When interdependence is two-way, the decision node to consider concerns whether a coordination solution is available. A co-ordination solution is one in which all actors are satisfied with a given course of action, and no trade-offs or conflicts of interests are present. If is is unknown whether such a solution exists, the indicated task is governance description, which involves understanding the interests, preferences and networks of relevant actors. When a co-ordination solution is available, communication, awareness raising or information sharing amongst the private actors is required in order to promote coordination and facilitate adaptation. For example, in shared transboundary river basins, there may be sufficient water to fulfill demand provided that extraction of water takes at different times in a coordinated manner. It may be sufficient for actors share information about when they will extract the resource, in order to avoid shortages at any given time, while still providing enough water to cover all of the individual actors’ demands.

When no coordination solution is available then a social dilemma is present. This means that there is a conflict between the social optima and individual private interests and some or all private actors involved need to compromise their own interests. One prominent type of such a challenge is the over-exploitation of a common pool resource. An example of such a situation would be a common groundwater stock that is declining under climate change and is used by a group of farmers to irrigate their fields (Varela-Ortega et al. 2013). Another prominent type is the private provisioning of a public goods. Take, for example, a community of private actors facing increasing risks of flooding and needing to collaborate to maintain the dike that protects them. In these cases, internal solutions are not very likely, but still possible and understanding the nature of these conflicts and identifying policy measures requires in-depth institutional analysis (see the Patfinder's decision tree for choosing approaches to institutional analysis). There are no panaceas to policy design for social dilemmas; all instruments or mixes thereof may be applicable. The success of policy measures in a given case depends upon many case-specific factors and it is difficult to generalise from one case to another. Furthermore, in some cases, policy intervention might even be counterproductive, which underlines the importance of contextual knowledge provided by institutional analysis (Ostrom, 2005).

The pathfinder provides decision trees for selecting the tasks to be carried out for public actors influencing individual and collective adaptation (currently selected decision tree) respectively. Table 2.6 further illustrates the choice of tasks and methods based on the criteria interdependence and coordination with the help of a couple of examples.