy can help one community and harm another. Standard income monitoring cannot see this. Adaptive Capacity Index and the Safe-Rate Bound give managers warning before collapse, turning a structural diagnosis into a tool practitioners can use. AI was used for text editing