Source document: https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/1696591216677.pdf (United States)
OctOber 2011 Lessons from adaptation in practice Assessing the effectiveness of climate adaptation n SImon AnDErSon “ As governments and other agencies spend more money on adaptation to climate change they want to know that their investments are effective — that adaptation will keep development on track, that there is a fair distribution of costs and benefits, and that climate resilience is being built.

But monitoring and evaluating adaptation policy and practice is not easy.
Some approaches are unhelpful because they fail to integrate adaptation and development, use purely quantitative methods and do not include the perspectives of climate-vulnerable groups in their assessments.

Enabling countries and organisations to effectively evaluate adaptation requires an inclusive approach built on sharing knowledge among all stakeholders — one that can capture behavioural and institutional changes and that answers to the needs of the climate-vulnerable poor.
Across the world, policymakers and development practitioners have embraced the need to adapt to climate change.
Climate change resilience and adaptive capacity have become the targets of significant spending — US$100 billion was pledged at the 2009 UN ” in climate and unintended consequences of development interventions — which all demand flexible responses.1 A difficult task Across all three types of adaptation activity, good negotiations in Copenhagen to support climate change monitoring and evaluating (M&E) is critical to ensuring responses, including adaptation.
And there is a growing effective and accountable investments.

But M&E of demand for frameworks and tools that can effectively adaptation is not easy, not least because the domain of track and assess the outcomes of these investments.

change that we are trying to measure — climate resilience Governments, donor agencies and development organisations want reassurance that their investments or adaptive capacity — is not well defined, making it very difficult to know when significant change has happened.
deliver measurable results.

Developing country M&E also tends to be seen as a highly technical and governments need ways to assess the returns on their use of national funds, grants and loans.

specialist area that focuses on quantifiable results.
Advocates of econometric approaches to impact There are three broad types of adaptation project: those that address existing ‘adaptation deficits’, those that manage incremental changes in climate-related risks evaluation question the validity of qualitative approaches to evaluation, saying ‘if you can’t measure it you’re guessing’.

and those that address longer-term climate change Capacity often poses a hurdle to M&E of adaptation impacts by transforming existing systems and practices.
because there are very few people who hold both M&E Most adaptation policy and practice focuses on the first and climate change expertise.

two, implementing projects to cope with current climate variability, improve climate risk management and ‘climate proof’ development — for example, providing social infrastructure against extreme weather events or promoting agricultural technologies to cope with less rainfall.
And there are difficulties associated with measuring how fairly adaptation costs and benefits are distributed.

Global economic development shapes adaptation needs for vulnerable groups — both by contributing to climate change through greenhouse gas emissions and by limiting adaptive capacity of socially excluded groups.

Simon Anderson is head of IIED’s Climate Change Group.
But the third type of adaptation project, which aims for So M&E needs to answer to both the agencies providing transformative changes, are just as important, especially the resources for adaptation investments and to those in the face of changing risk contexts, uncertain changes people identified as the beneficiaries of adaptation.
Download the pdf at http://pubs.iied.org/17104IIED Four tensions in practice When it comes to implementing M&E of adaptation on the ground, these methodological, technical, capacity and ethical difficulties create four key tensions.

developmental outcomes is evident to some degree in the results frameworks developed for the Pilot Programme on Climate Resilience4 and the Adaptation Fund.5 1.
Investing time and financial resources to work out how adaptation is additional to development versus pragmatically using development indicators for climate-vulnerable populations as proxies.

Here the emerging consensus is sensible: the best use of climate finance in the short term is developmental moral hazard and challenges Adaptation M&E frameworks are developed and deployed recognising the moral hazard and information asymmetry issues related to planning and implementing adaptation interventions.
activities that increase adaptive capacity.

The climate-vulnerable poor need to know what is Preoccupation with ‘additionality’ makes integrating being done to tackle the climate risks that affect their the two harder.

2.

Developing new M&E methods that account for the uncertainty and complexity of climate change effects2 versus building on known and practised results-based approaches.
Only once we have a sure grasp of the uncertainty and depth of climate change challenges to development will we realise the need for transformative change.

development.
development.

By examining how authorities manage climate risks, and by linking this to the vulnerability of marginalised groups and the development outcomes they experience, an adaptation M&E framework can assess whether and how the adaptation needs of the climate-vulnerable poor are addressed, and what safeguards are in place to avoid ‘mal-adaptation’ (actions that may deliver short-term gains or economic benefits but lead to exacerbated vulnerability in the 3.
Using quantitative impact evaluation methods versus medium to long term).

using quantitative and qualitative methods combined, to capture the behavioural and institutional changes that enable adaptation to succeed.

The bottom line is that many adaptation gains will be achieved by improving governance; impact evaluations as yet cannot assess this type of change.

Key challenges remain.


Adaptation deficits exist now and there is a real risk that the gap between those who can adapt to climate change and those who can’t will widen.

In many cases, becoming climate resilient requires development to be transformed rather just ‘climate proofed’.

This means that M&E of adaptation 4.


Using independent and impartial assessments versus has to measure how well climate risk management doing participatory M&E that involves climate- for development is done, and how well development vulnerable groups.

Approaches that treat the climate performs under increasing climate challenges.

vulnerable as objects of independent assessments may improve the impartiality of assessments, but they do little to support mutual accountability and learning.
These tensions have led to trade-offs in emerging M&E frameworks for climate adaptation.

Unfortunately, a review of current M&E approaches reveals that seeing adaptation as additional to development, finding uncertainty difficult, using purely quantitative methods and treating the climate vulnerable as objects are commonplace.
The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) is an independent, nonprofit research institute working in the field of Next Steps No one organisation will or should have a monopoly sustainable development.

on adaptation evaluation knowledge.

An ‘open source’ IIED provides expertise and approach to monitoring and evaluating adaptation, leadership in researching based on dialogue and the sharing of knowledge and achieving sustainable and lessons, is far more likely to be effective.
Such development at local, national, an approach should be inclusive, bringing together regional and global levels.

But more recent M&E frameworks are tending towards practitioners, donors, international bodies, and The ‘Lessons from adaptation pragmatism.
They focus on the capacity of institutions, representatives of governments, non-governmental in practice’ series has been government and civil society to understand climate organisations and civil society of developing countries produced with generous change and to integrate adaptation into decision making.3 In doing so they ask if policy, institutional and other mechanisms are adequate to promote knowledge and action on climate change.

where adaptation interventions will be implemented.
support from the Japan A key goal of this process should be to build mechanisms through which developing countries can International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

evaluate their own progress on adaptation and what CONTACT: Simon Anderson The developmental performance of adaptation — the outside agencies offer in terms of support to adaptation.
simon.anderson@iied.org extent to which adaptation to climate change keeps This should lead to greater capacity within developing 80–86 Gray’s Inn Road, development ‘on track’ — is important.

Combining the countries to independently formulate, implement and London WC1X 8NH, UK tracking of societal ‘adaptive capacity’ with measuring evaluate climate change policies and actions.

Sources n 1 Brooks, N. et al.

2011.

Tracking adaptation and measuring development.

IIED, London.
IIED, London.

n 2 See Villanueva, P. S. 2011.

Learning to ADAPT: monitoring and evaluation approaches in climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction – challenges, gaps and ways forward.

SCR Discussion Paper 9.

Strengthening Climate Resilience.


n 3 See www.wri.org/project/vulnerability-and-adaptation/ nac-framework n 4 See www.climateinvestmentfunds.org/cif/sites/climateinvestmentfunds.org/files/Implementing%20the%20PPCR%20 Results%20Framework_CIF_June%2023%202011.pdf n 5 See www.adaptation-fund.org and Project Level Results Framework and Baseline Guidance Document, AFB/EFC.3/3, p30, Adaptation Fund.
Download the pdf at http://pubs.iied.org/17104IIED Tel: +44 (0)20 3463 7399 Fax: +44 (0)20 3514 9055 Website: www.iied.org