THE ADAPTATIONGA P
TOWARDSGLOBALASSESSMENTREPORTPublished by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), November 2017
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CITATION
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UNEP 2017. The Adaptation Gap Report 2017. United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Nairobi, Kenya
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This report was funded by the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment of the Governmentof the Netherlands. Basque Centre for Climate Change, European Bank for Reconstruction andDevelopment, Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, International Centre for Climate Change
and Development, International Development Research Centre, Leeds University, McGill University,
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THE ADAPTATIONGA P
TOWARDSGLOBALASSESSMENTREPORTACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The UN Environment (UNEP) would like to thank thesteering committee members, the lead and contributing
authors, and the project coordination team for theircontribution to the development of this report. The
following individuals have provided input to the report.
Authors and reviewers contributed to this report in theirindividual capacity and their affiliations are only mentioned
for identification purposes.
PROJECT STEERING COMMITTEE
Craig Davies (European Bank for Reconstruction andDevelopment), Barney Dickson (UN Environment),
Saleemul Huq (International Centre for Climate Change
and Development), Willem Ligtvoet (PBL Netherlands
Environmental Assessment Agency), Anil Markandya (BasqueCentre for Climate Change), Michael Mullan (Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development), Youssef Nassef(United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change),
Edith Ofwona (International Development Research Centre),
Kulthoum Omari (Africa Adaptation Initiative), Maarten van
Aalst (Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre)
CHAPTER 1
Lead authors: Anne Olhoff (UNEP DTU Partnership), Prakriti
Naswa (UNEP DTU Partnership)
Contributing authors: Annett Moehner (United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change), Timo Leiter(Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit)
CHAPTER 2
Lead authors: Annett Moehner (United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change), Timo Leiter (Deutsche
Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit), Takayoshi
Kato (Organisation for Economic Co-operation andDevelopment)

CHAPTER 3
Lead authors: Alexandra Lesnikowski (McGill University),
James Ford (Leeds University)
Contributing authors: Lea Berrang-Ford (Leeds University),
Robbert Biesbroek (Wageningen University & Research)
CHAPTER 4
Lead author: Timo Leiter (Deutsche Gesellschaft fürInternationale Zusammenarbeit)
Contributing authors: Maritza Florian Buitrago (Ministry ofEnvironment and Sustainable Development of Colombia), Ala
Druta (Office of Climate Change, Republic of Moldova), Jorge
Enrique Gutierrez (Ministry of Environment and Sustainable
Development of Colombia), Mike Harley (Climate ResilienceLtd), Tsepang Makholela (Department of Environmental
Affairs of the Government of South Africa), Tin Ponlok(National Council for Sustainable Development of Cambodia),
Tlou Ramaru (Department of Environmental Affairs of theGovernment of South Africa), Camila Rodriguez Vargas(Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Developmentof Colombia), Erik Wallin (Deutsche Gesellschaft fürInternationale Zusammenarbeit)
CHAPTER 5
Lead author: Lea Berrang-Ford (Leeds University)
Contributing authors: Frances M. Wang (McGill University),
Alexandra Lesnikowski (McGill University), James Ford (Leeds
University), Robbert Biesbroek (Wageningen University &Research)
CHAPTER 6
Lead author: Henry Neufeldt (UNEP DTU Partnership)
Contributing author: Lea Berrang-Ford (Leeds University)

The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessmentiii

REVIEWERS
Imad-eldin Ahmed Ali Babiker (Agricultural Research
Corporation), Dennis Bours (The Independent Evaluation
Office of the Global Environment Facility), Sandeep Chamling
Rai (WWF International), Craig Davies (European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development), Barney Dickson (UNEnvironment), Polly Ericksen (International Livestock ResearchInstitute), Knud Falk (Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre),
Saleemul Huq (International Centre for Climate Change andDevelopment), Louise Jackson (University of California, Davis),
Irene Karani (LTS International), Vladimir Kendrovski (World
Health Organization), Richard Klein (Stockholm Environment
Institute), Donna Lagdameo (Red Cross Red Crescent Climate
Centre), Willem Ligtvoet (PBL Netherlands Environmental
Assessment Agency), Alexandre Magnan (Institute for
Sustainable Development and International Relations),
Paul Mapfumo (University of Zimbabwe), Anil Markandya(Basque Centre for Climate Change), Alexandre Meybeck(Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations),
Michael Mullan (Organisation for Economic Co-operation andDevelopment), Johanna Nalau (Griffith University), Arivudai
Nambi Appadurai (Word Resources Institute), Youssef Nassef(United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change),
Christine Negra (Versant Vision LLC), Ian Noble (Notre Dame
Global Adaptation Initiative), Edith Ofwona (International
Development Research Centre), Kulthoum Omari (Africa
Adaptation Initiative), Feisal Rahman (International Centre for
Climate Change and Development), Rajib Shaw (Integrated
Research on Disaster Risk Programme), Harjeet Singh (Action
Aid), Tajiel Urioh (The Green Icon), Elina Vaananen (UNEnvironment), Maarten van Aalst (Red Cross Red Crescent
Climate Centre), Rogier Vogelij (Netherlands Enterprise
Agency (RVO.nl), Christiaan Wallet (Ministry of Infrastructure
and the Environment of the Netherlands), Sidat Yaffa(University of The Gambia), Yan Zheng (Institute of Urban andEnvironment Studies - Chinese Academy of Social Studies)iv Acknowledgements

EDITORSAnne Olhoff (UNEP DTU Partnership), Henry Neufeldt (UNEPDTU Partnership), Prakriti Naswa (UNEP DTU Partnership),
Kelly Dorkenoo (UNEP DTU Partnership)
PROJECT COORDINATION
Prakriti Naswa (UNEP DTU Partnership), Kelly Dorkenoo (UNEPDTU Partnership), Anne Olhoff (UNEP DTU Partnership),Henry Neufeldt (UNEP DTU Partnership), Elina Vaananen (UNEnvironment), Barney Dickson (UN Environment)
MEDIA SUPPORT
Mette Annelie Rasmussen (UNEP DTU Partnership), Surabhi
Goswami (UNEP DTU Partnership)
DESIGN, LAYOUT AND PRINT
Phoenix Design Aid
GRAPHICS
Weeks.de
THANKS ALSO TO
Raúl Alfaro-Pelico (World Bank), Line Riis Christiansen (UNEPDTU Partnership), Jeanne Coulibaly (World Agroforestry
Centre - ICRAF), Desire Kagabo (International Center for
Tropical Agriculture - CIAT), Thomas Kragh Laursen (UNEPDTU Partnership), Natasha Delani Kuruppu (UNEP DTU
Partnership), Shuaib Lwasa (Makerere University), Gerardo
Sanchez Martinez (UNEP DTU Partnership), Daniel Puig (UNEPDTU Partnership)

CONTENTS

Glossary...........................................................................................................................................................................................

vii

Acronyms........................................................................................................................................................................................

ix

Foreword.........................................................................................................................................................................................

xi

Executive summary.......................................................................................................................................................................

xii

CHAPTER 1
Scoping the Adaptation Gap Report 2017...............................................................................................................................

1

1.1 Moving towards implementation of the Paris Agreement and its global goal on adaptation............................................................

2

1.2 The Adaptation Gap Reports and the focus of the 2017 report..............................................................................................................................

3

1.3 Structure of the report.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................

5

CHAPTER 2
Adaptation in the Paris Agreement and provisions for review and reporting..................................................................

7

2.1 Introduction.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

8

2.2 Provisions of the Paris Agreement relevant to the global goal on adaptation..............................................................................................

8

2.3 Moving towards implementation of the provisions related to review of adaptation progress and reporting.........................

10

2.4 Provision of information under the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement relevant to the global goal on adaptation.............

11

2.5 Unpacking the global goal on adaptation...........................................................................................................................................................................

13

CHAPTER 3
Assessing adaptation progress at the global level: conceptual and methodological issues.........................................

15

3.1 Introduction.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

16

3.2 Key challenges for assessing adaptation progress...........................................................................................................................................................

16

3.2.1 Conceptual challenges: what to measure?.............................................................................................................................................................

17

3.2.2 Capturing mainstreaming.................................................................................................................................................................................................

17

3.2.3 Systematic data collection and the related reporting burden...................................................................................................................

18

3.3 The current state of knowledge on adaptation assessment.....................................................................................................................................

19

3.3.1 Assessing adaptation activities.......................................................................................................................................................................................

20

3.3.2 Assessing adaptation results............................................................................................................................................................................................

21

The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessmentv

CHAPTER 4Country-specific assessments of adaptation progress..........................................................................................................

23

4.1 Introduction.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

24

4.2 Overview and characteristics of country-specific adaptation M&E systems...................................................................................................

24

4.3 Case studies of national adaptation M&E systems...........................................................................................................................................................

27

4.3.1 Cambodia....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

27

4.3.2 Colombia......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

28

4.3.3 Moldova........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

29

4.3.4 South Africa................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

29

4.4 Analysis of national adaptation M&E systems to date...................................................................................................................................................

31

4.5 Opportunities and limits of country-specific adaptation M&E systems to support the provisionsof the Paris Agreement......................................................................................................................................................................................................................

32

CHAPTER 5
Towards the assessment of adaptation progress at the global level..................................................................................

35

5.1 Introduction.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

36

5.2 Criteria for a global assessment of adaptation...................................................................................................................................................................

36

5.3 Assessing existing adaptation frameworks..........................................................................................................................................................................

38

5.3.1 Most adaptation assessment frameworks are not designed for aggregation..................................................................................

39

5.3.2 Frameworks that are designed for aggregation are often not suitable for the national/global level................................

40

5.3.3 Frameworks that are nationally aggregable face trade-offs between sensitivity/coherence andtransparency/feasibility.......................................................................................................................................................................................................

40

5.4 Examples from Mozambique and Cambodia.....................................................................................................................................................................

41

5.5 Global adaptation assessment through the lens of the Sustainable Development Goals and Sendai Framework
on Disaster Risk Reduction..............................................................................................................................................................................................................

43

5.6 Lessons from outside the adaptation field...........................................................................................................................................................................

45

5.7 Lessons from the framework analysis for the assessment of adaptation at global level.........................................................................

46

CHAPTER 6
Considerations for a future framework for assessing adaptation progress at the global level.....................................

49

6.1 Introduction.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

50

6.2 Reviewing progress towards the global goal on adaptation: key sources of information.....................................................................

50

6.3 Country-level indicators for global assessment.................................................................................................................................................................

51

6.4 Considerations for developing a global adaptation assessment framework..................................................................................................

51

6.5 Linking the global review of adaptation progress with the Sustainable Development Goals and the Sendai
Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction...................................................................................................................................................................................

53

6.6 Towards a future framework for assessing adaptation progress at global level............................................................................................

54

References.......................................................................................................................................................................................

55

vi Contents

GLOSSARYThe entries in this glossary are adapted from definitions provided by authoritative sources,
such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Adaptation

In human systems, the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its
effects in order to moderate harm or exploit beneficial opportunities. In natural systems,
the process of adjustment to actual climate and its effects; human intervention may
facilitate adjustment to expected climate.

Adaptation costs

Costs of planning, preparing for, facilitating, and implementing adaptation measures,
including transaction costs.

Adaptive capacity

The combination of the strengths, attributes and resources available to an individual,
community, society, or organization that can be used to prepare for and undertake
actions to reduce adverse impacts, moderate harm, or exploit beneficial opportunities.

Adaptation M&E system

A country-specific adaptation Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) system refers to any
mechanisms put in place at national level to monitor and/or evaluate adaptation-related
efforts and their results with the aim of understanding adaptation progress over time.

Baseline

State against which change is measured. It might be a current baseline, in which case it
represents observable, present-day conditions. It might also be a ‘future baseline’, which
is a projected future set of conditions excluding the driving factor of interest. Alternativeinterpretations of the reference conditions can give rise to multiple baselines.

ClimateClimate in a narrow sense is usually defined as the ‘average weather’, or more
rigorously, as the statistical description in terms of the mean and variability of relevant
quantities over a period of time ranging from months to thousands or millionsof years. These quantities are most often surface variables such as temperature,
precipitation, and wind. Climate in a wider sense is the state, including a statisticaldescription, of the climate system.

Climate Change

Any change in climate over time, whether due to natural variability or as a result of
human activity.

Climate (change) impacts

The effects of climate change on natural and human systems.

Evaluation

Evaluation is the systematic and objective assessment of an on-going or completed
project, programme or policy, its design, implementation and results.

Exposure

The presence of people, livelihoods, species or ecosystems, environmental functions,services, and resources, infrastructure, or economic, social, or cultural assets in places
and settings that could be adversely affected.

HazardThe potential occurrence of a natural or human-induced physical event or trend or
physical impact that may cause loss of life, injury, or other health impacts, as well as
damage and loss to property, infrastructure, livelihoods, service provision, ecosystems
and environmental resources.
In this report, the term hazard usually refers to climate-related physical events or trends
or their physical impacts.

The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessmentvii

Indicators

Quantitative or qualitative factor or variable that provides a simple and reliable means tomeasure achievement, to reflect the changes connected to an intervention, or to help
assess the performance of a development actor.

Metrics

A set of “metrics,” or indexes, can be defined as a system of measurement that includes
the item being measured, the unit of measurement, and the value of the unit.

Mitigation

Here understood as an anthropogenic intervention to reduce the anthropogenic forcingof the climate system; it includes strategies to reduce greenhouse gas sources andemissions and enhancing greenhouse gas sinks.

Monitoring

Monitoring is an activity that uses systematic collection of data on specified indicatorswith the aim of tracking change.

Resilience

The capacity of social, economic and environmental systems to cope with a hazardous
event or trend or disturbance, responding or reorganizing in ways that maintain theiressential function, identity and structure, while also maintaining the capacity foradaptation, learning and transformation.

Vulnerability

Here understood as the propensity or predisposition to be adversely affected by climate
impacts.

viii Glossary

ACRONYMS

COP

Conference of the Parties

IPCC

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

M&E

Monitoring and Evaluation

NAP

National Adaptation Plan

NDC

Nationally Determined Contribution

ND-GAIN

Notre-Dame Global Adaptation Index

PPCR

Climate Investment Fund’s Pilot Program for
Climate Resilience

SDGs

Sustainable Development Goals

TAMD

Tracking Adaptation and Measuring
Development

UNFCCC

United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change

The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessmentix

FOREWORD
Storm after storm provides unmissable reminders of the links
between mitigating and adapting to the impact of climatechange and sustainable development. Those vital links arehighlighted in a goal within the Paris Agreement, which aims
to unify global efforts to make our societies more robust. To
support that goal, this report offers guidance on a framework
to assess progress, outlining criteria for national indicatorsthat can be compared globally.
Almost every continent has recently suffered the severe
consequences of extreme weather events first hand; events
increasing in frequency and severity because of climatechange. With each new disaster, it is clear there is a serious
gap between what is required to protect our communities
and what is actually in place. Yet, we do not even know
how to accurately measure the size of that gap to prioritize
planning and investment. In fact, there are currently noagreed-upon methods, indicators, metrics or frameworks
in place. However, existing frameworks offer insight into
opportunities to aggregate and synthesize national progressto provide a global picture.
To understand what is at stake, you need only look at
the impact of recent hurricanes Maria and Irma. The
effects will be felt for years to come, with thousands ofpeople still displaced and millions of dollars needed torebuild. For example, in Puerto Rico, approximately 86%
of the island’s 1.57 million electricity customers werestill without power a month after being hit. As ever,
the most vulnerable are the worst affected. People like
Georgia Lopez Ortiz, an elderly resident in a crime-ridden
neighbourhood in San Juan. For Georgia, the lack ofelectricity makes it impossible to cook and too dangerous
to go outside after dark, while laundry can only be

hand-washed in a bucket. Her lifeline is, quite literally, arope passed through the security bars of her patio to aidgroups that deliver packages of water and dried food.
Unfortunately, Georgia’s story will be repeated, again andagain, until decision makers can take better informed andbetter coordinated precautions. That is why this report
recommends looking at sustainable development, disasterrisk reduction and climate change impacts jointly, tomaximize synergies and minimize duplication of effort. Sucha global framework would share and aggregate progress
updates towards country-specific adaptation goals bybuilding on existing communications to avoid creating
undue burden.
I hope this report will help to guide that process. I
also hope that our continued collaboration with the
Netherlands, through the Global Centre of Excellence on
Climate Adaptation, will rapidly bridge this crucial gap in
understanding to protect people everywhere.

Erik Solheim
Head of UN Environment

The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessmentxi

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015, established theglobal goal on adaptation of enhancing adaptive capacity,strengthening resilience and reducing vulnerability to
climate change, with a view to contributing to sustainable
development and ensuring an adequate adaptation
response in the context of the temperature goal. The 2017
Adaptation Gap Report, which is the third global Adaptation
Gap Report by UN Environment – prepared in collaboration
with the Global Centre of Excellence on Climate Adaptation– focuses on one of the key questions arising in the wakeof the global goal: What are the ways forward to assess
progress towards the global goal on adaptation?
The report explores key opportunities and challenges
associated with assessing progress on adaptation at the
global level. The report synthesizes information relevant forthe ongoing work under the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to prepare forthe implementation of the Paris Agreement. In contrast
to previous Adaptation Gap Reports, the 2017 reportfocuses on issues relating to frameworks, comprisingconcepts, methodologies and data, rather than on assessinga particular dimension of the adaptation gap. Future
Adaptation Gap Reports will return to assessments of specificadaptation gaps.
An international team of experts, assessing the latest
literature and practical experience within the topic
area, has prepared the report. The process has been

Photo: © Neil Palmer (CIAT)

xii Executive Summary

overseen by a steering committee, and all chapters haveundergone extensive external review.
The Paris Agreement’s global goal on adaptation
provides a new starting point and impetus forassessing progress on adaptation at the global level,
but additional information is required for assessing
such progress.
The global goal on adaptation provides a collective vision forthe direction of global adaptation action. The goal is broad
and multifaceted, and progress towards it will be reviewed
in the context of the global stocktake specified in Article 14of the Paris Agreement. The global stocktake will take place
every five years starting in 2023, and include reviewing theoverall progress in achieving the global goal on adaptation. In
addition, the Paris Agreement contains two other provisions
on adaptation that are important in the context of this report:
the transparency framework and adaptation communications.
These four provisions and the interlinkages between them areillustrated in Figure ES.1, further highlighting the global andnational dimensions of the provisions.
An assessment of collective progress towards the global goalon adaptation implies that national adaptation reporting andnational data are synthesized or aggregated in a transparent
and systematic manner. A key question relates to the extent
to which reporting should and can be comparable andstandardized across countries. The existing communication

NATIONAL

GLOBAL

Figure ES.1: Key adaptation provisions under the Paris Agreement and the interlinkages between them

ARTICLE 7 | Adaptation

ARTICLE 14 | Global
Stocktake

Global goal
Global stocktake

PurposeR Review the overall progress madein achieving the global goal
R Review the adequacy andeffectiveness of adaptationand support provided
R Recognize adaptation efforts
R Enhance implementation ofadaptation action

Each Party shall engage inadaptation planning processes
and the implementation ofactions
Financial, technological andcapacity-building support shallbe provided to developing
country Parties
Each Party should, as appropriate, submit and update
periodically an adaptation
communication

vehicles, including the Nationally Determined Contributions(NDCs), the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) processes andthe National Communications, offer valuable information
on past and planned adaptation actions and support needs.
However, additional information is needed to allow for acomprehensive and comparable assessment.
Globally comparable metrics that track progress
towards the global goal on adaptation based on
country-level information, while avoiding undue
burden on countries, provide additional opportunities
yet pose a considerable challenge.
Assessing global adaptation progress requires frameworks
and metrics that are applicable across countries and sectors,
and over time. The complexity of adaptation to climatechange as a development and policy issue presents major
challenges for a comprehensive assessment of adaptation
progress globally, because it requires the development

R Assess the collective progress
towards achieving the purpose of
the Agreement and its long-termgoals
OutcomeInform parties in:
R Updating and enhancing theiractions and support
R Enhancing international
cooperation

ARTICLE 13 | Transparency
Framework
PurposeR To provide a clear understandingof climate change action andsupportR To inform the global stocktake
Each Party should provide
information related to climatechange impacts and adaptation

and use of metrics that encompass enormous diversity.
At the same time, metrics that can be aggregated andcompared at higher levels do not lend themselves well tocontext specificity and meaningful progress on adaptation,
particularly at national and sub-national levels. Decisions
regarding which metrics to assess globally should take suchtrade-offs into account.
Opportunities to complement national adaptation
communications with third-party information are currently
explored. Such information can be derived from bodies suchas the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),
frameworks developed by independent research and nongovernment organizations, and dovetailing with other global
frameworks, such as the Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs) and the Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction(Sendai Framework). Figure ES.2 outlines how various sourcesof information may feed into an assessment of the overall
progress made in achieving the global goal on adaptation.
The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessmentxiii

Figure ES.2: Reviewing the overall progress in achieving the global goal on adaptation based on multiple
sources of information

GLOBAL

Reviewing the overall progress made in achieving the global goal on adaptation

The overall effect of adaptation
contributions and the state ofadaptation efforts, support,
experiences and priorities

Reportsof the IPCCand UNFCCC
subsidiarybodiesRelevant reports inthe context of theSDGs, the Sendai
Framework andother contexts

Global trackingof adaptationby third Parties

NATIONAL

Synthesis/
aggregation

Country-specific information on:• Implementation of plans andaction and further needs• Assessments of adaptation
progress

Existing tools and frameworks for adaptationassessment, including for monitoring and evaluation(M&E), are generally geared towards project- to-country-level assessments and are typically notdesigned to be aggregated at global level.

Country-specificinformation

Similarly, it is possible to distinguish between two different
types of metrics:•

Descriptive metrics do not provide value statements
or normative assumptions, and generally use indicatorsof activities or results that can be more readily quantified.
Descriptive metrics typically lend themselves more easily
to repeated collection over time, which is of significancein relation to assessing progress towards the global goalon adaptation through the global stocktake;•

Evaluative metrics attempt to qualify adaptation
activities and results to understand whether activities
and results are adequate and effective. These questions
cannot be answered directly through data collection andsynthesis, because evaluative responses are influenced
by individual and collective perceptions, values andexpectations. Evaluative assessments of adaptation thus
require the articulation of principles that will structure
analysis and the recognition that the results of theassessment are not fully objective, but the outcome of apolitical and societal process.

Existing frameworks allow a distinction to be made between
two generic approaches, focusing on either activities or
results of adaptation policies and action:••

Assessing activities examines what countries are doing
to address climate risk, and aims to measure inputs andprocesses related to adaptation. Metrics to assess levels
and content of activities can capture whether actors are
creating positive conditions and strong institutions oran effective and enabling environment for successful
adaptation, but they do not allow for direct connections
to be made to reduced vulnerability or enhanced
resilience and adaptive capacity;
Assessing results examines what has come out of theactivities to enhance adaptation. In policy evaluation
terms, this approach aims to measure the outputs,
outcomes and impacts of adaptation activities. However,along the results chain from inputs to impacts, attributionof specific activities to adaptation outcomes becomesincreasingly difficult, because external factors play evergreater roles. To assess results, it may therefore be more
useful to focus on contribution, rather than attribution,and qualitative evidence to support quantitative
indicators.

xiv Executive Summary

Globallycomparable
data at country
levelCountries currently use both types of information andmetrics in their national adaptation M&E systems. To
assess progress towards the global goal on adaptation, it isnecessary to ensure not only comparability of information
across countries, but also to utilize metrics that can becollected repeatedly. Finally, there is a clear correlation
between the depth of information an adaptation assessment
can provide and the resources available.

National adaptation M&E systems can facilitate global
knowledge sharing and transparency in addition tooffering domestic benefits, such as better informed
planning and decision-making.
More than 40 countries across all continents have
implemented, or are in the process of developing, countryspecific adaptation M&E systems. Reflecting the diversity
in national circumstances, needs, policies and climate risks,existing M&E systems differ significantly in terms of purpose,scope, methodology, institutional arrangements and types ofreporting. Most countries have taken several years to develop
and implement their national adaptation M&E systems andhave faced multiple challenges, including lack of capacity
and limited availability of data. Some countries, in particular
Least Developed Countries (LDCs), will likely require support
to establish ongoing assessments of adaptation progress.
Country experiences indicate that the development of anational adaptation M&E system should start by clarifying the
purpose(s) of the system. Clarification of purpose is essential
to inform the design of appropriate methodologies andmetrics and to assess information and data needs. The same
applies for assessing adaptation progress globally.
Current national M&E systems mainly focus on
monitoring adaptation. Few countries haveundertaken an evaluation of national adaptation
progress.
Indicators are an essential part of most adaptation M&E
systems. Existing national M&E systems tend to focus
on monitoring adaptation through process and output

indicators. Some countries intentionally avoid standardized
indicators to allow for context-specific flexibility.
While adaptation M&E systems differ across countries, they
provide similar types of information, including advancesin adaptation policies and governance, mainstreaming,
implementation, and changes in vulnerabilities and risks
over time. These data are highly relevant for country-level
reporting to the UNFCCC.
There is limited evidence of the extent to which national
M&E systems capture actions by non-state actors, including
private sector, sub-national government and civil society.
Such actions will be important to include in a review ofadaptation progress, locally, nationally and globally.
There are currently no agreed-upon methods,
indicators, metrics or frameworks designed for anassessment of progress towards the global goal on
adaptation, yet existing frameworks can provide
insights into opportunities for aggregating andsynthesizing country-level progress.
A review of existing frameworks for adaptation indicatesthe following key desirable criteria for an adaptationassessment framework at global level: capacity to aggregate
or synthesize country-level data, transparency, considerationof progress over time, avoiding undue burden on countries,
inclusion of proxy indicators that are coherent with acollective understanding of meaningful adaptation, andsensitivity to national vulnerabilities, resources, and contexts.
These are described in more detail in Table ES.1.

Table ES.1: An overview of desirable criteria for a global framework for assessing progress on adaptation
Criteria

Description

Associated articles in the Paris Agreement

1. Aggregable

Does the measure reflect a consistent definition of adaptationthat is comparable at the national level, and is available for acomprehensive number of countries globally, such that data could
be systematically aggregated (qualitatively or quantitatively)?

Article 14 focus on collective progress andArticle 7 inclusion of overall progress.
To some extent Article 7’s consideration ofadaptation recognition

2. Transparent

Are definitions, assumptions, and methods transparent and consistent
between countries?

Article 13 requirement for a transparency
framework to inform the global stocktake

3. Longitudinal

Can the measure be tracked over time to monitor and evaluate progress?

Article 7 and 14’s focus on progress implies
tracking over time

4. Feasible

For global synthesis/aggregation of national assessments submitted to
UNFCCC: Does the measure avoid placing undue additional reporting
burden on countries?
For global tracking of adaptation using publically available data: Is themeasure reasonably available or can it be collected for all countries?

Implicit

5. Coherent

Does the measure reflect a concept or construct that is coherent with ageneral understanding of what constitutes meaningful adaptation? Are
assumptions underpinning the use of proxies empirically validated ortheoretically sound?

Implicit in the Paris Agreement, particularly
Articles 7, 13, and 14

6. Sensitive
to national
context

Is the measure sensitive to diverse national contexts (for example,
different political, economic, and socio-cultural priorities andresources)? Does the measure avoid unjustified, poorly evidenced or
generalized assumptions — implicit or explicit — regarding what is‘good’, ‘appropriate’, or ‘sufficient’ adaptation?

Implicit but unspecified; degree of desired
normativity unresolved

The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessmentxv

Photo: © Jen Watson (Shutterstock)

Four existing frameworks include mechanisms for reportingof country-level data that to some extent is aggregable orconsistent across countries, although the frameworks use
different approaches to address the trade-offs in assessing
adaptation. However, a comparison of these frameworks fortwo countries, Mozambique and Cambodia, where 3 of the
4 frameworks have been implemented, shows that results
are highly inconsistent across frameworks, even for a single
country, and there is evidence that results are inconsistently
reported across countries.
A framework for assessing global adaptation progress would
benefit from being sufficiently: a) broad to absorb the range
of information; b) rigorous to capture essential metrics ofchange; and c) flexible to accommodate innovations inassessment approaches.

xvi Executive Summary

Guidelines for scoring criteria, peer review and broad
stakeholder engagement can all improve the validity andownership of assessment frameworks.
In summary, the 2017 Adaptation Gap Report points tothe following key insights for informing an assessmentof global progress on adaptation:
1. Frameworks that are based on nationallydetermined proximity-to-target approaches
have the greatest potential to respect a diversityof national contexts while facilitating global
assessment of progress. There are no one-size-fits-all
metrics given the diversity of resources, vulnerabilities,
and adaptive capacity.

2. A transparent assessment of global progress isfacilitated if national reporting of descriptive
metrics (including activities and results) is clearly
distinguished from evaluative metrics. Evaluative
metrics reported by nations are poorly suited toquantification of progress at the global level. Whilecountries may choose to include evaluative metrics
in national reporting, such metrics are best suited toqualitative synthesis when assessing global progress.
Despite this, some evaluative metrics should probably be
standardized to facilitate widespread adoption, including
special consideration of the most vulnerable countries
and vulnerable groups within countries, and principles
such as equality and equity between genders and acrossother dimensions of vulnerability.
3. Global review of adequacy and effectiveness, which
typically involves the use of evaluative metrics, isunlikely to be achievable through standardizedor quantifiable indicators alone. Countries may
assess how well they are achieving their targets basedon their climate risk profile and other considerations. To
increase transparency for global synthesis of progress,
these assessments are well suited to qualitative
reporting formats and peer or expert review rather thanstandardized indicator scoring. A review of frameworks
from outside of the adaptation field highlights the role ofpeer review mechanisms in increasing reliability, validity,
and consistency of adaptation reporting.
4. A focus on the contribution made to a result rather
than strict attribution is emerging as a more usefulconcept to link national efforts with results. Attributing
outcomes and impact to inputs and action directly isunlikely to be reliable or comparable at the national
level or consistent across countries. Instead, narratives
can be used to assess contribution and qualitative
evidence to support quantitative indicators.
5. Longitudinal assessment of adaptation progress overtime is reflected relatively poorly in existing assessment
frameworks, but will be critical in a global effort to review
adaptation progress over time. This implies the use of
indicators of change or progress in addition to static
measures of effort.
6. The SDGs and the Sendai Framework offer
considerable opportunities for alignment via shared
indicators, joint implementation, capacity building, andcreation of policy support.
7. Third party information can complement information
provided by countries. The IPCC, other international
bodies, and the broader research community can becalled upon to provide information, and to help further
develop methodologies suitable for global assessment ofadaptation progress.
The Paris Agreement provides a new impetus for a
global perspective on adaptation, which offers immense
opportunities for advancing our understanding ofadaptation and our ability to assess adaptation action andresults across geographical locations and administrative
scales, and over time. If efforts are combined and sufficient,
it is possible not only to improve our ability to assess
progress on adaptation, but to enhance such progress, andto ensure an adequate adaptation response in the context
of the temperature goal of the Paris Agreement.

The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessment

xvii

01

CHAPTER 1SCOPING THE
ADAPTATIONGAP REPORT
2017
LEAD AUTHORS—ANNE OLHOFF (UNEP DTU

PARTNERSHIP), PRAKRITI NASWA (UNEP DTU
PARTNERSHIP)
CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS—ANNETT MOEHNER (UNITED

NATIONS FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON CLIMATECHANGE), TIMO LEITER (DEUTSCHE GESELLSCHAFT FÜR
INTERNATIONALE ZUSAMMENARBEIT)

Photo: © Think4photop (Shutterstock)

The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessment11.1 MOVING TOWARDS IMPLEMENTATION
OF THE PARIS AGREEMENT AND ITSGLOBAL GOAL ON ADAPTATION
The adoption of the Paris Agreement at the twenty-firstsession of the Conference of the Parties (COP 21) to theUnited Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC) in 2015 marked a milestone in international efforts
to establish a universal foundation for ambitious action tocombat climate change and address climate risks. For the
first time, the Paris Agreement established a global goal on
adaptation of “enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening
resilience and reducing vulnerability to climate change,
with a view to contributing to sustainable development
and ensuring an adequate adaptation response in thecontext of the temperature goal” (UNFCCC, 2016: Article
7.1). The goal provides a collective vision for the direction of
global adaptation action, and underscores the interlinkages
between adaptation, mitigation, and sustainable
development, as illustrated in Figure 1.1.
The global goal on adaptation is broad and multifaceted,reflecting the inherent nature of climate change adaptation,
resilience, and vulnerability, and acknowledging theimmense differences in national circumstances, preferences,

Photo: © Vivian Atakos (CCAFS)

2 Chapter 1 | Scoping the Adaptation Gap Report 2017and capacities across countries. However, because thegoal is broad and multifaceted, it does not offer an
immediate way of assessing whether progress towards it isbeing made, which is an important element of the global
stocktake specified in Article 14 of the Paris Agreement.
The global stocktake will take place every five years startingin 2023 and include reviewing the overall progress inachieving the global goal on adaptation (UNFCCC, 2016:
Article 14).
A review of the overall progress in achieving the global goalon adaptation implies that national adaptation reporting andnational data are synthesized or aggregated in a transparent
and systematic manner. A key question is the extent towhich reporting should and can be made comparable andstandardized across countries. The various provisions of theParis Agreement, including those relating to reporting on andreviewing progress made on adaptation, are currently further
discussed as part of the Paris Agreement work programme,
which is scheduled to be concluded by COP 24 in December
2018 (UNFCCC, 2017a).

Figure 1.1: The global goal on adaptation in the context of mitigation and sustainable development

ACTION TO ACHIEVE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Contribute tosustainable
development

Temperature
goal
Mitigation
itigation action to
R Holdold the increase in the global
average temperature to well below
2°C above pre-industrial levels
R Pursueursue efforts to limit thetemperature increase
to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels

Global goalon adaptation

Reduce the risks
and impacts ofclimate change

Adaptation action to
R Enhance
hance adaptive capacity
R Strengthen resilience

Ensure an adequate
adaptation responsein the context of thetemperature goal

R Reduce
Reduc vulnerability to
climate change

1.2 THE ADAPTATION GAP REPORTS AND
THE FOCUS OF THE 2017 REPORTThe 2017 Adaptation Gap Report, prepared by UN
Environment in collaboration with the Global Centre of
Excellence on Climate Adaptation, focuses on one of the key
questions arising in the wake of the global goal: What are theways forward to assess progress towards the global goal on
adaptation?

level. Currently, there is a lack of such frameworks as wellas limited understanding of what they require, which ishighlighted as one of the main challenges for global levelassessments in the published literature on the topic (Magnan
and Ribera, 2016; Ford et al., 2015) as well as under the
UNFCCC (2017b).

Answering this question predominantly involves conceptual,
methodological and data issues, and therefore the focus of
the 2017 report is on assessing some of the key opportunities
and challenges associated with establishing frameworks –consisting of concepts, methodologies and data – that aresuitable for assessing progress on adaptation at the global

The 2017 report is the third global Adaptation Gap Report
prepared by UN Environment, and it follows up on someof the crosscutting areas for future analysis pointed out inthe first Adaptation Gap Report, published in 2014 (UNEP,
2014). These include: transparency and comparabilityof methodologies; establishing appropriate metrics for
The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessment

3

assessing adaptation needs and gaps; and monitoring andevaluation of adaptation. The focus of the 2017 Adaptation
Gap Report implies that in contrast to previous reports,
which provided preliminary assessments of adaptation
gaps in finance, technology, and knowledge respectively,
the 2017 report does not assess a specific adaptation gap.
Future Adaptation Gap Reports will return to assessmentsof specific adaptation gaps, generically defined as
the difference between the actual level of adaptation
action and the level required to achieve a societal goal
at a given point in time, influenced by risk preferences,
resource limitations and competing priorities (UNEP,
2014). Furthermore, the focus on frameworks for assessing
adaptation progress at the global level implies that the2017 report includes very limited information on adaptation
at sub-national scale.

The 2014 Adaptation Gap Report highlighted the relevanceof a global framework for and approach to adaptation,
which has now been established by the Paris Agreement.
It concluded that although adaptation is often understoodas a response to specific climate risks at a given timeand in a given context, the magnitude and unequal
distribution of the adaptation challenge, combined withthe similarities of climate risks and adaptation responses
across communities, sectors, and countries, indicate theimportance of also considering adaptation in a global
context. The 2014 report furthermore highlighted theSustainable Development Goals and the Sendai Frameworkfor Disaster Risk Reduction, which, at the time, werestill under development, as inspirational examples ofglobal frameworks where goals and targets are set, whileaccommodating differences in capacity, needs, andBox 1.1: The Sustainable Development Goals and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk
Reduction
The Sustainable Development Goals adopted in 2015 as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable
Development provide a vision for sustainable development and eradication of poverty by 2030. The 17
goals have a total of 169 associated targets and 230 approved indicators to assess progress made towards
the goals at global level. Countries can define additional country-specific indicators. Progress madetowards achieving the SDGs is assessed during the annual High Level Political Forum on Sustainable
Development, which considers an annual global progress report prepared by the Secretary-General andnational voluntary reviews of progress made at national and subnational levels, and undertakes annual
thematic reviews.1
The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction adopted in 2015 strengthens a paradigm shift
from managing disasters to managing current and future risks, bringing in resilience-building as the coretarget to be reached by 2030. To this end, countries pursue four priorities of action: understanding disaster
risk; strengthening disaster risk governance; investing in resilience; and enhancing and leveraging disaster
preparedness. It includes seven targets against which progress can be measured and 38 global indicators
approved in February 2017. Progress in implementing the Sendai Framework is assessed biennially by UNISDR;
analysis and trends will be presented in the Sendai Framework Progress Report, the first one being expected
in 2019. As from January 2018, countries will be able to report against the indicators for measuring the global
targets of the Sendai Framework, and disaster risk reduction-related indicators of the SDGs, using the online
Sendai Framework Monitor. For most targets, progress will be evaluated by comparing data recorded for the
decade 2020–2030 with the period 2005–2015.2
The Sendai indicators were designed to ensure coherence with the measurement of progress towards relevanttargets of the SDGs. Indeed, Sendai indicators have been adopted for use in measuring disaster-related goals
and targets of SDG 1 (ending poverty), 11 (making cities and settlements resilient) and 13 (global climate change
action) thus allowing for simultaneous and coherent monitoring and reporting on the Sendai Framework andthe SDGs (Leiter and Olivier, 2017).

1

Available at https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org.

2

Available at http://www.preventionweb.net/drr-framework/sendai-framework.

4 Chapter 1 | Scoping the Adaptation Gap Report 2017

preferences (see Box 1.1). As subsequent chapters will show,these two frameworks may provide useful information to
support the reviews of the overall progress in achieving the
global goal on adaptation under the UNFCCC.
This report primarily considers issues related to thedevelopment of frameworks for global assessment ofadaptation progress that are relevant in the context ofreviewing the overall progress in achieving the global
goal on adaptation as part of the global stocktake under
the Paris Agreement. However, it is part of the muchbroader issue of how we can advance our understandingof adaptation and our ability to assess and compare
adaptation action and results across geographical locations

and political scales, and over time. Addressing this issue
will help us answer questions increasingly raised bydifferent stakeholders inside and outside the UNFCCC,
including national and sub-national decision makers,
funders, researchers, the private sector and civil society.
Questions such as: where are the gaps in adaptation? How
is adaptation changing over time? Are projected risks being
addressed? How can adaptation funds be most effectively
invested? What factors explain adaptation progress and dothey vary across region, country, sector? Which countries
are leaders in adaptation and what lessons do they hold for
promoting adaptation globally? How can the policy process
be changed to induce adaptation that is more effective?
(Ford and Berrang-Ford, 2016).

1.3 STRUCTURE OF THE REPORT
Following this introductory chapter, the report consists of five
additional chapters, structured as follows:

frameworks, and for utilising the information these systems
make available.

Chapter 2 provides a summary of the adaptation provisionsof the Paris Agreement and their current implementation,
looks closer at the global goal on adaptation, and gives an
overview of the adaptation information currently reported,
highlighting considerations for an assessment of progress on
adaptation.

Chapter 5 assesses existing adaptation and non-adaptationassessment frameworks to identify the extent to which
they can meet and inform the needs of a global stocktake.
The chapter also outlines potential components of a global
assessment framework that can fulfil the criteria identified in
the Paris Agreement.

Chapter 3 assesses key conceptual and methodologicalissues associated with global level assessment of adaptation,
based on the current state of knowledge on assessing
adaptation activities and results.

Chapter 6 synthesizes the key messages of the reportchapters and outlines potential elements of a future
framework for assessing adaptation progress at global level.

Chapter 4 draws on the experience from national
monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems that many
countries have already established, or are in the process ofdeveloping, and looks into the opportunities for aligningnational level adaptation M&E systems with global

As for previous reports, an international team of experts,
assessing the latest literature and practical experience within
the topic area, has prepared this report. The process has been
overseen by a steering committee, and all chapters haveundergone extensive external review.

The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessment

502
6 Chapter 2 | Adaptation in the Paris Agreement and provisions for review and reportingCHAPTER 2

ADAPTATION
IN THE PARISAGREEMENT AND
PROVISIONS FORREVIEW ANDREPORTING
LEAD AUTHORS—ANNETT MOEHNER (UNITED

NATIONS FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON CLIMATECHANGE), TIMO LEITER (DEUTSCHE GESELLSCHAFT
FÜR INTERNATIONALE ZUSAMMENARBEIT),
TAKAYOSHI KATO (ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC
CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT)

Photo: © Marco Alhelm (Shutterstock)

The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessment

72.1 INTRODUCTION
The adaptation provisions of the Paris Agreement put
in place a process to review the overall progress madein achieving the global goal on adaptation as part of aperiodic global stocktake to assess how much adaptation
has been undertaken collectively and how much moreis needed to manage the realized and projected climatechange impacts. To allow for such an assessment,each country needs to interpret the global goal on
adaptation in line with their own national circumstancesand risk perceptions and undertake adaptation actions
accordingly. The agreement calls for necessary support
to be provided to developing countries. In addition,
information on national adaptation action, which

could also be used for domestic purposes, is to becommunicated and assessed to get insights on global
progress.
This chapter provides an overview of the adaptation
provisions of the Paris Agreement and the ongoing work
to prepare for its implementation. It outlines the types ofadaptation information currently reported to the UNFCCC
and highlights agreed principles that should guide theassessment of progress on adaptation. Finally, it seeks to
unpack the global goal on adaptation and illustrate howvarious sources of information could be used in the review ofcollective progress made.

2.2 PROVISIONS OF THE PARIS AGREEMENTRELEVANT TO THE GLOBAL GOAL ON
ADAPTATIONThe Paris Agreement features several provisions that are
relevant to the global goal on adaptation and the review ofprogress made (see Figure 2.1).
First, Article 7 of the Agreement spells out how to achieve
the global goal on adaptation, by specifying that:•

Each country shall engage in adaptation planning
processes and the implementation of actions, including
the development or enhancement of relevant plans,
policies and/or contributions (UNFCCC, 2016a: Article 7.9);•

Countries should strengthen their cooperation onenhancing action on adaptation (ibid.: Article 7.7);•

Continuous and enhanced international support,
comprising finance, technology and capacity-building, shallbe provided to developing countries (ibid.: Article 7.13).

Second, to promote effective implementation andbuild mutual trust and confidence, the Paris Agreement
established a transparency framework, which is to be
implemented in a facilitative, non-intrusive, non-punitive

Photo: © Leo Sebastian (IRRI-CCAFS)

8 Chapter 2 | Adaptation in the Paris Agreement and provisions for review and reportingNATIONAL

GLOBAL

Figure 2.1: Provisions relevant to assessing progress made on adaptation under the Paris Agreement andtheir interlinkages

ARTICLE 7 | Adaptation

ARTICLE 14 | Global
Stocktake

Global goal
Global stocktake

PurposeR Review the overall progress madein achieving the global goal
R Review the adequacy andeffectiveness of adaptationand support provided
R Recognize adaptation efforts
R Enhance implementation ofadaptation action

Each Party shall engage inadaptation planning processes
and the implementation ofactions
Financial, technological andcapacity-building support shallbe provided to developing
country Parties
Each Party should, as appropriate, submit and update
periodically an adaptation
communicationmanner, respectful of national sovereignty, and without
placing an undue burden on countries. The purpose of thetransparency framework is to provide a clear understandingof climate change action in light of the objective of the
UNFCCC as set out in its Article 2, and for adaptation action
specifically, “Parties’ adaptation actions under Article 7,
including good practices, priorities, needs and gaps, toinform the global stocktake under Article 14” (UNFCCC,
2016a: Article. 13.5). The purpose of the framework fortransparency of support [for adaptation] is to give clarity on
support provided and received by relevant individual Parties
in the context of climate change actions under Article 7(UNFCCC, 2016a: Article 13.6).
Third, to enable such understanding and clarity, Articles
7 (on adaptation) and 13 (on transparency) of theAgreement require countries to communicate relevant
information. Article 7.10 states that each country should, as
appropriate, submit and update periodically an adaptation
communication that may describe its priorities, plans andactions, and implementation and support needs, without
creating any additional burden for developing country
Parties. The communications can be submitted as acomponent of, or in conjunction with, other communications
or documents, including a National Adaptation Plan (NAP), a

R Assess the collective progress
towards achieving the purpose of
the Agreement and its long-termgoals
OutcomeInform parties in:
R Updating and enhancing theiractions and support
R Enhancing international
cooperation

ARTICLE 13 | Transparency
Framework
PurposeR To provide a clear understandingof climate change action andsupportR To inform the global stocktake
Each Party should provide
information related to climatechange impacts and adaptation

Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), and/or a national
communication (Article 7.11). In addition, Article 13 statesthat each Party should also provide information related toclimate change impacts and adaptation under Article 7, asappropriate (Article 13.8); developed country Parties shall,and other Parties that provide support should, provide
information on financial, technology transfer and capacitybuilding support provided to developing country Parties(Article 13.9); and developing country Parties should provide
information on financial, technology transfer and capacitybuilding support needed and received (Article 13.10)(UNFCCC, 2016a).
Finally, collective progress towards achieving the purposeand goals of the Agreement is assessed every five years
through a comprehensive and facilitative global stocktake
with a view to enhancing, in a nationally determined manner,
Parties’ actions and support and international cooperation(Article 14). In addition to reviewing the overall progress
made in achieving the global goal on adaptation, thestocktake will also recognize adaptation efforts of developing
country Parties, review the adequacy and effectivenessof adaptation and support provided for adaptation, andenhance the implementation of adaptation action taking
into account the adaptation communications (Article 7.14).
The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessment

92.3 MOVING TOWARDS IMPLEMENTATION
OF THE PROVISIONS RELATED TO
REVIEW OF ADAPTATION PROGRESS
AND REPORTING
The various provisions of the Paris Agreement, including
those relating to reporting on and reviewing progress
made on adaptation, are currently being made operational
as part of the Paris Agreement work programme, which isscheduled to be concluded by COP24 in December 2018.
Work is being undertaken by subsidiary and constituted
bodies under the UNFCCC.

discussing reviewing progress in phases. These include
a first technical phase, during which information would
be gathered, compiled, and assessed; and a subsequent
political phase, during which the outputs of the technicalphase would be considered and political momentum
be generated to mobilize ambition and international
cooperation (UNFCCC, 2017a).

Regarding reporting on adaptation, Parties are considering
the following under the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris
Agreement:

In support of the adaptation provisions of the global
stocktake, the Adaptation Committee and the Least
Developed Countries Expert Group under the UNFCCC wererequested to develop:••

Modalities, procedures and guidelines for thetransparency framework including consideration ofreporting information on adaptation action and planning,with a view to collectively exchanging information andsharing lessons learned, and of support provided andreceived, including the use, impact, and estimated results
thereof;Further guidance in relation to adaptation
communications.

With respect to reviewing progress made on adaptation,
including the global goal on adaptation, Parties are
considering sources of input and modalities for the global
stocktake under the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris
Agreement. So far, the following adaptation-relevant inputs
are foreseen in line with decision 1/CP.21, paragraph 99(UNFCCC, 2016a):•

Information on the overall effect of the (adaptation
components of ) nationally determined contributions
communicated by Parties;•

Information on the state of adaptation efforts, support,
experiences and priorities from the adaptation
communications, and reports prepared under thetransparency framework;•

The latest reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC);•

Reports of the subsidiary bodies.

In addition, some countries are calling for inputs from
non-state actors and for authoritative third-Party analysis
to inform Parties. In terms of modalities, countries are•

Modalities for recognizing adaptation efforts ofdeveloping country Parties;•

Methodologies for reviewing the adequacy andeffectiveness of adaptation and support.

The Adaptation Committee and the Least Developed
Countries Expert Group developed the modalities forrecognizing adaptation efforts. However, they wereunable to develop methodologies for reviewing theadequacy and effectiveness of adaptation and support
provided, which would support the review of overall
progress on adaptation (UNFCCC, 2017b). In their reportto the COP, the Adaptation Committee and the Least
Developed Countries Expert Group noted the constraints
they encountered in developing methodologies,
including in the context of the different circumstances ofadaptation, and difficulties in setting adaptation baselines
and targets, and the lack of common metrics to measureprogress on adaptation. The Adaptation Committee andthe Least Developed Countries Expert Group further
noted that the current state of knowledge is not sufficient
for addressing the mandate and requires more time andefforts (UNFCCC, 2017b).
No technical work has been mandated to be undertaken by
any subsidiary and constituted body in support of reviewing
the overall progress made in achieving the global goalon adaptation. Therefore, the details of the global goal on
adaptation and how to measure progress against it remain
an open question. Likewise, no technical work is being
undertaken in the context of the global stocktake regarding
enhancing the implementation of adaptation action. Hence,such an enhancement would be more an outcome rather
than a part of the global stocktake.

10 Chapter 2 | Adaptation in the Paris Agreement and provisions for review and reportingPhoto: © Neil Palmer (CIAT)

2.4 PROVISION OF INFORMATIONUNDER THE UNFCCC AND THE PARISAGREEMENT RELEVANT TO THE GLOBALGOAL ON ADAPTATION
While adaptation communications and reporting under thetransparency framework are envisaged as discussed in theprevious section, there are currently three distinct vehicles
through which adaptation information is provided:
1. Nationally determined contributions. In line with
Article 3 of the Paris Agreement, countries are toundertake and communicate ambitious efforts as a NDC
to the global response to climate change. As at 1 October
2017, 160 NDCs had been submitted, of which 108
contain adaptation-related information.3

2. National adaptation plans. Established in 2011, theprocess to formulate and implement NAPs seeks toenable least developed countries and other developing
countries to address medium- and long-term adaptationneeds. While many are still in the preparatory stagesof the process, seven developing countries havecommunicated their NAPs through NAP Central.4
3. National communications are submitted by all
countries; however, content and frequency of submission
differ between developed and developing countries.
4

3

Available at http://www4.unfccc.int/ndcregistry/Pages/Home.aspx.

Available at http://www4.unfccc.int/nap/Pages/national-adaptation-plans.aspx.

The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessment

11

While some form of comparable information is alreadyprovided by countries on their adaptation actions andsupport needs through their NDCs, NAPs or national
communications, it does not lend itself to aggregation(UNFCCC, 2017c). Information communicated through theabove channels is periodically compiled and synthesized
to provide a global overview: a synthesis report on theaggregate effect of the NDCs (see UNFCCC, 2016b), an
annual progress report on NAPs (see UNFCCC, 2017d)
and a compilation and synthesis report of developing
countries’ national communications (see UNFCCC, 2005).
The NDCs show that countries are increasingly translating the
global goal on adaptation into different national adaptation
goals and associated targets, policies, mainstreaming efforts,
and investments to reduce vulnerability and strengthen
resilience. A majority of the adaptation components of the
NDCs include qualitative adaptation targets, and about 40
countries introduced diverse quantitative targets.5 Thesetargets illustrate the diversity of sectors covered, as well as
the challenges of synthesizing or aggregating adaptation
progress from national to global level.
As of 1 October 2017, seven developing countries havesubmitted their NAP documents to the UNFCCC secretariat.6
There is no standard structure and format for the NAP
document. The NAP Technical Guidelines allow for a flexible
approach depending on the needs of the country, though“Reporting, monitoring and review” is foreseen as one of
the four elements of the NAP process (Least Developed
Countries Expert Group, 2012). The existing NAPs containsome references to adaptation actions already undertaken,
including examples of ongoing projects on specific sectors,
and descriptions of institutions and other arrangements thathave been put in place to implement adaptation. While someprovide detailed lists of proposed goals, outputs, outcomes,
and indicators to measure progress over time, for example
Brazil and Kenya, others provide a more general indication of
their plans to undertake Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E), forexample Sri Lanka and Sudan.7
In terms of adaptation-related information contained innational communications, developed countries are toprovide information on, inter alia, expected impacts andvulnerability, adaptation actions taken, and adaptation
support (UNFCCC, 2000). Developing countries are to provide

5

More information on the adaptation components of the NDCs
and the initial NDCs can be found in Kato and Ellis (2016), UNFCCC(2016b) and GIZ (2017).

6

Available at <http://www4.unfccc.int/nap/Pages/national-adaptation-plans.aspx>.

7

To support developing countries in their M&E efforts, supplementary materials have been developed by GIZ and IISD (Price-Kelly etal., 2015) in collaboration with the Adaptation Committee and the
Least Developed Countries Expert Group, which also developed thetool for monitoring and reviewing progress, effectiveness and gaps
(Least Developed Countries Expert Group, 2015),

information on, inter alia, national circumstances, expected
impacts and vulnerability, policy frameworks, programmes
containing adaptation measures, barriers, support received
and an evaluation of adaptation strategies and measures(UNFCCC, 2003).
Overall, countries may wish to consider what information
they are currently providing and what additional information
might be required to fulfil the provisions of the Paris
Agreement, as well as how such information might besynthesized or aggregated to review progress made at thecollective level, that is, towards achieving the global goal on
adaptation.
As countries continue to negotiate the details of theadaptation communications and reports prepared under
the transparency framework, the following should beconsidered:•

Accounting for differences and flexibility while
ensuring some degree of comparability. As seen in
the NDCs, NAPs and national communications, targets,priorities, and needs regarding adaptation vary among
countries, given that adaptation is context-specific andchanging over time, and the reporting and assessmentof progress inevitably needs to take such diversity into
account. At the same time, a review of collective progress
based on information provided by countries will only bepossible if information is to a certain degree comparable.
Thus, there is a trade-off between the ease of reviewing
collective progress towards the global adaptation
goal, and the degree of context-specificity in countries’
adaptation reporting, which needs to be addressed while
avoiding an undue reporting burden.

•

Avoiding placing undue (reporting) burden on
countries. Another challenge to reporting on progress
made is to address the risk of placing an undue burden
on countries, and developing countries in particular(see Articles 7.10 and 13.3). Key issues are thus
whether and how adaptation-related information canmost efficiently be identified, collected, and collated
by countries in order to meet their national needs, aswell as reported to the global level. Depending on
the scope, granularity, and accuracy of information
required, collecting and reporting such additional
information for the global stocktake could lead to
additional burden of reporting (Kato and Ellis, 2016).
One way of minimising the reporting burden would
be to maximize synergies between what is includedin these adaptation communications and informationneeded for efficient national adaptation planning andimplementation (see UNFCCC (2017e) and Chapter 4of this report).

12 Chapter 2 | Adaptation in the Paris Agreement and provisions for review and reporting2.5 UNPACKING THE GLOBAL GOAL
ON ADAPTATION
The global goal on adaptation is multifaceted and unspecified
in terms of targets and indicators at national and global
levels. While some regard the goal as qualitative (ActionAid
et al., 2016), others see it as semi-quantitative, as it links thequalitative concept of an “adequate adaptation response”
with the quantitative aspect of the long-term objective oflimiting global average temperature increase to well below 2°C(Ngwadla and El-Bakri, 2016). Three closely related concepts
are included in the global goal on adaptation, namely:
vulnerability, resilience and adaptive capacity (see the Glossary
for definitions). Each of these concepts can be conceptualised
in different ways and offers no uniform, objective opportunities
for measurement (Leiter et al., 2017). The IPCC also emphasises
the dynamic character of vulnerability, implying that it resultsfrom a complex interaction between biophysical and social
factors which differ between places and over time (IPCC, 2014).
Considering these complexities, the global goal on adaptation
does not offer an immediate way of assessing progress, thatis, how far countries have progressed (backward-looking)and how much more action and support is needed (forwardlooking). Some countries and non-state actors have called forfurther elaboration of the goal, including for the developmentof metrics and indicators to allow both for the reflection ofdifferent circumstances in each country as well as for a moreaggregate understanding of progress achieved (ActionAid etal., 2016; Ngwadla and El-Bakri, 2016). Others point out that
common indicators for generic application across contexts

have important limitations, and that flexible indicators among
common domains could be more relevant for decision making(Leiter and Pringle, Forthcoming; Craft and Fisher, 2016; Leiter,2015). Figure 2.2 presents complementary ways in which
progress towards the global goal can be reviewed and how
potential sources of information might contribute.
A review of progress could be based on a synthesis or
aggregation of information provided by Parties to the UNFCCC(see Chapter 4). Such information can refer to implemented
adaptation action and their results, including impacts on the
degree of vulnerability or resilience. Further actions plannedand support required could also be included. Adaptation
could furthermore be tracked at the global level through acommon methodology based on publically available data (seeChapter 5). Finally, information collected for other purposes
could complement adaptation reporting under the Paris
Agreement and inform the global stocktake on adaptation,
including reporting on progress made towards the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) and the Sendai Framework for
Disaster Risk Reduction (see Box 1.1, Chapter 5, Chapter 6 andLeiter et al. (2017)). Given calls for prioritization of inputs fromcountries to ensure a country-driven assessment of collective
progress made towards the global goal (UNFCCC, 2017a),the information provided by countries is crucial and should
ideally feature some degree of comparability to be conduciveto aggregation. The various sources of information are further
explored in subsequent chapters.

Figure 2.2: Reviewing the overall progress in achieving the global goal on adaptation based on multiple
sources of information

GLOBAL

Reviewing the overall progress made in achieving the global goal on adaptation

The overall effect of adaptation
contributions and the state ofadaptation efforts, support,
experiences and priorities

Reportsof the IPCCand UNFCCC
subsidiarybodiesRelevant reports inthe context of theSDGs, the Sendai
Framework andother contexts

Global trackingof adaptationby third Parties

NATIONAL

Synthesis/
aggregation

Country-specific information on:• Implementation of plans andaction and further needs• Assessments of adaptation
progress

Country-specificinformation

Globallycomparable
data at countrylevel

The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessment

1303
14 Chapter 3 | Assessing adaptation progress at the global level: conceptual and methodological issues

CHAPTER 3

ASSESSING
ADAPTATIONPROGRESS AT THE
GLOBAL LEVEL:
CONCEPTUAL AND
METHODOLOGICALISSUES
LEAD AUTHORS—ALEXANDRA LESNIKOWSKI (MCGILLUNIVERSITY), JAMES FORD (LEEDS UNIVERSITY)
CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS—LEA BERRANG-FORD (LEEDSUNIVERSITY), ROBBERT BIESBROEK (WAGENINGEN
UNIVERSITY & RESEARCH)

Photo: © Leah Kennedy (Shutterstock)

The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessment

153.1 INTRODUCTION
Chapter 2 provided an overview of the adaptation
provisions of the Paris Agreement and looked at thetypes of adaptation information reported to the UNFCCC,
highlighting agreed principles that should guide theassessment of progress on adaptation under the UNFCCC.
It also outlined how other sources of information, outside
the UNFCCC, could contribute to a review of collective
progress on adaptation. This chapter focuses on general
conceptual, methodological, and data availability
issues surrounding assessments of adaptation progress,
particularly at the global level. As outlined in Chapters

1 and 2, such assessments require that information
be synthesized or aggregated in a transparent andsystematic manner. To do so requires more genericframeworks and measurements that can be applied
across countries and sectors. Currently, such frameworks
are underdeveloped (Ford et al. 2015a). The chapter is
structured in two main sections, where the first discusses
key challenges for assessing adaptation progress(section 3.2), and the second looks at the current state ofknowledge on adaptation assessment, particularly at the
global level (section 3.3).

3.2 KEY CHALLENGES FOR ASSESSING
ADAPTATION PROGRESS
Assessment of adaptation progress, particularly at the
global level, is surrounded by a number of conceptual,
methodological, and data availability issues. Studies show thatto capture adaptation trends for the purpose of a robust global
assessment of adaptation progress, information needs to becollected across countries in a systematic, comprehensive,and consistent manner and at regular intervals, determinedby the timescales over which adaptation is to be monitored.
Key issues related to what and how to measure adaptation
progress are discussed in the following.

Photo: © Neil Palmer (CIAT)

16 Chapter 3 | Assessing adaptation progress at the global level: conceptual and methodological issues

Box 3.1: Adaptation tracking research
Adaptation tracking is an emerging area of research that complements existing monitoring andevaluation practices by providing a high-level perspective on adaptation progress. The goal of
adaptation tracking is to develop and implement scalable, systematic, and reproducible methodologies
for assessing adaptation progress, and to simplify the complexity of the adaptation landscape toprovide broad insights into where and how progress is being made (Magnan and Ribera, 2016; Leiter,
2015; Ford and Berrang-Ford, 2016; Berrang-Ford et al., 2011). Adaptation tracking seeks to answer
questions like: How is adaptation emerging in different places? Are we adapting more over time? As
countries develop their adaptation activities, are there gaps emerging or persisting between or withinplaces? The development and use of quantitative indicators is central to adaptation tracking, because
they provide comprehensive means for comparing adaptation over time and across contexts. The
emerging scholarly work on adaptation tracking is receiving substantial and growing interest in the
research and decision-making communities. The methodologies being developed in this area offer
promising pathways forward for informing adaptation plans, policies, and assessments, including under
the Paris Agreement.

3.2.1 CONCEPTUAL CHALLENGES:
WHAT TO MEASURE?
The Paris Agreement specifies that adaptation efforts
should be based on a country-driven approach, andemphasizes the importance of integrating adaptation
into socio-economic development activities. Vulnerability
to climate change is the result of place-specific impacts
and sensitivities to risk, and to the socioeconomic andenvironmental systems that shape capacity to adapt(Adger et al., 2007). The country-driven nature of the Paris
Agreement in regard to adaptation aims to align adaptive
responses to the unique needs of countries and gives themownership and control over the articulation of these needs(Lesnikowski et al., 2017).
There is no universal definition of adaptation, and countries
interpret adaptation and adaptation needs based on theirnational and sub-national contexts. Adaptation can beframed more narrowly as risk management activities in
response to climatic drivers, or more widely as ongoingdevelopment work that addresses or transforms theunderlying socioeconomic drivers of vulnerability, adaptive
capacity, and resilience (Lemos et al., 2016; Sherman etal. 2016). The complexities surrounding how adaptationis structured as a policy issue, combined with its intrinsic
interlinkages with broader development issues - sometimes
referred to as the ‘fuzziness’ of its boundaries - presents
challenges for assessing adaptation progress (Robinson,
2017; Sherman et al. 2016; Ford et al. 2015a; Eakin et al.
2014). Making sense of these fuzzy boundaries requires
the development of metrics that account for differences in
how adaptation activities are framed, without introducing
biases into global assessment frameworks that undermine
objective, coherent, and consistent analysis (Ford andBerrang-Ford, 2016). Given this ambiguity, a key questionis how the global adaptation community can measure,aggregate, and assess adaptation progress made at thenational level to gain insights into collective progress on
adaptation (see Box 3.1).
In this context, it will be important to build a stronger
understanding of how national adaptation monitoring andevaluation (M&E) systems define the relationship between
adaptation activities and broader development contexts.
An overview of the extent and nature of convergence(or divergence) of M&E systems across countries andregions, and how the relationship between adaptation anddevelopment is addressed, can provide insights for thedesign of an approach for global level assessments (see also
Chapters 4 and 5).

3.2.2 CAPTURING MAINSTREAMING
Another key issue is how to identify adaptation-relevant
activities that are mainstreamed into existing plans,
policies, programs, and actions, but not necessarilylabelled as climate change adaptation. Governments act
on a wide range of issues that may not ostensibly intend
to enhance adaptive capacity, reduce vulnerability, or
strengthen resilience to climate change, but which havesuch benefits. Early adaptation assessment studies focusednarrowly on the additional responses of governments to
impacts of anthropogenic climate change, and sought
to develop various tests for evaluating the relevance ofdifferent policies or interventions (Araos et al. 2016, 2015;
EEA 2015, 2014; Ford et al. 2015b; Lesnikowski et al. 2015a;
Massey et al. 2014; Panic and Ford, 2013; Bierbaum et al.
2012; Biesbroek et al. 2010). A common way to separate

The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessment

17

Box 3.2: Tracking adaptation finance
Global estimates on the costs of adaptation suggest that the world may need to spend between
US$ 280 billion and US$ 500 billion per year by 2050 on adaptation, with higher costs possible underhigher emissions scenarios (UNEP, 2016). Developing countries are already experiencing an adaptation
finance gap, which is expected to grow as adaptation needs increase with rising climate impacts.
Financing for adaptation will flow not only from national and subnational government budgets, butalso through dedicated climate funds, bilateral and multilateral development aid, non-governmentalorganizations, and the private sector. Establishing mechanisms for measuring, tracking, and reporting
progress on adaptation will also support transparency of financial flows and efficiency of climate
finance (Donner et al., 2016).
Monitoring adaptation financing will be particularly important in the coming years because mobilizationof financial resources is an important signal of political commitments to respond to climate change risk.
There are, as yet, no clear methodologies for tracking global climate financing flows (UNEP, 2016). As
levels of climate financing for adaptation increase, there is an increasing push for mechanisms to assess
effectiveness, efficiency, adequacy, and legitimacy of financing.

adaptation policies from those that were designed toreach other policy objectives in these studies, was to lookat whether climate change impacts are considered andinform the design of the policy interventions in question(Dupuis and Biesbroek, 2013).

3.2.3 SYSTEMATIC DATA COLLECTION
AND THE RELATED REPORTING BURDEN
Currently, there are no readily available databases thatprovide comprehensive information on adaptation
policies, programs, and activities across all countries. At
the national level, there is some standardization in metrics
and databases for monitoring of adaptation progress.
However, given the diversity in what is being measured
and how, metrics and data from these national-level
frameworks cannot simply be scaled up and aggregatedto conduct a global assessment of adaptation progress(see Chapter 5; Ford and Berrang-Ford, 2016; Dupuis andBiesbroek, 2013).
In the few cross-national datasets that exist, adaptation
information is typically based on self-reporting and is notstandardised or designed for global assessment purposes.
Early adaptation progress studies frequently relied on thenational communications to the UNFCCC for assessing
progress, because they are the only information source
available across all countries (including subnational
levels of government), but these documents provide
only a snapshot of adaptation priorities and activities(Lesnikowski et al., 2017; 2015b; 2011; Gagnon-Lebrun andAgrawala, 2007).

Additionally, experience from cross-country adaptationassessments demonstrates a significant trade-off between
the depth of information that the adaptation assessment
can deliver and the amount of resources required. For
examples, metrics that capture only plans, policies, andprogrammes labelled as climate change adaptation, willcommonly deliver a much narrower set of activities, but
require less time and financial resources to implement.
Given the data requirements for a comprehensive global
assessment of adaptation progress and the practicallimitations of aggregating metrics used in national M&E
systems, generating and integrating high-quality data isa key issue for making substantial progress on adaptationassessment. The Paris Agreement furthermore makes
clear that reporting requirements should avoid creating
an undue burdens on developing countries (Adaptation
Committee, 2016).
Together, this highlights the important role of involving
and engaging third-party contributors, including theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and orother research bodies, and of making use of existingdata collected within established processes such as
those for the SDGs and the Sendai Framework. As astarting point, however, guidelines from bodies like the
UNFCCC to countries on the collection of adaptation
information with universal and consistent reporting,would enhance access to comparable adaptation
datasets at the national level, and limit the impacts ofreporting bias (Lesnikowski et al., 2015b).

18 Chapter 3 | Assessing adaptation progress at the global level: conceptual and methodological issues

3.3 THE CURRENT STATE OF KNOWLEDGE
ON ADAPTATION ASSESSMENT
The current state of knowledge on adaptation assessment
draws primarily from the knowledge and experience
with M&E of adaptation at various scales (activity up tonational level). This domain has expanded rapidly overthe last decade, driven by the needs of development
organizations, donors, and governments to measure theresults of supported adaptation initiatives (Adaptation
Committee, 2016; OECD, 2015; Silvestrini et al., 2015;
Brooks et al., 2013; Leiter, 2013).
Monitoring and evaluation efforts have increased theunderstanding of how adaptation takes place and thefactors influencing the effectiveness of policies, plans,or programs. However, M&E has so far offered a limited
perspective for answering broader questions about how
adaptation takes place across countries, and for assessing
global adaptation progress over time. Efforts to date toassess adaptation progress across countries and at a global
level point to two broad approaches: assessing adaptation
activities; and assessing adaptation results. Both are
explored here. These approaches and metrics are important
not just for the ability to assess progress on adaptation, butequally for an assessment of adequacy and sufficiency ofadaptation action (see also Table 3.1).

Table 3.1: Assessing adaptation activities and results
Descriptive
Questions

Evaluative
Questions

ADAPTATION ACTIVITIESIndicator Examples

ADAPTATION RESULTS

Indicator Examples

What is/are a country’s key
areas of adaptive capacity,
resilience, and vulnerability?

Impact and vulnerability
assessments, global risk
maps

What has resulted from these
activities?

Farmers use more efficientirrigation technologies tocope with water shortages

What are a country’s national
adaptation goals andtargets?

Visions, goals, targets set
out in adaptation planningdocuments

How has adaptive capacity,
resilience, and vulnerabilitychanged?

Change in number of people
living in flood plains, change
in extreme heat mortality

How are countries making
decisions on adaptation?

National or subnational
working groups, ministerial/departmental leadership,
integration of equity andjustice considerations into
decision-making processes

What are countries doing toincrease adaptive capacity
and resilience, and decrease
vulnerability?

Creation of national
adaptation plans, publicawareness-raising, reforms
to standard operatingprocedures, legislativereforms

ADAPTATION ACTIVITIESJudgements

ADAPTATION RESULTS

Judgements

Are countries responding to
the right risks, and in waysthat do not create long-term
maladaptation?

Do national impact andvulnerability assessments
reflect scientific consensus?

Do outcomes meet goals
and targets?

Are countries’ adaptation
efforts leading to theintended objectives?

Do goals and targets reflect
key areas of adaptive
capacity, resilience, andvulnerability?

Are goals and targets
sufficiently ambitious toaddress key risks?

Have changes in adaptive
capacity, resilience, andvulnerability addressed acountry’s risk profile?

Are countries making
sufficient progress fastenough?

Do countries have robust
decision-making processes?

Do governments
demonstrate decisionmaking processes that
represent the spirit of
the Paris Agreement(e.g. gender-responsive,
participatory, transparent)?

Are countries making
sufficient effort to meetgoals and targets?

Are countries doing enoughto adapt to current andfuture risk?

The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessment

193.3.1 ASSESSING ADAPTATION ACTIVITIESAssessment of adaptation activities examines what countries
are doing to increase adaptive capacity and resilience,and decrease vulnerability. These assessments can be
descriptive or evaluative in nature. As Table 3.1 indicates,
descriptive assessments of adaptation ask non-judgmental
questions such as: what are a country’s key vulnerabilities
or areas of adaptive capacity and resilience? What are acountry’s national goals and targets on adaptation? How aredecisions being made within countries? What are countries
doing to address climate change risk? Future steps in thedevelopment of a global assessment framework will need
to identify comprehensive metrics that can be appliedsystematically to describe adaptation activities acrosscountries, and that can be analysed on a global scale (seealso Box 3.3).
Different types of metrics will answer different descriptive
questions. Common metrics include the scope of the goals
and targets set out in strategic planning documents, thelocation of responsibility for decision-making, the natureof decision-making coordination across departments oragencies, or the types of activities that are being pursued
within adaptation portfolios. These types of metrics
already tend to be used by governments at various levels
in existing monitoring and evaluation systems, and havepotential for being aggregable to the global level. Metrics
that capture the organizational and administrative aspectsof adaptation annotate whether governance structures arein place to support adaptation, whether there is evidenceof growth or dismantling of these structures, and whether
equity and participatory considerations are being taken

during planning processes. In the context of climatechange, where long time horizons mean that the impact
of policies may not be visible for some time and there isconsiderable uncertainty about the future, these types of
metrics are often advocated as short and medium-termways to assess whether stakeholders are creating positive
conditions and strong institutions to enable adaptation.
They do not, however, highlight what governments are
doing to directly reduce exposures and vulnerability(Robinson, 2017; Lwasa, 2015; Kumamoto and Mills, 2012;
Mannke, 2011, 2010).
Policy-focused descriptive metrics look specifically at
the interventions that governments are implementing to
respond to current or future impacts and vulnerabilities(Henstra, 2016). This approach focuses on how adaptation
objectives are being defined and translated into policies,
plans, and programs, and whether these activities areaccumulating over time to address key aspects of risk andvulnerability. Essentially, policy-oriented metrics provide
insights into what countries are doing to reduce theirclimate risks.
A related, second, category of questions about adaptation
activities is evaluative questions. These questions
examine whether the collection of adaptation policies,
plans, and programmes identified through descriptive
metrics are sufficient to achieve progress on adaptation.
Are countries responding to the “right” climate risks?
Are goals and targets reflective of the most important
aspects of adaptive capacity, resilience, or vulnerability?
Are decision-making processes robust and inclusive?
Are countries making sufficient efforts to achieve theirBox 3.3: Experience from studies providing global assessments of adaptation
Existing global assessments of adaptation have been limited by issues of data quality and accessibility,
which has led to the use of proxy measurements for capturing relative states or changes in societal levelsof adaptation. Early global adaptation assessment studies relied primarily on activities-based metrics ofadaptation to assess progress, for example, assessing whether national adaptation plans were in place,and indicating the ministries or departments tasked with leading adaptation planning efforts (Austin et al.
2016; Tilleard and Ford, 2016; Lesnikowski et al. 2015a; Reckien et al. 2015; Reckien et al. 2014; Heidrich et al.
2013; Lesnikowski et al. 2011; Gagnon-Lebrun and Agrawala 2007). These studies aimed to understand how
governments create institutional environments to mobilize adaptation actions and what types of policies
they adopt. However, they have been critiqued for: over-reliance on the number of adaptation activities
identified as a proxy of adaptation progress; lack of validation of connection between indicators used tomeasure adaptation and their effect on adaptive capacity; resilience and vulnerability; overlooking thesubstance of policy development; not adequately accounting for mainstreamed adaptation activities; and for
relying on a limited number of data sources. The quantity of adaptation activities reported is not necessarily
indicative of progress towards a more adapted society; adaptation efforts may be either maladaptive or
superficially labelled adaptation but without substantive impact on long-term risks (Hupe et al. 2014; Massey
et al., 2014; Dupuis and Biesbroek, 2013; Ford et al., 2013).

20 Chapter 3 | Assessing adaptation progress at the global level: conceptual and methodological issues

goals and targets? These questions cannot be answered
directly through data collection and synthesis, because
evaluative responses are influenced by individual andcollective perceptions, values, and expectations about
adaptive change. Evaluative assessments of adaptation
activities thus require the articulation of principles thatwill structure analysis, deliberative processes that allow
multiple perspectives to be heard, and recognition that
adaptation is not simply a technocratic exercise, but apolitical process through which there are winners andlosers (Shi et al., 2016).

3.3.2 ASSESSING ADAPTATION RESULTS
The second approach to assessing adaptation progress
focuses on conceptualizing and measuring the resultsof adaptation policies, plans, and programmes. In policy
evaluation terms, this approach aims to measure theoutcomes and impacts of adaptation activities. Descriptive
inquiry of adaptation results asks what the effect of various
activities has been against the goals or targets of policies,
plans, and programs, and looks at broad changes invulnerability status, adaptive capacity, and resilience.
Assessment of adaptation results vis-à-vis adaptation
activities is closely linked with policy monitoring methods.
These allow an assessment of how closely the observed
outcomes of specific activities align with their expected
contributions. On the other hand, impact-focused
assessment makes observations about longer-term changes
in vulnerability status, including exposures, sensitivities, andadaptive capacity. Implicit in this is the question of whether
the “problem” is gradually improving or worsening overtime. These approaches include efforts to measure changes
in key vulnerabilities such as food security or livelihoods,
and to measure aspects of the political, economic, social,and environmental contexts that shape our capacity toadapt to climate impacts. Understanding these dynamics isa key starting point for assessing whether adaptation efforts
are making a positive contribution to resilience-building or
vulnerability reduction.

The major ambition of results-based adaptationassessments is to find ways of measuring thecontributions of adaptation activities to changes in
adaptive capacity, resilience, and vulnerability. Thesechanges are influenced by a complex web of factors, suchas general levels of development and the unintended
influences from government activities in other sectors.
Isolating the added contribution of intentional adaptationintervention is a key challenge for adaptation assessment.
It is not, however, a challenge unique to adaptation, andadaptation assessment can learn from approaches andmethods being applied in other areas of government
policy (Ford et al., 2013). A key challenge for global
adaptation assessment going forward will be making
sense of political commitments on adaptation and thelikelihood that they will be effective in the long term.
This suggests that it is important to distinguish between
adaptation policies that aim for observable changes invulnerability, adaptive capacity, and resilience – whatmight be termed substantial adaptation – and actions
whose impacts are perhaps largely rhetorical in nature(Dupuis and Biesbroek, 2013).
Being able to attribute changes in resilience orvulnerability to specific policy interventions not only
addresses questions about whether implemented
actions are effective in reducing vulnerability but
also catalyzes normative questions like: Are we doing
enough to adapt to impacts of climate change? Should
governments or other actors be doing more or be doing
something different? Similar to evaluative assessments ofadaptation activities, responses to evaluative questions
on adaptation results will be influenced by expectations,values (including risk tolerances), preferences, andperceptions. However, such consensus on assessment
results cannot be reached by merely relying on data.
Attributing outcomes and impact to inputs and action
directly is unlikely to be reliable or comparable at thenational level or consistent across nations. Instead,narratives can be used to assess contribution andqualitative evidence to support quantitative indicators(see Chapter 5 and Chapter 6).

The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessment

21

04
22 Chapter 4 | Country-specific assessments of adaptation progress

CHAPTER 4

COUNTRY-SPECIFICASSESSMENTS
OF ADAPTATIONPROGRESSLEAD AUTHOR—TIMO LEITER (DEUTSCHE GESELLSCHAFT

FÜR INTERNATIONALE ZUSAMMENARBEIT)
CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS—MARITZA FLORIANBUITRAGO (MINISTRY OF ENVIRONMENT ANDSUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF COLOMBIA), ALA
DRUTA (OFFICE OF CLIMATE CHANGE, REPUBLIC OF
MOLDOVA), JORGE ENRIQUE GUTIERREZ (MINISTRY
OF ENVIRONMENT AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
OF COLOMBIA), MIKE HARLEY (CLIMATE RESILIENCELTD), TSEPANG MAKHOLELA (DEPARTMENT OFENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS OF THE GOVERNMENT OF
SOUTH AFRICA), TIN PONLOK (NATIONAL COUNCILFOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF CAMBODIA),TLOU RAMARU (DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTALAFFAIRS OF THE GOVERNMENT OF SOUTH AFRICA),CAMILA RODRIGUEZ VARGAS (MINISTRY OF
ENVIRONMENT AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF
COLOMBIA), ERIK WALLIN (DEUTSCHE GESELLSCHAFT
FÜR INTERNATIONALE ZUSAMMENARBEIT)

Photo: © Sirisak Baokaew (Shutterstock)

The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessment

23

4.1 INTRODUCTION
Many developing countries are undertaking efforts
towards climate resilient development planning andimplementation, including through the National
Adaptation Plan (NAP) process and the adaptation
components in their Nationally Determined Contributions(NDCs) (GIZ, 2017a). Assessing progress towards national
adaptation goals and targets, such as tracking theimplementation and results of strategies, policies, andprogrammes, or monitoring changes in the level ofclimate risks and vulnerabilities, are therefore increasingly

important tasks. Accordingly, many governments haveinitiated ways to assess their adaptation progress throughcountry-specific adaptation monitoring and evaluation(M&E) systems. Based on the current literature and several
country case studies, this chapter provides an overview
of the characteristics and the current states of national
adaptation M&E systems, and discusses the opportunities
and limits of assessing adaptation progress at national
level to contribute to provisions of the Paris Agreement, inparticular the global stocktake.

4.2 OVERVIEW AND CHARACTERISTICS
OF COUNTRY-SPECIFIC ADAPTATION
M&E SYSTEMSAt least 40 countries spanning all continents and levelsof economic development are currently developing or
are already operating national adaptation M&E systems(GIZ, 2017b; EEA, 2015; Naswa et al., 2015; OECD, 2015;
Hammill and Dekens, 2014; Leiter, 2013). Four genericstages of development of adaptation M&E systems can be
distinguished and examples of the stages countries’ M&E
systems are currently in are listed in Table 4.1:
1. Initial steps that include defining the M&E purpose,
identifying information needs and users, and engaging
stakeholders;
2. Advanced elaboration, including clarified M&E purpose
and content, advanced development of the M&E

methodology, identified data sources, agreed institutional
agreements, and targeted formats for communication
and reporting;
3. Fully operational monitoring and reporting,including routine data gathering, sharing and analysis,
and regular communication and reporting;
4. Evaluations of national adaptation progress,
referring to explicit evaluations of national adaptation
efforts, including strategies, plans, actions and theirresults, with a particular focus on identifying causeeffect relationships, and providing recommendations for
improvement.

Table 4.1: Development stages of adaptation M&E systems with country examples
Beginning

Fully operational
Monitoring

Evaluation

Development stageof the M&E system

Initial steps

Advanced stage, but notcompletely operational yet

Fully operational andregularly reporting

Explicit evaluations ofnational adaptation
progress

ExamplesArgentina, Australia, Albania,
Brazil, Cameroon, Costa
Rica, Grenada, Lithuania,
Mozambique, Slovakia, Sri
Lanka, Thailand, Togo

Burkina Faso, Cambodia,
Colombia, Kenya, Moldova,
Netherlands, Philippines,
South Africa, Uganda

Austria, Belgium, Finland,
France, Germany, Morocco(sub-national level),
Spain, Switzerland, United
Kingdom

Chile, Finland, Switzerland,
United Kingdom

Note: The table is based on available literature but may not be exhaustive. Some countries may be missing, in particular those recently working on
adaptation M&E as part of their NAP process and those that have not yet reached the stage of submitting their NAP to the UNFCCC.

24 Chapter 4 | Country-specific assessments of adaptation progress

Adaptive management, learning, accountability, and meeting
reporting requirements are among the main reasons fordeveloping national adaptation M&E systems (EEA, 2015;
Price-Kelly et al., 2015). Through their adaptation M&E
systems, countries can better understand to what extent
implementation of policies, strategies and actions hastaken place, and whether it has led to the intended results.
For example, the progress assessment and reporting by
the United Kingdom’s Committee on Climate Change isinforming the periodic revision of the United Kingdom’s
National Adaptation Programme (Committee on Climate
Change, 2017). In combination with national climate risk
or vulnerability assessments, it can also be determined
whether actions have been adequate and effective, andthis can further guide policy and investment decisions.
These domestic benefits have often motivated countries
to develop national adaptation M&E systems for their
specific circumstances. In addition, international or regional
influences may also play a role, for example in Europe
through the provisions of the European Union Adaptation
Strategy, or globally through the momentum and guidelinesof the NAP process (see Box 4.1). Experience so far points todomestic actors being the main users and beneficiaries ofnational adaptation M&E systems, but these systems can also
provide important information for international reporting, as
will be discussed in section 4.5.
Country-specific adaptation M&E systems are normally
tailored to their unique national policy contexts and climate
risk profiles. Although this leads to a great diversity of
approaches, common components can be defined. The
Adaptation Committee and the Least Developed Countries
Expert Group, in collaboration with Deutsche Gesellschaft fürInternationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and the International
Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), defined fourbuilding blocks that constitute a national adaptation M&E
system and may guide the design of future national M&E
systems (Price-Kelly et al., 2015), namely:

1. Context: what is the policy context the M&E system
operates in and what is the M&E purpose?
2. Content: what information is required to address the
purpose?
3. Operationalization: how will the information begathered and what are the institutional arrangements fordata sharing and analysis?
4. Product: how is the generated information used anddisseminated?
Figure 4.1 illustrates these four building blocks and theirinterrelations. Guiding questions as part of the supplementarymaterials to the “reporting, monitoring and review” element of
the NAP technical guidelines provide orientation to develop
useful and country-specific adaptation M&E systems (PriceKelly et al. 2015). National assessments of adaptation progress
can be further characterized on a number of dimensions,which are analyzed in detail in GIZ (2017b), OECD (2015) andHammill and Dekens (2014):•

What type of mandates exist for the development of theadaptation M&E system? Some countries, like Mexico andthe United Kingdom, have a legislative requirement in
the form of a climate change law directing them to put inplace an M&E system for adaptation. In other cases, like inSouth Africa and Germany, the mandate is stipulated bynational climate change policies and strategies, by NDCs,
like in Cambodia and Morocco, or as part of the NAP
process, like in Brazil and Thailand;•

What is the main purpose of adaptation M&E? In many
countries it is to track implementation and results ofpolicies and actions, often combined with the purposeof informing planning and decision-making, although
the link to decision-making processes varies considerably

Box 4.1: M&E as part of the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) process
The objectives of the NAP process, as adopted by COP17, are to: a) reduce vulnerability to the impactsof climate change by building adaptive capacity and resilience; and b) facilitate the integration of climatechange adaptation into relevant new and existing policies, programmes, and activities, in particulardevelopment planning processes and strategies (Decision 5/CP.17). As an ongoing government process,
NAPs can support the implementation of adaptation components of countries’ NDCs (GIZ, 2016). The
NAP Technical Guidelines developed by the Least Developed Countries Expert Group under the UNFCCC
include “reporting, monitoring and review” as one of four NAP elements (Least Developed Countries Expert
Group, 2012). Accordingly, several countries are developing national adaptation M&E systems as part oftheir NAP process. Specific guidance for M&E of the NAP process is provided in supplementary material
developed in collaboration with the Adaptation Committee and the Least Developed Countries Expert
Group (Price-Kelly et al., 2015).

The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessment

25

among countries. Some adaptation M&E systems put
more emphasis on accountability, whereas others focus
more on learning;•••

Which content is the adaptation M&E system mainly
covering? Some focus exclusively on the implementationof national adaptation programmes, that is whether
defined actions are implemented according to plan, as is
the case of Mexico’s Special Program on Climate Change,
while others monitor climate vulnerability and adaptation
through an integrated approach, like in Morocco, or
through different components of an adaptation M&E
system, like in Colombia;
What is the scope of the M&E system, and which sectors
and levels of government are included? Some countries,
like France or Germany, focus mainly on efforts taken by
the national government, whereas others incorporate
information from any government level (for example
South Africa) or focus also on municipalities (for example
the Philippines);
Which methodologies are used to make the M&E
system work? A variety of methodologies have been used
so far, including results chains with output and outcome

indicators (Philippines), frameworks or theories of changewith associated indicators (Cambodia, Kenya), periodic
national vulnerability and risk assessments (United
Kingdom, Germany), and combinations of these or othermethodologies;•

Which institutional arrangements exist for data
sharing and coordination among actors? In many
countries the ministry responsible for adaptation policy
is also coordinating the development of the adaptation
M&E system, while some countries use technical agencies
for its implementation, for instance Germany, Austria,
and the Netherlands. The United Kingdom has createdan independent committee through its Climate ChangeAct, which is mandated to perform adaptation progressassessments;•

What types of outputs and reporting are used tocommunicate the findings of the M&E system, and how
are they linked to planning and decision-making? In the
United Kingdom, for example, biennial progress reports
are presented to parliament to inform the revision of the
National Adaptation Programme. Online databases andwebsites are also developed by several countries to makethe information easily available and reach a larger audience.

Figure 4.1: Building blocks of national adaptation M&E systems

1
2
3
4

Policy Context
PurposeCONTEXTCONTENTLLIZATIONIZATION

Scale(s)Focus &
Methodologies
Data& Information
Institutional
Arrangements &Resources

PRODUCT

Synthesis

Outputs& Reporting

Source: Price-Kelly et al. (2015)

26 Chapter 4 | Country-specific assessments of adaptation progress4.3 CASE STUDIES OF NATIONAL
ADAPTATION M&E SYSTEMSThe following examples of national adaptation M&E systems
were chosen with a view to demonstrate a diversity of
approaches, geographic coverage, and lessons for othercountries. Additional examples are available as country M&E
factsheets from GIZ (2017b) as well as in studies by EEA(2015), OECD (2015), Naswa et al. (2015), Brooks and Fisher(2014), and Hammill and Dekens (2014). Adaptation metrics
at national level are also discussed by Leiter and Pringle(forthcoming), Climate-Eval (2015), and Hammill et al. (2014).

4.3.1 CAMBODIA8POLICY CONTEXT AND PURPOSE
Cambodia’s Climate Change Strategic Plan (CCCSP 20142023) identifies key priority adaptation and mitigation
measures. The Plan underlines the importance of
establishing mechanisms to assess the progress being
made in the implementation of the country’s response,
setting out the vision of a climate change M&E system fully
integrated into national and sub-national development
planning processes. The purpose of the national M&E
system is to: a) measure how effective adaptation efforts
keep development on track; b) generate evidence andlessons to inform future policy making; c) facilitate thecoherent integration of climate change into national
planning and key sectors; and d) provide information
required to fulfil the reporting obligations to the UNFCCC
and development partners. The national adaptation
M&E system, whose development has been proposed in
Cambodia’s Intended Nationally Determined Contribution,
was officially launched in April 2016.
8

CONTENT OF THE ADAPTATION M&E SYSTEM
Cambodia’s adaptation M&E system adopts a twintrack approach. On the one hand it assesses how well
the national institutions are managing climate risks– through institutional readiness indicators – and, on
the other – through impact indicators – how successful
climate interventions are at reducing vulnerability
or lowering carbon emissions (see Table 4.2). The
Cambodian M&E system operates at national as wellas sub-national levels taking all key climate sensitive
sectors into account. The Commune database is themain channel for accessing data from the local level
and is being used for the impact indicators related toadaptation. The institutional readiness indicators aremeasured with scorecards, which are applied throughself-assessments by the key climate change sensitive
sectors/ministries.
EXPERIENCES AND LESSONS LEARNED
Despite some difficulties in collecting data, thedevelopment of the national M&E system has alreadyhelped key sectors in their planning and in defining
climate change investments on the national and local
levels. The advancement of sectoral M&E systems could
further assist in this process. As the national M&E system isdependent on concerted participation of a large amountof stakeholders, robust coordination mechanisms become
crucial. A harmonization of the timeframes between
sectoral, national, and international reporting could
streamline coordination and reduce the burden on key
stakeholders.

GIZ (2017b); Department of Climate Change, Cambodia (2016); Raiet al. (2015); Cambodia National Climate Change Committee (2013).

Table 4.2: National adaptation M&E indicators of Cambodia
Track 1: Institutional readiness indicators

Track 2: Impact indicators

Climate policy and strategies: Status of development of national
policies, strategies, and action plans for climate change response

Percentage of communes classified as ‘highly vulnerable’ and‘quite vulnerable’ according to a vulnerability index. Results can be
disaggregated by hazard type (flood, drought, and storm)

Climate integration into development planning: Status ofinclusion of climate change in long, medium, and short term nationaland sub-national planning
Coordination: Status and functionality of a national coordination
mechanism for climate change response and implementation of theCambodia Climate Change Strategic Plan

Families affected due to floods, storms, and droughts: Proportionof families affected by these extreme weather events (measured in
number of affected families per 1,000 families)

Climate information: Status of production, access, and use of climatechange information

GHG emissions: GHG emissions by sectors and per capita

Climate integration into financing: Status, availability, andeffectiveness of a financial framework for climate change response

Plus 2-3 indicators per sector

The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessment

27

4.3.2 COLOMBIA9POLICY CONTEXT AND PURPOSE
Colombia launched its National Adaptation Plan in 2012, to
include climate change considerations into the planning
instruments of seven priority sectors of the economy:transport, energy, agriculture, housing, health and trade,
tourism, and industry. Furthermore, Colombia is advancing
towards the design of a National System of Adaptation
Indicators to monitor and evaluate the implementation ofadaptation measures. The development of the adaptation
indicator system is a prioritized action of Colombia’s Intended
Nationally Determined Contribution.
CONTENT OF THE NATIONAL ADAPTATION M&E SYSTEMThe National System of Adaptation Indicators seeks toenable M&E of the implementation of adaptation actions aswell as monitoring changes in each municipality regarding
climate hazards, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity (Ministeriode Ambiente y Desarrollo Sostenible de la República deColombia, 2015). The latter will include a geographical
9

Government of Colombia (2017); Ministerio de Ambiente y Desarrollo Sostenible de la República de Colombia (2015).

Photo: © Manon Koningstein (CIAT)

28 Chapter 4 | Country-specific assessments of adaptation progresscomponent that would offer the opportunity for regional
analysis and tracking progress of implemented actions.
Additionally, in September 2017 Colombia launched its Third
National Communication, assessing vulnerability and climate
risk through a set of indicators.
The national vulnerability assessment guides the regional
priorities across the country, while the National Adaptation
Indicators System guides the sectorial priorities and Colombia’s
NAP guides the planning processes of adaptation from anational level. Together, they provide orientation to local andregional projects, which generate indicators in accordancewith the national indicator guidelines and, in dialogue with
communities, account for both national and local scales. The
projects can use primary information and tailored indicators fortheir specific context in addition to using some of the national
indicators from the National Adaptation Indicators System or
those of the Third National Communication, both of which are
based on official data with national coverage.
EXPERIENCES AND LESSONS LEARNED
Using uniform concepts and terminology across different
territorial scales is key to enable a coherent M&E system ofadaptation actions and processes, and recognize adaptationefforts. For instance, simultaneously mainstreaming
adaptation at national level and implementing at local
level has had the benefit of mutual learning, such thatguidelines and local processes on adaptation efforts areinterpreted in the context of territorial needs. However,there are still weaknesses of information flows at different
scales and therefore opportunities to improve the system bystrengthening local capacity and data gathering.

•

Driver indicators: measuring the result of actions
targeting the drivers of change, including: a) mobilized
resources; b) capacity to plan adaptation; c) knowledge
on climate risks, impacts, and vulnerabilities;•

Output indicators: measuring the implementation ofadaptation actions included in the Sectoral Adaptation
Planning;

The assessment of adaptation actions and processes islinked with the monitoring, reporting and verification(MRV) of mitigation actions via the evaluation
mechanisms of the National Climate Change Policy. Thisis an opportunity to harmonize different efforts in orderto have a single climate change M&E system and platform
for the country and to identify co-benefits between
mitigation and adaptation efforts.

•

Outcome indicators: measuring the result of the
Sectoral Adaptation Planning in terms of reduced sectoral
vulnerability and advancing in adaptation/resilience;•

Objective indicators: measuring the aggregate resultof a NAP cycle, in terms of impacts on the vulnerability of
the Moldovan economy and progress on adaptation.

4.3.3 MOLDOVA10
POLICY CONTEXT AND PURPOSEThe Climate Change Adaptation Strategy of the Republic ofMoldova (2014) provides an integrated vision to react to theimpacts of climate change. Moldova is currently establishinga NAP process and Sectoral Adaptation Planning processes(SAP), which are coordinated by the Climate Change
Adaptation Coordination Mechanism (CCACM) and chairedby the National Commission on Climate Change (NCCC).
CONTENT OF THE ADAPTATION M&E SYSTEM
The goal of the M&E system is to ensure progress on
adaptation across geographic scales, time, and sectors canbe measured, and to determine whether, as a result of its
successive plans, Moldova is less vulnerable to the impactsof climate change. The adaptation M&E system will monitor:a) progress and evaluate impacts of implemented policies; b)
implementation of adaptation related planning, technologies
and practices; c) development and dissemination ofadaptation related knowledge and research; and d)adaptation related financing and investments, including
external support received.

In addition, Moldova is implementing the climate
budget tagging (CBT) process that aims at improving theunderstanding of how much is being spent on national
climate change responses. Four Climate Change Budget
Indicators (CCBIs)/climate markers have been established:a) policy development and governance; b) research anddevelopment; c) knowledge sharing and capacity building;and d) climate response and service delivery. The whole
M&E system is supporting the Republic of Moldova’scommunication to UNFCCC on adaptation and will either
become part of the national communication or a separate
document as adaptation communication.
EXPERIENCES AND LESSONS LEARNED
A holistic M&E system, covering both national and sectoral
objectives and priorities, and taking different types of indicators
into account, can assess economy-wide adaptation progress.
Climate budget tagging provides supplementary informationon the overall spending volume and its distribution among
spending categories. At the same time, possibilities of allowing
adaptation monitoring at regional and global levels need to beconsidered to achieve the greatest synergies.
The implementation of M&E needs to be accompanied bystrong capacity building activities to engage stakeholders
and create ownership and vertical integration from local tonational levels.

The M&E framework is based on the need to monitor
progress towards achieving resilient economic growth. It
monitors sector-based activity as well as their aggregate
impact on the overall economy. Tracking of national or
sectoral adaptation achievements at the outcome level
will be accompanied by assessing the adaptation results ofindividual actions. The indicator-based M&E system consistsof four types of indicators and is operated through the
Climate Change Adaptation Information System, consistingof a monitoring platform designed to facilitate data
management and monitoring, and an online portal intended
for presenting public information:

POLICY CONTEXTSouth Africa’s National Climate Change Response White
Paper (NCCRWP) and the National Development Plan
(NDP) present a vision for an effective response to climatechange (Department of Economic Affairs, South Africa,2011). The National Climate Change Response White Paper
and National Development Plan address the immediate

10 Republic of Moldova (2014).

11 GIZ (2017b); Department: Environmental Affairs of South Africa(2011, 2016); National Planning Commission of South Africa (2011).

4.3.4 SOUTH AFRICA11The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessment

29

and observed threats of climate change to the country’ssociety, economy, and environment and provide the basis for
tracking South Africa’s transition to a climate-resilient society
and lower-carbon economy. South Africa has published thefirst Climate Change Annual Report in 2016 and is about topublish the second whilst also finalizing the third national
communication. The reports outline South Africa’s progress
towards the objectives of the National Climate Change
Response White Paper.
CONTENT OF THE ADAPTATION M&E SYSTEM
An M&E system has been developed to track the transition
towards a climate-resilient society guided by chapters
5 and 12 of the NCCRWP. The system consists of threebuilding blocks: a) climate information; b) climate risks,
impacts and vulnerability; and c) understanding theeffectiveness of climate-resilient measures. The building
blocks have been further broken down into Desired
Adaptation Outcomes to facilitate and focus monitoringand evaluation of South Africa’s progress towards climate
resilience. Desired Adaptation Outcomes aim to provide
clarity and understanding about the measures to betaken by South Africa in adapting to climate change, help
capture the country’s unique circumstances to support
reporting on adaptation at national and international
levels, and identify desired states that will contributeto climate resilience in the short to medium-term (thatis over the next 5 to 20 years). They will also provide ameans of assessing the capacity of sectors at risk and theirstakeholders to adapt to climate change, and whether
the measures being taken are appropriate, efficient, andeffective in building resilience.
Table 4.3 shows nine generic Desired Adaptation Outcomes,
which fall into two distinct groups: six describe the ‘inputs’(for example processes, resources, and capacities) thatneed to be in place to enable effective climate change
adaptation; and three describe the key ‘impacts’ of adaptationinterventions (for example reductions in vulnerability ofhuman and natural systems). In addition, sector-specificDesired Adaptation Outcomes can be developed.
The information collected on Desired Adaptation Outcomes
will be available through a web-based platform and will be
used to: a) inform policy and decision-making; b) address
reporting obligations (nationally and internationally); and c)
replicate what has worked well. Key players include national
sector departments, provinces, municipalities, business,
research, and non-governmental organizations.
EXPERIENCES AND LESSONS LEARNEDKey lessons learned include the importance of stakeholder
buy-in and ownership, and that standard indicators might
not be appropriate for a flexible M&E system that includes
multiple levels of government. Instead, providing a clear
M&E system can guide stakeholders in undertaking
adaptation monitoring and evaluation in a meaningful andcoherent way.

Table 4.3: Generic desired adaptation outcomes of South Africa
Desired Adaptation Outcomes‘Inputs’ to enable effective adaptation
G1

Robust/integrated plans, policies, and actions for effective delivery of climate change adaptation, together with monitoring, evaluation andreview over the short, medium, and longer-term

G2

Appropriate resources (including current and past financial investments), capacity, processes (human, legal, and regulatory), and support
mechanisms (institutional and governance structures) to facilitate climate change adaptation

G3

Accurate climate information (for example historical trend data, seasonal predictions, future projections, and early warning of extreme
weather and other climate-related events) provided by existing and new monitoring and forecasting facilities/networks (including theirmaintenance and enhancement) to inform adaptation planning and disaster risk reduction

G4

Capacity development, education, and awareness programmes (formal and informal) for climate change adaptation (for example informedby adaptation research and with tools to utilise data/outputs)

G5

New and adapted technologies/knowledge and other cost-effective measures (for example nature-based solutions) used in climatechange adaptation

G6

Climate change risks, impacts, and vulnerabilities identified and addressed‘Impacts’ of adaptation interventions and associated measures
G7

Systems, infrastructure, communities, and sectors are less vulnerable to climate change impacts (e.g. through effectiveness of adaptationinterventions/response measures)

G8

Non-climate pressures and threats to human and natural systems are reduced (particularly where these compound climate change
impacts)

G9

Secure food, water, and energy are supplied for all citizens (within the context of sustainable development)

Source: GIZ (2017b); Department of Environmental Affairs, South Africa (2011, 2016); Harley et al. (2008).

30 Chapter 4 | Country-specific assessments of adaptation progress

4.4 ANALYSIS OF NATIONAL
ADAPTATION M&E SYSTEMS TO DATEThe examples presented above illustrate the diverse andcontext-specific nature of country-level M&E systems toassess national progress on adaptation. In connection withan analysis of the literature, a number of observations can bemade from the experiences gained to date.

ENGAGEMENT OF STAKEHOLDERS
DURING THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESSIn most countries the development process of the national
adaptation M&E systems has been led by the government
body responsible for the coordination of adaptation policy.
The primary stakeholders have often been other government
entities at national and sub-national levels, which are
directly affected by monitoring and reporting provisions,and their buy-in and cooperation are of major concern
for the implementation of adaptation M&E. In addition,
most countries have conducted some form of stakeholder
engagement beyond government agencies, albeit todifferent degrees and with variable outcomes.

MONITORING OR EVALUATION
Most of the national adaptation M&E systems in use today
are still largely focusing on monitoring, with very few
employing systematic means to explain what caused or
hampered adaptation progress (see Table 4.1). In this regard
there are opportunities to enhance the capacity of thesystems to assess whether adaptation efforts have had thedesired effects.

USE OF INDICATORS
Although most national adaptation M&E systems employ
indicators, they vary considerably between countries. An
analysis of indicators used by national adaptation M&E
systems found that they can be categorized according
to their focus on climate change impacts, adaptation
processes, or actions, and adaptation results (Leiter andOlivier, 2016; Hammill et al., 2014b). While important,indicators are only one part of an M&E system, and their

Photo: © Neil Palmer (CIAT)The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessment

31formulation should be preceded by the development of aframework defining purpose, information needs, and target
audience. Quality criteria can guide indicator development(Climate-Eval, 2015), but their relevance for adaptationneeds to be specified for a given context (Hammill et al.,2014).

DATA SOURCES AND LINKS TO EXISTING
M&E SYSTEMS
Adaptation M&E systems do not need to be new andseparate. They can often build on existing data andmonitoring structures. Their added value lies in the
combination of available information with additional datato get a better overview of adaptation in the country.
Synergies can also be explored with national monitoring
and reporting of related international agreements, inparticular the SDGs and the Sendai Framework for Disaster
Risk Reduction (Leiter et al., 2017).

ONE SYSTEM, MULTIPLE COMPONENTS
Progress on climate adaptation can be captured in
multiple ways and through various M&E systems. For
example, existing sector-specific monitoring frameworks
may integrate adaptation as an add-on. Alternatively,
country-specific adaptation M&E systems can also havemultiple components, each responding to a particularpurpose. For instance, periodic national climate risk andvulnerability assessments can indicate changes in priority
risks over time, while monitoring the implementationof adaptation and its results can indicate achievements
and gaps, and evaluations can examine effectivenessand generate lessons learned. Each of these approaches
yields different information, which together can provide
a comprehensive picture of a country’s adaptation
progress.

CHALLENGES OBSERVED IN THE
DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION
OF NATIONAL ADAPTATION M&E
SYSTEMS
A number of similar challenges have emerged acrosscountries in the development and implementation ofnational adaptation M&E systems (EEA, 2015; Hammill and
Dekens, 2014; Leiter, 2013). The typical challenge at the
beginning of the process is to clarify the exact purpose
and content of the M&E system, and to create ownershipand buy-in from stakeholders, particularly those needed
for implementation. Countries have required between two
years and five years to develop and fully implement theirnational adaptation M&E, including countries with highcapacities like Germany or the United Kingdom. A major
time-consuming factor is the large number of sectors
affected by climate change, which requires the involvement
and coordination of many actors within governmentand beyond. After the development phase, barriers to
implementation include reluctance to share data, a limited
mandate to involve key government stakeholders, limited
technical capacities, and human and financial resources. As
a result, some countries have been unable to implement
their adaptation M&E systems despite the availabilityof several bi- and multilateral support programmes
and exchange platforms. This underscores the need forcontinued support and capacity building on adaptation
M&E and transparency.

4.5 OPPORTUNITIES AND LIMITS OF
COUNTRY-SPECIFIC ADAPTATION M&E
SYSTEMS TO SUPPORT THE PROVISIONS OF
THE PARIS AGREEMENT
National adaptation M&E systems provide useful
information for reporting on countries’ progress on
adaptation, which can be used domestically as well asinternationally. The information can be used to reportto the respective provisions of the Paris Agreement,in particular the transparency framework and theadaptation communications. Table 4.4 illustrates
types of information that adaptation M&E systems
can provide. Several of these are currently not, or only

32 Chapter 4 | Country-specific assessments of adaptation progress

partially, available through existing UNFCCC reporting
vehicles (Kato and Ellis, 2016). For instance, national
communications have so far largely focused on reporting
vulnerability and governance aspects with rather limited
reporting on actual adaptation interventions, andalmost no reporting on their contribution to reducing
vulnerability (Lesnikowski et al., 2015). The added valueof national adaptation M&E systems therefore is to go
beyond descriptions of vulnerabilities and impacts, andTable 4.4: Types of information produced by national adaptation M&E systems
Focus

Type of information

Country examples

Process /output-based

Extent of implementation of national strategies, plans, orprocesses

The M&E systems of Austria, France, and the United
Kingdom measure the percentage of implementation ofnational action plans

Extent of mainstreaming of adaptation across sectors andlevels of government

The M&E systems of Cambodia and Kenya measure thedegree of mainstreaming of adaptation

Dependingon the targets

Degree of achievement of adaptation targets, for example
from the NAP process or the NDC

In Brazil, the adaptation M&E system is monitoring theimplementation of the targets defined by the NAP

Outcome-based

Changes in climate risk or vulnerability over time

The M&E systems of Colombia, Germany, Morocco, andUnited Kingdom monitor climate vulnerability or risks overtime at national, sub-national, or programme level

Avoided negative impacts from climate change

Any systems whose methods and indicators focus directly
on avoided impacts

Achievement of development goals despite climatechange impacts

Proposed for the M&E systems of Cambodia, Kenya, thePhilippines, and South Africa

Explanation: Process or output-based refers to monitoring whether implementation takes place, and whether the capacities to adapt are strengthened –without tracking whether these capacities actually led to adaptation. Outcome-based refers to the intended outcome of reducing vulnerability or risks,that is whether adaptation actually had an effect (Harley et al., 2008).
Note: The countries mentioned are examples only. The table is not comprehensive with regard to countries providing a given type of information.
Source: Author.

instead focus on implementation of adaptation and its
results, that is whether vulnerabilities are being reduced.
This kind of knowledge is needed to overcome some of
the challenges addressed in Chapter 3, foster learning,
and inform future adaptation practice.
Due to their country-specific nature, national adaptation
M&E systems measure different aspects of adaptation,and their results are therefore generally not directlycomparable and do not lend themselves to globally
standardized indicators. In countries with federal
governments, the national adaptation M&E systems
may be limited to actions under the responsibility of thenational government and leave out sub-national activities.
In addition, adaptation by non-state actors is often notcovered. Most national adaptation M&E systems operated
today are implemented by government agencies and are
not independently verified – the independent Committeeon Climate Change of the United Kingdom being an
exception. Finally, due to the difficulties of assessing
adaptation outcomes, many national adaptation M&E
systems still predominantly focus on process or outputbased information. While such information is importantto understand advancements in mainstreaming, it is not
sufficient to measure progress towards the global goalon adaptation (Leiter and Olivier, 2017). Overall, national
adaptation M&E systems have some inherent limitations
for a collective assessment of progress, in particular theirdifferent scope and content, and diversity in methods
and data sources, but they provide in-depth sources of
information to inform and complement the assessmentof adaptation progress at global levels, including the
global goal on adaptation. By implementing some of therecommendations that can be taken from Chapters 5 and6, national adaptation M&E systems could become evenmore useful in that regard.

The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessment

33

05
34 Chapter 5 | Towards the assessment of adaptation progress at the global level

CHAPTER 5TOWARDS THE
ASSESSMENT
OF ADAPTATIONPROGRESS AT THE
GLOBAL LEVELLEAD AUTHOR—LEA BERRANG-FORD (LEEDSUNIVERSITY)
CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS—FRANCES M. WANG(MCGILL UNIVERSITY), ALEXANDRA LESNIKOWSKI(MCGILL UNIVERSITY), JAMES FORD (LEEDSUNIVERSITY), ROBBERT BIESBROEK (WAGENINGEN
UNIVERSITY & RESEARCH)

Photo: © Valeriya Anufriyeva (Shutterstock)

The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessment35

5.1 INTRODUCTION
The Paris Agreement clearly eschews any one-size-fitsall approach to assessing adaptation. Yet adaptationaccountability within the Paris Agreement is based onreporting, stocktaking, and shared learning between
governments (Lesnikowski et al., 2017; Magnan and Ribera,
2016). These accountability mechanisms assume somelevel of consistency because sharing of good practices andlessons learned are unlikely, or at least difficult, without someindicators that can be aggregated and synthesized acrosscountries. Stocktaking similarly implies some standardizationof reporting on progress to facilitate organization andsynthesis of diverse country reports (Ford and Berrang-Ford,
2016; Dupuis and Biesbroek, 2013) . Countries seek guidance

and frameworks on how to track and report on adaptation in
ways that are recognized as rigorous, transparent, and valid,
without disregarding the uniqueness of their circumstances(Silvestrini et al., 2015; Wang et al., Forthcoming). How thencan we draw on a diversity of country-level assessment
frameworks and reporting formats to identify indicators
or metrics that can be aggregated to facilitate global
assessment of adaptation? Compounding to this is theconfusion over the extent to which reporting should or
can be comparable and standardized across countries.
Untangling this confusion and providing guidance on
country-level indicators of adaptation progress that can besynthesized or aggregated is the focus of this chapter.

5.2 CRITERIA FOR A GLOBALASSESSMENT OF ADAPTATION
The provisions under the Paris Agreement underpin theassessment of progress made towards the global goal on
adaptation. Responding to these provisions, Box 5.1 outlines
6 key criteria for country-level, globally comparable indicatorsof adaptation progress. Global tracking and synthesis aremost likely to be achieved through two mechanisms. The
first mechanism draws upon country-level assessments ofadaptation progress submitted to the UNFCCC. The second
mechanism employs publically available, existing, or newly yetexternally collected aggregate data that are gathered at thenational level and globally comparable. The key difference inthese data sources is that the former are nationally-reported,
while the latter are assembled or collected external tonational adaptation reporting processes. While several of thecriteria in Box 5.1 are shared with country-level monitoringand evaluation (M&E), the criterion of aggregation (acrosscountries) is specific to global assessment and underpins theunique goals of the global stocktake.
Fundamental to the goal of global synthesis isthat assessment approaches or indicators must be
aggregable. Consistent with the principles of the 4Cs ofsystematic adaptation tracking (comparable, consistent,
comprehensive, coherent), this implies that measures
must be — quantitatively or qualitatively — consistentand comparable, as well as available or feasible for acomprehensive number of countries (Ford and BerrangFord, 2016). The requirement under the Paris Agreement
to aggregate adaptation progress globally presents one of
the greatest challenges to global syntheses of nationallyreported adaptation information, because country-led
methodologies, indicators, and frameworks may differ

widely and even minimal standardization of reporting
may be difficult to implement or verify (Lesnikowski et al.,2015; Magnan et al., 2015; Ford et al., 2013). Aggregablity isassessed in this chapter as the extent to which frameworks
use indicators that are comparable, consistent, andcomprehensive, with the potential for the country-levelindicators to be aggregated globally.
Related to aggregation, and articulated explicitly in Article 13of the Paris Agreement, is the need for transparency within
the framework used to conduct the global stocktake. Whiletransparency does not necessarily require that individual
countries use comparable frameworks, it does imply theneed for some degree of consistency. The transparency ofadaptation frameworks is assessed here based on the extent
to which methods, underlying assumptions, guiding theories,
and choice of indicators are articulated.
Assessment of progress towards the global goal on
adaptation requires that global synthesis or tracking be, insome way, longitudinal, that is, considers change over timeor from some baseline. This criterion can face trade-offs withaggregability and feasibility, where frameworks that are bothaggregable and feasible for a one-time assessment may not
be so over time as methods, priorities, or resources change.
At the same time, a focus on progress means not just aninterest in a country’s current activities on adaptation, but
the extent to which those actions reflect progress from someprevious date (Lesnikowski et al., 2015; Preston et al., 2009). A
country may be less active in adaptation policy compared toanother, for example, and yet it may have achieved greater
progress from a lower baseline.

36 Chapter 5 | Towards the assessment of adaptation progress at the global levelBox 5.1
Criteria

Description

Associated articles in
the Paris Agreement

1. Aggregable

Does the measure reflect a consistent definition of adaptationthat is comparable at the national level, and is available for
a comprehensive number of countries globally such thatdata could be systematically aggregated (qualitatively or
quantitatively)?

Article 14 focus on collective progress
and Article 7 inclusion of overall
progress
To some extent Article 7’s considerationof adaptation recognition

2. Transparent

Are definitions, assumptions, and methods transparent andconsistent between countries?

Article 13 requirement for atransparency framework to inform theglobal stocktake

3. Longitudinal

Can the measure be tracked over time to monitor and evaluate
progress?

Article 7 and 14’s focus on progress
implies tracking over time

4. Feasible

For global synthesis/aggregation of national assessments
submitted to UNFCCC: Does the measure avoid placing undue
additional reporting burden on countries? For global trackingof adaptation using publically available data: Is the measurereasonably available or can it be collected for all countries?

Implicit

5. Coherent

Does the measure reflect a concept or construct that is coherent
with a general understanding of what constitutes meaningfuladaptation? Are assumptions underpinning the use of proxies
empirically validated or theoretically sound?

Implicit in the Paris Agreement,
particularly Articles 7, 13, and 14

6. Sensitive
to national
context

Is the measure sensitive to diverse national contexts (for example,
different political, economic, and socio-cultural priorities andresources)? Does the measure avoid unjustified, poorly evidenced,
or generalized assumptions — implicit or explicit — regarding
what is ‘good’, ‘appropriate’, or ‘sufficient’ adaptation?

Implicit but unspecified; degree ofdesired normativity unresolved

Feasibility will take different forms depending on whether
a framework draws on nationally-submitted adaptation
information or uses publically-available or externallycollected global datasets. In the case of national reportingon adaptation, feasibility means keeping reporting burdens
on countries to a minimum. This is particularly relevant fordeveloping countries, where reporting resources may be least
available. In the case of publically available global datasets orexternal (e.g. third-party) data collection, feasibility means thatindicators must either be existing and available, or there must
be a reasonable expectation that data can be collected for acomprehensive majority of countries.
There is no conceptual or methodological way to measureadaptation directly (Berrang-Ford et al., 2011; Biesbroek et al.,2010). Adaptation M&E thus relies on proxy indicators thatare coherent with our understanding of what constitutes
meaningful adaptation, and are underpinned by empiricallyvalidated or methodologically sound assumptions (Fordet al., 2013, 2015; SBSTA, 2010). Distinguishing adaptationfrom tokenism, identifying mainstreaming not explicitly
reported as adaptation, and assessing maladaptation remain
methodologically irreconcilable to-date. Coherence is assessed
here based on the extent to which frameworks attempt toselect proxies of adaptation that are underpinned by theory
or more directly measure adaptation-specific concepts. In
practice, the desire for adaptation-specific indicators often
contrasts with the need for aggregable indicators, which canbe reductive and thus form crude proxies for adaptation.
The Paris Agreement clearly articulates that adaptationassessment should be sensitive to national contexts,
reflecting the diverse range of vulnerability profiles, economic
resources, and political climates across countries. There is noone-size-fits-all approach to adaptation, and no ‘gold standard’
for undertaking adaptation (Noble et al., 2014). In line with this,
there is relative consensus that, despite the goal of collective
accountability, global assessment should avoid being overly
prescriptive. It is unclear, however, how to methodologicallybalance the sensitivity to national context with accountability
to assess progress towards the global goal on adaptation.
The challenge of prescribing standardized definitions or
characterization of what is ‘adequate’ or ‘effective’ adaptation canbe, to some extent, reconciled by a focus on national targets.
What a government is doing, for example, is very different fromasking what a government should be doing. Similarly, seeking to
document whether a government is meeting its goals or targets
The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessment37

is very different from assessing whether goals and targets areappropriate and/or sufficient. A proximity-to-target approachenables focus on whether a government is achieving their preidentified adaptation goals (Dupuis and Biesbroek, 2013). The
use of targets or goals as benchmarks for assessment creates aconceptually feasible baseline for adaptation tracking and global
synthesis across diverse countries. They may also choose toassess the extent to which relevant goals are in fact sufficiently
ambitious, appropriately aligned with national vulnerabilities,
and most likely to actually reduce climate vulnerability. These
conceptually difficult and more normative questions, however,should be clearly distinguished from what a government isdoing (descriptive), and whether a government is meeting
its adaptation targets (proximity-to-targets). Given the ethosof the Paris Agreement, a global assessment is likely to be
based on descriptive and proximity-to-target assessments bycountries, while the sufficiency of targets is likely to be subject
to normative judgement through participatory or expert review
and country-led mechanisms. While the global assessments
may not impose a standardized prescriptive framework to assess

whether countries are adapting sufficiently and effectively— such a framework would be conceptually impossible — it
could include provisions for countries to clearly justify theirown targets and provide criteria and evidence to support theirchosen goals. This would be consistent with Article 13’s focus
on transparency, and facilitate shared learning vis-à-vis nationaltargets and progress.
In addition to criteria discussed above, uncertainties in climate
impacts and adaptation outcomes, as well as changing climate
risks, are important constraints that will affect the results ofassessments. The adequacy of targets, for example, may need
to be revised over time as vulnerability changes, reinforcing
the importance of a longitudinal assessment of progress andthe need for salient, credible and legitimate science underlying
the data collected for assessments. Uncertainty underlies bothclimate risks and also the adequacy and results of adaptation
efforts. This implies that frameworks must not only be sensitive
to changing vulnerability and national contexts, but also
flexible given scientific uncertainty.

5.3 ASSESSING EXISTING ADAPTATIONFRAMEWORKS
There are currently no agreed-upon methods, indicators,
metrics, or frameworks that fulfill all of the goals listed in Box
5.1. However, a range of assessment frameworks for adaptation
exist, reflecting a wide diversity of objectives, questions, data
sources, and approaches to adaptation assessment that manage
trade-offs between the criteria listed above differently, andaccording to their goals. Reflecting this, AdaptationCommunity.
net provides an on-line Adaptation M&E Navigator, designed
to guide selection and development of tools to respond to arange of M&E needs and priorities. While no one frameworkhas yet met all the needs of a global assessment of adaptation
progress, a breadth of frameworks can provide insights totriangulate common approaches and indicators, and identify
key characteristics and components that might reasonably meetthe criteria for a global assessment of adaptation progress.
This section thus systematically reviews — and synthesizes
insights from — existing adaptation frameworks and tools.
In doing so, we iteratively sifted through a large number
of approaches and tools to select and examine those that
include some level of aggregation and comparison acrosscountries in the design of indicators. Within this selection
criterion, we assess how frameworks manage trade-offs
across the remaining criteria. This review thus aims togauge the extent to which existing frameworks and theircharacteristics are applicable, suitable, or adaptable forassessing progress towards the global adaptation goal while
minimizing the trade-offs between criteria in Box 5.1.

Several comprehensive reviews of existing assessment
frameworks and tools for adaptation have already been
conducted. In 2014, the Adaptation Committee of the UNFCCC
initiated an inventory of ongoing M&E work of adaptation
prepared under the Nairobi Work Programme on impacts,
vulnerability, and adaptation to climate change (Adaptation
Committee, 2016). The inventory includes 88 tools/frameworks
undertaken at national or subnational levels, or by the
Adaptation Committee and the Nairobi Work Programme. In
the same year, UKCIP published a synthesis report of tools,
frameworks and approaches for assessment of climate change
adaptation and resilience. UKCIP reviewed and characterized
22 documents reporting frameworks, tools, or conceptual
papers (Bours et al., 2014a). The OECD systematically reviewed
106 adaptation initiatives funded by six bilateral donors in2011 to assess and characterize adaptation M&E (Lamhauge
et al., 2011). In addition to these reviews, GIZ compared 10
M&E systems evaluating adaptation, with a focus on how
frameworks are implemented in individual countries (Hammill
et al., 2013). Here we considered all adaptation frameworks andtools identified by the Adaptation Committee, UKCIP, OECD,and GIZ reviews. We additionally scanned the literature to
identify any additional national-level comparative frameworks
with relevance to assessing the global adaptation goalthat may have been published after, or excluded by, thesereviews. The key insights from this review, primarily related toaggregation and the comparative assessment of adaptation
across countries, are presented below.

38 Chapter 5 | Towards the assessment of adaptation progress at the global level

Photo: © Kelly Dorkenoo (UNEP DTU Partnership)

5.3.1 MOST ADAPTATION ASSESSMENT
FRAMEWORKS ARE NOT DESIGNED FOR
AGGREGATION
A large majority of frameworks and tools available
are designed explicitly and exclusively for M&E at thecommunity, project, programme, or sector level, not thenational to global level. In these cases, there is an emphasis
on assessment using approaches that are designed to be
tailored to each unique context. These include, for example,
the UNDP’s Community-based Resilience Assessment(CoBRA) framework, CARE’s Participatory Monitoring,
Evaluation, Reflections, and Learning (PMERL) framework, andGIZ’s Adaptation Make to Measure framework. There are alsoa range of tools and frameworks designed for sector-specificevaluation or specific regional/national risks: for example,
International Institute for Sustainable Development’s (IISD’s)
Climate Resilience and Food Security framework, the UK’s
Future flooding and coastal erosion risk assessment, theWorld Bank’s Economic Evaluation of Climate Change
Adaptation Projects in the Agricultural Sector, and the
Red Cross/Crescent and WHO’s Tsunami Recovery Impact
Assessment and Monitoring System. Given their focus andobjectives, these frameworks are not designed — and havenegligible potential — to be used for systematic global
aggregation or synthesis of nationally-reported data.
In many cases, however, such frameworks provide richdiscussion of adaptation theory and adaptation M&E, andprovide insights into how adaptation can be conceptualized,
measured, and tracked. CoBRA, for example, explicitly
includes consideration of progress, providing an example of
how longitudinal aspects of adaptation can be integrated
into the assessment. Similarly, the International Climate
Initiative’s Ecosystem-based Adaptation M&E tool outlines
a framework for assessing adaptation effectiveness using
theories of change. GIZ’s Making Adaptation Count
report provides a guide to designing adaptation M&E
to evaluate effectiveness of adaptation funding, andprovides examples of M&E programmes and their specificperformance indicators. UNEP’s Programme of Research on
Vulnerability, Impacts, and Adaptation (PROVIA) provides
extensive methodological guidance for adaptationassessment, and in doing so provides insight into a rangeof tools and approaches that would underpin a global
framework, including consideration of participation andsocial justice in decision-making, outcome mapping andmost significant change, logical frameworks, and options
for analysis of impact, capacity, and scenarios. The Institutefor Development Studies’ (IDS’) Learning to Adapt working
paper, meanwhile, provides insight into opportunities for
integrating M&E for climate change adaptation with disasterrisk reduction and development goals, articulating a set ofprinciples to facilitate M&E framework development.
Of the frameworks or tools with relevance to national-level
adaptation assessments, the majority include indicators
designed to aid countries in developing contextually-sensitive
assessment approaches, rather than inter-country comparison
or synthesis. UK-CIP’s AdaptMe Toolkit, for example, outlines
key questions, decisions, and stages involved in M&E
development for adaptation, and outlines a logic model
to articulate its components. Similarly, the OECD’s National
Climate Change Adaptation (Emerging Practices in M&E)
provides an overview of approaches and tools for assessing
adaptation progress within countries, and summarizes various
national M&E programmes, but does not present a frameworkor comparable indicators for aggregation.
The World Resources Institute (WRI)’s National Adaptive
Capacity (NAC) Framework, designed to integrateconsideration of adaptive institutional capacity into national
adaptation planning, provides detailed (exclusively processbased) capacity questions and ‘elements to look for’. The
International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions(INTOSAI) Working Group for Environmental Auditing’s report,‘Auditing the Government Response to Climate Change,’
provides an example of how to methodologically reconcile
the relationship between national vulnerability, government
effort, and evaluation of adequacy.
The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessment

39

5.3.2 FRAMEWORKS THAT ARE DESIGNEDFOR AGGREGATION ARE OFTEN NOTSUITABLE FOR THE NATIONAL/GLOBAL LEVEL
Some frameworks integrate comparable targets and indicators
for adaptation that are intended to be aggregated, but use
common indicators that are poorly suited to systematic
assessment at the national level. Typically, aggregation results
in a sacrifice of sensitivity to context and validity of the proxies
as indicators of adaptation (coherence). The Adaptation Fund’s
Strategic Results Framework (SRF), for example, includes
a menu of standard indicators for outputs, outcomes, andimpacts, which are designed to document tangible results
using comparable data and aggregation across projects at thefund rather than the project level. Core aggregable indicators
focus to a large extent on the presumption of measureable
output data, for example targeted population groups
participating in adaptation risk reduction awareness activities.
The UNDP’s Climate Change Adaptation M&E framework
similarly includes standard output indicators to facilitate
aggregation and tracking of results.
The Global Environment Fund’s Adaptation Monitoring andAssessment Tool (AMAT) additionally includes common
adaptation indicators designed to enable comparative

tracking over time and assess progress for the Least
Development Countries Fund and the Special Climate
Change Fund. AMAT indicators, similar to the SRF and UNDP
frameworks, to a large extent focus on measurement ofpresumed proxies for adaptation outcomes. While such
indicators may be plausible and arguably measureable
at the project level, they are not amenable to scaling up
transparently to the national level. Many of these indicatorsreflect counts of outputs that would be unreasonable,
unreliable, or invalid if aggregated across countries with very
different populations and resources.

5.3.3 FRAMEWORKS THAT ARE
NATIONALLY AGGREGABLE FACE TRADEOFFS BETWEEN SENSITIVITY/COHERENCE
AND TRANSPARENCY/FEASIBILITY
Of all frameworks and tools reviewed, four included
substantial consideration of aggregable indicators thatcan be scaled to the national level (Table 5.1). IIED’s
Tracking Adaptation and Measuring Development(TAMD) project is one of the few frameworks including
explicit integration of a process for translating from thelocal to global levels, with articulation of scalable indicator

Table 5.1: Adaptation frameworks measureable at the national level and including aggregation aims
within framework design
M&E Tool /Framework Title(Institution, date)

General Description

Suitability for assessing progress
towards the adaptation goal

Tracking
Adaptationand Measuring
Development(TAMD) project(IIED, 2013)

A framework to evaluate how climate risks aremanaged, assessing development outcomes
and climate resilience.
www.iied.org/tracking-adaptation-measuringdevelopment-tamd

Aggregable and scalable while retaining sensitivity to national context
and adaptation-specific indicators. Open-ended questions lack reliability
and transparency of methods for global assessment, and longitudinalcomponents are limited. The key trade-off is feasibility, with significant
resources needed, and only a few countries piloted. Potential to adapt
framework and combine with other tools for global assessment.

Global Adaptation
Index (ND-GAIN)(University ofNotre Dame)

A quantitative dataset and tool to provide
country-level, global, open-source, free data on
vulnerability and adaptation readiness. Alreadyglobally aggregated. Indicators are generalized
and not adaptation-specific.
http://index.gain.org/

A fully implemented aggregable framework at the national level, providing
open-source global data. Strong longitudinal focus and high feasibility. The
trade-off is generic indicators that lack coherence with adaptation-specificconcepts, and lack of sensitivity to national context. Could provide an
example platform for data collection and mobilization if strong adaptationfocused and contextually-sensitive indicators were used.

Adaptation
Scoreboard(European
Environment
Agency, 2013)

A framework for scoring adaptation preparedness
from a policy/ institutional perspective. Designed
for EU nations.
https://forum.eionet.europa.eu/nrc-climatechange-adaptation/library/workshops-meetings/
expert-workshop-monitoring-reporting-andevaluation-mre-climate-change/workshopoutcomes-and-findings/european-commission_
adaptation-preparedness-scoreboard

Explicitly designed for country-level tracking using standard
indicators. No explicit consideration of longitudinal progress, andindicators too vague or prescriptive to measure without wide
variation, reporting bias, and low reliability. Potentially adaptable if acoding scheme guide were developed, prescriptive indicators were
removed or clarified and justified, and indicators validated for non-EU
countries.

Pilot Program for
Climate Resilience(PPCR) (Climate
Investment Funds)

A scoring-based framework for adaptation
governance. PPCR pilot countries track progress
towards climate resilient development andimplementation.
http://www.climateinvestmentfunds.org/sites/
default/files/results-2015/ppcr/index.html

A country-level aggregable framework with explicit longitudinalframing. One of the few that balances sensitivity to national context
and coherence with transparency and comparative metrics. The key
trade-off is feasibility, with significant resources needed, and only a
few countries piloted.

Source: Author.

40 Chapter 5 | Towards the assessment of adaptation progress at the global levelcategories. The framework identifies eight indicators ofclimate risk management and two indicator categories
for development and adaptation outcomes. Though theframework articulates the need for supporting indicators
using narratives, its methods for justifying scoring are
not currently designed for aggregation and systematiccomparison. The greatest weakness of the TAMD
framework is its feasibility in its current form. To date, it
has only been tested in a small number of countries withsignificant investment of resources and limited longitudinalassessment of progress.
The University of Notre-Dame’s Global Adaptation
Index (ND-GAIN) is a global dataset and tool explicitly
designed to summarize and compare country-level climatechange vulnerability and adaptation readiness. It particularly
targets the private sector and the development sector as atool to raise awareness in order to better manage risk. Changeover time is explicitly built into the tool’s methodologicalstructure, with over 15 years of data and rankings basedon progress as well as current scores. The index is built
around vulnerability theory, and includes two key pillars:
vulnerability (including exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive
capacity), and readiness. The trade-off for aggregation andfeasibility within the index is relatively poor proxying ofadaptation. While dimensions, components, and concepts
are guided by adaptation theory, the selection of indicators
is primarily driven by the availability of global datasets, withmany proxies not adaptation-explicit. The ND-GAIN’s index
is one of the few already-aggregated global datasets, but
the generalized nature of its adaptation indicators is poorly
suited to documenting adaptation activity and progress bynational governments (Ford and King, 2015). In addition,
dependence of the scoring on primarily quantitative data
limits the potential for context specificity and engagementwith qualitative knowledge sources. Nonetheless, the data
may be adaptable to monitoring outcomes or vulnerability
reduction at the global level.
The EU Adaptation Preparedness Scoreboard is explicitly
designed for reporting at the state level, with comparison
between countries within the EU. The scoreboard’s selectionof indicators reflects the five steps of adaptation policy

making: preparing the ground for adaptation; assessing
risks and vulnerabilities to climate change; identifying andassessing adaptation options; implementing adaptation
action; monitoring and evaluation of adaptation activities.
It has yet to be validated for its appropriateness inlower income countries, limiting its potential for global
applications to date. There is currently no explicit integrationof longitudinal considerations in indicators for change
or scoring of progress. Using the quantitative scoring
components of the scoreboard via national self-reportingis unlikely to result in consistent or comparable adaptation
tracking data due to lack of transparency in the scoring of its
open-ended questions. Along the same line, many indicators
are vague — e.g. “a periodic review…. is planned,” or “there
are processes…” — limiting the comparability of potential
outputs. While potentially scaleable globally, these factors
limit the Adaptation Preparedness Scoreboard’s application.
The Climate Investment Fund’s Pilot Program for
Climate Resilience (PPCR) Results Framework isa scoring-based framework for tracking adaptation
governance at the national level. The PPCR scorecard
structures reporting around priority sectors, with thepotential for reporting to be aligned with countryspecific vulnerabilities and thus contextually-relevant interms of diverse risk profiles. Assessment of longitudinal
progress is also embedded in the scorecard design, with
reporting and justification of changing performance on
adaptation indicators or criteria. The scorecard includes
some tracking of adaptation outputs, and also attempts tocount numbers of people affected by adaptation projects,
though the resulting values are likely to be unreliable
and unlikely to reflect valid proxies of adaptation. PPCR
addresses the trade-offs between prescription and contextsensitivity by providing guiding/example scoring criteria,
and leaving the decisions on scoring to the jurisdictionof individual countries, which reduces comparability of
results across countries. Despite this, transparency of criteria
and reporting across similar indicators may allow someaggregation and systematic assessment, and certainly
facilitates reflective learning. This framework, however,demands extensive financial and human resources, which isa major barrier to feasibility for scaling up globally.

5.4 EXAMPLES FROMMOZAMBIQUE AND CAMBODIA
There are no countries that have been assessed by all four ofthe frameworks listed in Table 5.1, primarily because the TAMD
and PPCR frameworks are predominantly used in lower andmiddle income countries whereas the EU scoreboard has notbeen used outside of the EU. Two countries, Cambodia andMozambique, have been assessed sufficiently by both TAMD
and PPCR, and ND-GAIN data are available for most countries
to allow comparison of framework results for these countries
across three of the four frameworks. A summary of key
indicators, results, and reported progress is shown in Table 5.2.
The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessment

41

Table 5.2: Comparison of results from the TAMD, PPCR, and ND-GAIN frameworks for Cambodia
and Mozambique
Cambodia

TAMD

PPCR

ND-GAIN

Track 1: Adaptation efforts1 (2013baseline)
Climate policy & strategy: ~30%
Climate integration into planning: ~20%
Coordination: ~45%
Climate information: ~20%
Climate integration into financing: ~25%

Core indicator 12: Integration of climate change
into national planning: 3.6/10 (2014), 4/10 (2015),
4.0/10 (2016).

Overall score3: 43.4/100
High vulnerability score (0.495)
and low readiness score (0.362).
Cambodia is the 51st mostvulnerable country and the 56th
least ready country.

Track 2: Adaptation results
Baseline data established and withemerging results. Tracked using
proxies for flood, storm, and drought
vulnerability vis-à-vis poverty andagriculture.

Core indicators 3-5: report on instruments
tested; use of instruments at household,community, business, and public sector level; andnumber of people supported by PPCR.

Key messages: Government
Climate Change Strategic Plan
recently released. As this is the firstevaluation, the framework currently
has only established baselines for
future assessment. Track 1 baselines
show that Cambodia is still somedistance away from meeting all of
their selected indicators/goals. Track
2 identifies vulnerable regions anddrivers of vulnerability.
Progress: Not yet available

Core indicator 22: Strengthened government
capacity 1.75/10 (2014), 3/10 (2015), 4.25/10(2016); coordination to mainstream 1.9/10 (2014),
1.9/10 (2015), 2/10 (2016).

Key messages: Indicators 1 and 2 demonstratemoderate progress in national institutional
strengthening. Establishment of National Council
for Sustainable Development to coordinate
adaptation, strong government commitment,
establishment of ministerial coordination,
establishment of a financing framework. National
plans and 14 sectoral plans completed. Legislation
for mainstreaming in 3 ministries. Mainstreaming
climate change into budgetary processes has
been initiated by some ministries. Despite some
progress, strengthening capacity and coordination
mechanisms to mainstream climate change intodevelopment planning remains a challenge. It is
too early to report progress on core indictors 3-5.
Progress: Modest but positive since previous
reporting periods (2015 and 2014). Scoring
available for 2014, 2014, and 2016.

Mozambique

Track 1: Adaptation efforts4
Climate change mainstreaming/
integration into planning: ~35%
Coordination: ~70%
Budgeting and finance: ~10%
Institutional knowledge/capacity: ~35%
Climate information: ~60%
Planning under uncertainty: ~35%
Participation: 75%
Awareness among stakeholders: ~70%
Track 2: Adaptation results
Only baseline data established. Tracked
using 3 incidences of vulnerability:
disaster risk index; climate vulnerability
index; vulnerability index.
Key messages: Finds that theinstitutional indicators on integration,
coordination and knowledge
management are all relatively weak,
except a strong gender equality
participation. Some evidence of climate
risks informing planning decisions. Eachministry has a focal point for climatechange, but there is no formal calendar
for regular meetings. Technical expertise
limited but growing.
Progress: not reportedCore indicator 15: Integration of climate change
into national planning 1.6/10 (2014), 2.6/10 (2015)
Core indicator 25: Strengthened government
capacity and coordination to mainstream 1.25/10(2014), 2.5/10 (2015)
Core indicators 3-5: report on instruments
used and % implemented, and number of peopleusing instruments and supported by PPCR.
Key messages: Indicators 1 and 2 demonstratemoderate progress in national institutional
strengthening. National Adaptation Programme of
Action and National Strategy developed; Disaster
Risk Reduction response approved by cabinet.
Moving towards climate change integration
into sectors, and climate change now Priority 5on the National Agenda. Inter-ministerial group
established. Financing/ budgeting mechanisms
developing in key sectors. Technical climate
expertise still limited. Despite some progress,
strengthening capacity and coordination
mechanisms to mainstream climate change intodevelopment planning remains a challenge. Core
indicators 3-5 provide a range of estimates ofnumbers affected and instruments used/tested.
Progress: Progress across all but one indicator(expertise) since previous reporting period (2014).
Scoring available for 2013 baseline, 2014, and 2015.

Key messages: Weaknesses inreadiness are associated withICT infrastructure, education,and innovation. It has botha great need for investment
and innovations to improvereadiness and a great urgency foraction. Innovation proxied using
patents/capita; education basedon ratio of enrollment to eligible
population for tertiary education;
IT infrastructure proxied using
mobile phone/fixed hone/internet subscriptions and use
per 100 persons.
Progress: Country has increased
readiness since 1995 in absoluteterms (from ~0.23) and relative
to similar countries. Progresshas been comparable with theaverage progress across Asia.

Overall score6: 38.6/100
High vulnerability score (0.552)
and low readiness score (0.324).
Mozambique is the 31st mostvulnerable country and the 32nd
least ready country.
Key messages: Readinessweaknesses are associated withICT infrastructure, education,and innovation. It has botha great need for investment
and innovations to improvereadiness and a great urgency foraction. Innovation proxied using
patents/capita; education basedon ratio of enrollment to eligible
population for tertiary education;
IT infrastructure proxied using
mobile phone/fixed hone/internet subscriptions and use
per 100 persons.
Progress: Country has increased
readiness since 1995 in absoluteterms (from ~0.24) and relative
to similar countries. Progress hasmodestly exceeded the average
progress across Africa.

Source: 1 Estimates taken from (Rai et al., 2015; Appendix 2) for the national level only, using equal weighting across indicators. 2 Estimates areapproximations taken from PPCR (2015a, 2016) for the national level only (sectoral assessments not shown) using an average of the mean capacity
and coordination scores (assuming equal weighting of questions within each). 3 From http://index.nd-gain.org/country/cambodia. 4 Results ofassessment are from a pilot of Guija County and not for all of Mozambique. Estimates are taken from Artur and Gomes (2014) using mean of responses
for each indicator, where indicators are equally weighted. 5 Estimates are approximations taken from PPCR (2015b) for the national level only (sectoral
assessments not shown) using an average of the mean capacity and coordination scores (assuming equal weighting of questions within each). 6 From
http://index.gain.org/country/mozambique

42 Chapter 5 | Towards the assessment of adaptation progress at the global level

Both the TAMD and PPCR frameworks include reportingon adaptation efforts and results, while the ND-GAIN
index reports on proxies of adaptation. The most directlycomparable components between the TAMD and PPCR
frameworks are for climate efforts, particularly climate
integration into national planning and national coordinationof climate change. In the case of Cambodia, there is relatively
limited consistency in results, with TAMD identifying
integration as a greater weakness than coordination and the
PPCR scoring integration higher. Scoring between TAMD
and PPCR are even more divergent in the case of Cambodia:
while TAMD reported relatively strong coordination (~70%),
the PPCR indicates low scores (2.5/10), though this iscombined with strengthening of government capacity, so
it is difficult to compare directly. Neither TAMD nor PPCR
provide detailed data on adaptation results, with existing
reporting predominantly confined to establishment ofbaselines, targets, and some counting or reporting of
instruments used. Results reporting by these frameworks iseven less comparable than adaptation efforts, though overallnarratives of progress and strengths/weaknesses are similar.
While the PPCR framework is stronger on quantitative scoring
and reporting on progress over multiple time periods, theTAMD framework focuses on developing a narrative fornational learning through M&E.

Note that Table 5.1 also indicates potential concerns
regarding reliability of results across countries, indicating
inconsistency in reporting within a single framework. TAMD
results imply stronger adaptation efforts in Mozambiquefor example, PPCR results indicate generally higherscores in Cambodia. While global assessment may not
be preoccupied with ranking countries, these results
indicate that national-level scoring may be inconsistentand unreliable for systematic synthesis, especially whencountries construct indicators and scoring rubrics
themselves, and self-report the results. ND-GAIN uses
indictors that are assumed to proxy adaptation, such as
patents/capita and mobile phone subscriptions and are
typically those that are publically available for a large
number of countries and are presumed to reflect measurescoinciding with adaptation. Both the PPCR and NDGAIN frameworks provide progress data, while TAMD has
not yet implemented assessment substantially beyond
the establishment of baselines. Both Cambodia andMozambique have PPCR results over several years, reportingon progress across indicators for the country as a whole andfor individual sectors. ND-GAIN has a longer longitudinaltime frame, with data reported since 1995 and resultscompared to other countries globally or to comparable
countries by income group or region.

5.5 GLOBAL ADAPTATION ASSESSMENT
THROUGH THE LENS OF THE SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT GOALS AND SENDAIFRAMEWORK ON DISASTER RISK REDUCTION
The Paris Agreement and global stocktake are closelyaligned with adaptation-related objectives, targets,and reporting within the UN Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs) and the United Nations Office for Disaster
Risk Reduction’s Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk
Reduction (Sendai Framework). The SDGs, while notspecific to adaptation, include a number of goals
related to climate change adaptation (see Table 5.3
for a selection). For instance, Goal 13 (Climate Action)
includes adaptation targets related to strengthening
resilience and adaptive capacity, integrating adaptation
into national planning, improving institutional capacity,
and adaptation financing. Consistent with otheradaptation M&E approaches, Indicator 13.2.1 measures
the number of countries mainstreaming adaptation or
implementing integrated planning for adaptation withingovernance. While not climate change or adaptation
focused, the majority of the other SDGs, such as Goal 11(Sustainable Communities), Goal 2 (Zero Hunger), Goal

1 (Zero Poverty), include targets that arguably reflectproxies of climate vulnerability, adaptive capacity, andresilience. Climate adaptation is thus deeply embedded
within the SDGs.
The SDGs do not use baselines, but rather benchmark
progress towards articulated targets within each goal.
The SDGs are explicitly designed to guide countries andfacilitate aggregation, collective progress, and sharedlearning through transparency. In doing so, the SDG
framework is closely aligned with the intentions andprovisions of the Paris Agreement’s stocktaking exercise.
The SDGs are also explicitly designed to be tracked
longitudinally and to measure progress, as well as to assess
both country-level achievements and collective global
progress. Given the relationship and synergies between
the Paris Agreement and SDGs, there is significant potential
to link adaptation stocktaking and global tracking to theoverarching framework of the SDGs.
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43

Table 5.3: Examples of Sustainable Development Goals and Sendai Framework for
Disaster Risk Reduction indicators that could relate to climate change adaptation
SDG indicators that could relate to climate change adaptation
Goal
Climate action

Indicators
13.2.1

Number of countries that have formally communicated the establishment of integrated low-carbon, climateresilient, disaster risk reduction development strategies (e.g. a national adaptation plan process, national
policies, and measures to promote transition to environmentally-friendly substances and technologies).

13.1.1

Number of deaths, missing people, injured, relocated, or evacuated due to disasters per 100,000 people

13.3.1

Number of countries that have integrated mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction, and early warning into
primary, secondary, and tertiary curricula

2.4.1

Percentage of agricultural area under sustainable agricultural practices

2.4.2

Percentage of agricultural households using irrigation systems compared to all agricultural households

Clean water andsanitation

6.4.1

Percentage change in water use efficiency over time

6.5.1

Degree of integrated water resources management implementation (0-100)

Sustainable cities
and communities

11.b.1

Percentage of cities implementing risk reduction and resilience strategies aligned with accepted internationalframeworks (such as the Sendai Framework)

Life on land

15.2.1

Forest cover under sustainable forest management

Zero hunger

Sendai Framework compound indicators that could relate to climate change adaptation (outcomes and enabling environments)
Global target

Indicators

Disaster mortality

A-1

Number of deaths and missing persons attributed to disasters, per 100,000 population

Affected people

B-1

Number of directly affected people attributed to disasters, per 100,000 population (including population
injured or ill, whose dwelling is damaged or destroyed, and whose livelihood is disrupted or destroyed)

Economic loss

C-1

Direct economic loss attributed to disasters in relation to global gross domestic product (including losses fromagriculture, housing sector, productive assets, critical infrastructure, and cultural heritage damaged or destroyed)

Criticalinfrastructure
and basic services

D-1

Damage to critical infrastructure attributed to disasters (including health and educational facilities damaged
or destroyed and critical infrastructure units and facilities)

D-5

Number of disruptions to basic services attributed to disasters (including educational, health, and other basic
services)

Developing
countries’ support

F-1

Number of countries that adopt and implement national disaster risk reduction strategies in line with the
Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030

Early warning
systems

G-1

Number of countries that have multi-hazard early warning systems

Source: IAEG-SDG (2017), Vallejo (2017) and Kato and Ellis (2016).

The Sendai Framework is a non-binding agreement withseven global targets and four priorities for action, with theoverarching goal of reducing disaster risk and losses in lives,
livelihoods, and health (Table 5.3). Global targets within theframework are impacts-based and include, for example,
global disaster mortality reduction, reduction of disaster
economic losses, and increased availability of early warning
systems and disaster risk information. The Sendai Framework
includes minimum standards and meta-data for reporting,and has developed a technical report with methods formeasuring each target and indicator. These include, forexample, indicators within Target F (Enhance International
Cooperation to Developing Countries to Complement
National Actions), which measure international official
development assistance for disaster risk reduction bilaterally,
multilaterally, and for capacity building.

Indicators within the Sendai Framework reflect impact
measures for disasters, and use many of the same concepts
and goals as adaptation frameworks. The framework clearly
articulates progress goals and longitudinal considerations,benchmarked to future targets and linked to the SDGs. As
impact measures, the framework provides a complementary
approach to the Paris Agreement, and indicators could be
used alongside global assessments and tracking indicators.
The targets reflect impacts rather than outputs or process,however, and lack a focus on how countries are undertaking
adaptation, as is embedded in most adaptation frameworks.
Given relative transparency of methods, a focus onaggregation, and relevance to adaptation concepts, someindicators within the Sendai Framework might feasibly crossover with or complement global assessment indicators andaggregation.

44 Chapter 5 | Towards the assessment of adaptation progress at the global level5.6 LESSONS FROM OUTSIDE
THE ADAPTATION FIELD
Many of the methodological challenges related to assessing
adaptation at the global scale are shared by fields outside ofadaptation (Ford et al., 2013). We thus selected and reviewed 7
frameworks with similar challenges of qualifying and quantifying
highly complex development or policy arenas (Box 5.2).
The majority of non-adaptation frameworks in this review
used standardized and comparable approaches to derive
quantifiable indicators and indices, typically collected via
existing data sources or third-party collection rather thancountry-level self-reporting. Such approaches offer theopportunity for aggregation at the global scale. To date, there
are few similar indices for adaptation policy or governanceupon which to base composite scoring. Additionally, while
systematic and comparable, these frameworks typicallyuse composite indices that limit the context-sensitivity of
the framework and would not be amenable to the selfreporting and country-led structure of adaptation reporting
within the Paris Agreement. Such approaches would require
independent initiatives and strong normative assumptions toassemble and score countries systematically.
Our assessment of non-adaptation frameworks foundlimited additional insights into methods to tackle questionsof attribution or innovation for avoiding crude measuresof output and outcomes. However, innovation could be
identified in the methods of data collection, validation,and presentation. No frameworks used only narrative andqualitative assessment for global comparison. All frameworks
used some form of composite or aggregate scoring to enablesystematic comparability.
A common feature among several of the frameworks
was the use of expert or peer review. Some, such as
Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) and the Resource
Governance Index (RGI), use peer reviewers to validate
responses or scoring. For example, the RGI articulates clear
questions related to governance, with example scenario
answers to guide scoring (Natural Resource GovernanceInstitute, 2017). This has potential to make the scoringtransparent and amenable to external validation. Similarly,
the Small and Medium Enterprise Policy Index includes
parallel processes for self-assessment and independent
assessment via local experts (OECD, 2014). The SGI, in turn,uses a process of double expert assessment followed byexpert mediation, inter-regional calibration, and advisoryboard approval (Sustainable Governance Indicators, 2017).
Insights from these processes provide useful opportunities forindividual countries or the global adaptation community todevelop peer review and cross-validation mechanisms withinglobal assessment and adaptation reporting. Peer review
or expert validation of scoring could substantially increase
the comparability and consistency of an adaptation tracking
approach — in particular for qualitative indicators — and thus
reflects a potentially suitable opportunity to reconciling someof the trade-offs between criteria listed in Box 5.1.

Box 5.2: M&E frameworks outside of the adaptation field assessed for methodologicalinsight relevant to global adaptation tracking•

Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI): Evaluates climate protection performance at the national
level, primarily on mitigation•

Climate Laws, Institutions, and Measures Index (CLIMI): Evaluates how climate policy differs in terms of
quality and pervasiveness across countries•

Migrant Integration Index (MIPEX): Evaluates and compares government actions to promote theintegration of migrants•

Resource Governance Index (RGI): Measures the quality of governance in the oil, gas, and mining sectors•

SME Policy Index: Benchmarking tool assessing and monitoring small and medium enterprises’ policy
frameworks in emerging economies•

World Governance Indicators (WGI): Evaluates the quality of government and institutions in a country•

Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI): Analyzes and compares a country’s need for reform and its
ability to respond to current social and political challenges

The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessment

45

5.7 LESSONS FROM THE FRAMEWORKANALYSIS FOR THE ASSESSMENT OF
ADAPTATION AT GLOBAL LEVEL
There are currently no existing frameworks that fulfil all of
the criteria for an assessment of progress towards the global
goal on adaptation. There is a clear trade-off between: a)frameworks emphasizing context-specificity and assessmentof proxies coherent with our understanding of meaningfuladaptation at the local level; and b) those that emphasize
aggregation at the expense of sensitivity to context andcoherent measurement. Penetration of adaptation theory
into indicator selection for global datasets or frameworks
is limited but emerging, and largely constrained by theconceptual complexity of adaptation.
Frameworks with the greatest potential for aggregation andglobal scaling are those that are designed to be aggregable
while minimizing trade-offs in terms of coherent assessmentof adaptation and sensitivity to national context. This is most
likely achieved using a proximity-to-target approach
whereby countries are assessed vis-à-vis national targets,
and where highly prescriptive indicators of adequacy,
sufficiency, and efficacy in reducing vulnerability and impacts
are not subject to standardized scoring. Such prescriptive
assessment is suited to justification and evidence based on
qualitative and logic model approaches, complemented
by theory of change narratives and quasi-experiments.
Aggregation in all forms risks losing important detail as towhy some adaptation approaches are working, and in what
contexts they have evolved (Leiter and Pringle, Forthcoming).
This is important for shared learning. Therefore, to minimize
the pitfalls of highly aggregated indicators, any quantitative
or semi-quantitative aggregation will need to be combinedwith qualitative — but ideally systematic and consistent— reporting that provides important depth to the global
assessment.
Defining, documenting, and justifying specific adaptation
outcomes and vulnerability impacts is difficult at the local andproject levels, and requires extensive qualitative data, theoriesof change, causal narratives, or the acceptance of substantial
causal assumptions. The idea of attribution, for example, isamong the most desirable and yet least conceptually andmethodological feasible features of adaptation (Ford et al.,2015; Dupuis and Biesbroek, 2013). While some frameworks
include indicators that imply direct impact from adaptation
projects to reduced vulnerability at national level (e.g.
CIF’s PPCR), attribution assessment is unlikely to ever be
feasible as a global indicator for adaptation and will remain
a significant challenge within countries. Most frameworks
that aggregate outcome or impact indicators face substantial
trade-offs in the coherence and validity of their adaptation
measures. These often include measures such as ‘number
of…’ adaptation activities, people protected, projects, or

stakeholders engaged, for example. Such measures areamenable to transparent and aggregable data frameworks,
but poor proxies of adaptation progress and poorly adapted
to global comparison across diverse national contexts. A
focus on contribution rather than attribution is emerging as
a more useful concept within adaptation literature (Bours etal., 2014a, 2014b; Spearman and McGray, 2011). Methods forassessing contribution, however, are difficult to scale up andare better suited as complementary evidence to aggregatedindicators rather than included within standardized indicators
directly. Combined methods, including standardized
scoring across descriptive or proximity-to-target indicators
combined with evidence of contribution, justifying targets
and employing logic models, provide the greatest promise forfulfilling our criteria.
All adaptation assessment approaches use proxies foradaptation, yet few adaptation indicators have been
rigorously validated, and many frameworks have limited or
no clear justification or causal methods for indicator choice.
Aggregation to the global level typically requires normative
assumptions based on our understanding of what processes
and actions are likely to lead to adaptation. To fulfil global
scalability criteria, frameworks will need to be transparent in
the logic models and articulation of assumptions underlying
indicator selection.
Longitudinal tracking of progress is not widely considered
across adaptation assessment frameworks, with ND-GAIN
and the PPCR being notable exceptions, while both theSDGs and the Sendai Framework are explicitly designed
for longitudinal tracking. Although many frameworks are
implicitly designed to be tracked over time, few identify
indicators that specifically measure progress or change.
Ranking or scoring of current adaptation actions or status
without explicit assessment of country-level progress limits ourability to recognize adaptation efforts, progress across diverse
national contexts and achievements from different baselines.
Differentiating static assessment from national progress will bea key challenge in ensuring context-sensitivity of adaptationassessment across countries. A country, for example, may farepoorly on adaptation governance indicators but demonstrate
substantial progress over time, while another country may
fare moderately but show no progress. The structure oflongitudinal assessment within an adaptation assessment
framework is thus important.
Despite relative wariness for highly prescriptive indicators
within global assessment, there are a few concepts that areenshrined within the Paris Agreement and constitute global
consensus: that is to say that there are a few things we

46 Chapter 5 | Towards the assessment of adaptation progress at the global levelbroadly agree ‘should’ be prescribed to some extent within
adaptation assessment. These include acknowledgementof human rights obligations, and special considerationof vulnerable populations and equality (gender, age,and socio-economic status, as well as consideration of
empowerment and intergenerational perspectives).
For example, the Paris Agreement emphasizes ‘genderresponsive’ adaptation that takes into consideration
vulnerable groups and local/traditional knowledge (African
Working Group on Gender and Climate Change, 2017a). It
is possible and indeed likely that some adaptation activities
will reduce overall impacts but increase inequalities. This
has implications for the selection of gender-responsive(and equity-responsive) indicators of adaptation results,
where crude estimates may be insufficient in detecting
equity impacts. Design of gender-responsive assessment
frameworks that, for instance, allow to disaggregate databy sex and highlight sex or gender differences in both
qualitative and quantitative data, could contribute to
identifying negative impacts and allow corrective measures
to be taken (African Working Group on Gender andClimate Change, 2017b). This is also relevant for processesof peer review or participation in national assessments,
where mechanisms might be put in place to ensure theconsideration of gender and other equity priorities.
Third-party or external validation of nationally-reported
adaptation progress, or generation of global datasetsfrom publically available data provide an alternative
to standardized national reporting. While a few of theframeworks employ these approaches, notably ND-GAIN
and to some extent the SDGs, there are currently insufficient
existing data for validated proxies of adaptation to compile
adaptation data globally. A diversity of national reporting
methods and frameworks also precludes meta-analysis andsynthesis of global progress. Grappling with diverse national
adaptation reports could be tackled in two ways. First, we
could assemble and attempt to synthesize data from existing
global datasets, such as ND-GAIN and any data generated
through the SDGs and Sendai Framework reporting. This
would generate a relatively feasible and comprehensive
dataset, but lack convincing proxy measurement ofadaptation. Second, external and third-party data collection
could undertake a substantial data collection and peerreview process to compile relevant country-level data using
a standardized framework and a small number of adaptationspecific indicators. Such a process could reconcile most of
the criteria in Box 5.1, but would require substantial resources
and be difficult to implement longitudinally.
Integration of explicitly-reported external peer-review
mechanisms was largely absent from the adaptation
frameworks reviewed, yet presents significant potential

to reconcile trade-offs between context-specificity andtransparency. The use of an approach such as PPCR, which
provides standardized scoring guidelines, but leaves final
scoring to countries, would be well suited to the additionof a peer-review process of scoring criteria. Peer review
could additionally be used to replace prescriptive indictors
within frameworks, with external review judging theotherwise murky and problematic questions of ‘adequacy’,‘effectiveness’, and choice of national goals. Peer-review
might feasibly integrate not only external expert judgement
but also facilitate peer review by stakeholders at the national
level. The PPCR provides a framework for integrating
stakeholder consultation into the process of defining
national criteria and scoring methods. A similar process
would be compatible with more methodological clarity
within the TAMD framework. There is, hence, substantial
potential to develop an integrated process of stakeholder
consultation and scoring development, combined withpeer review of country-specific choices and results. Suchprocesses provide promising opportunities to reconcile someof the more challenging trade-offs to global aggregation,
and are consistent with the Paris Agreement’s goals of sharedlearning.
There is considerable research needed to reconcile some of
the more intractable conceptual challenges in adaptation
tracking. Among the most pressing are:•Innovation and validation of new approaches to dealing
with attribution and contribution;•

Innovating methods to assess outputs and outcomesbeyond crude proxies;•

Operational definitions of adaptation that more
effectively differentiate tokenism and mainstreaming
within government activities;•

Establishment of clear baselines or terms of reference
from which to measure progress within individual
countries.

There are also a number of promising opportunities toengage with computational science, including automatedanalysis of large volumes of text, crowd sourcing, andscraping of digitally sourced data. To date, there has been
negligible engagement by the adaptation community
in exploring such sources of data, or collaboration withcomputational experts. The promise of “big data” may not
resolve many of the fundamental conceptual challenges ofadaptation tracking, but may provide new insights into datacollection approaches and innovations that help address
feasibility constraints to synthesizing large volumes of data.

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47

06
48 Chapter 6 | Considerations for a future framework for assessing adaptation progress at the global level

CHAPTER 6CONSIDERATIONSFOR A FUTURE
FRAMEWORKFOR ASSESSING
ADAPTATIONPROGRESS AT THE
GLOBAL LEVELLEAD AUTHOR—HENRY NEUFELDT (UNEP DTU

PARTNERSHIP)
CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR—LEA BERRANG-FORD(LEEDS UNIVERSITY)

Photo: © Serpeblu (Shutterstock)

The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessment49

6.1 INTRODUCTION
The aim of this chapter is to provide methodologicalinput in support of the thinking on how to assess
progress towards adaptation at global level, including
the global goal on adaptation, which is enshrined in the
Paris Agreement. For the periodic review of this goal, aminimum amount of systematic information that can be
aggregated across countries is necessary. However, thenature and diversity of national adaptation monitoring andevaluation frameworks (see Chapter 4), and the information
communicated under the UNFCCC, do not lend themselves
to straightforward systematic collection or aggregation.
To make progress towards the global reviews despite thechallenges, it would be useful to take the considerations
made below into account.

The Parties to the UNFCCC could devise a framework to informthe periodic review of the overall progress towards the global
adaptation goal. Such a framework could also help the Parties
identify remaining gaps to reach their national goals andtargets. To date it is unclear what such a framework might look
like, but the timeline for negotiations foresees that the specificsof the Paris Agreement’s provisions be agreed upon by COP 24
at the end of 2018 (see Chapter 2). Recommendations to help
the thinking on these matters are hence very timely.
This chapter builds on previous chapters of the reportand discusses desirable characteristics of a framework
for assessing progress on adaptation at global level, andpotential ways forward.

6.2 REVIEWING PROGRESS TOWARDS
THE GLOBAL GOAL ON ADAPTATION:
KEY SOURCES OF INFORMATIONAs Chapter 2 illustrated, the information available to review
the overall progress made in attaining the global goal on
adaptation can be understood to consist of four pillars (seeFigure 2.3):
1. Progress on adaptation at national levels that is reported
by Parties or publicly available, and which may besynthesized under the UNFCCC;
2. Reports of the IPCC and subsidiary bodies of the UNFCCC;
3. Reports prepared for the SDGs and the Sendai Frameworkfor Disaster Risk Reduction with relevance for adaptation,
among other international agreements;
4. Global adaptation tracking by third parties based on
globally comparable data at country level.
Together these sources of information can contribute toreviewing whether, collectively, countries are going in theright direction on adaptation to climate change vis-à-vis thegoal to limit temperature increase to well below 2°C above
pre-industrial levels, and whether the adaptation efforts
are adequate in terms of the magnitude of the adaptation
challenge and effective in terms of reducing climate risk to
the degree necessary.
In addition to the distinction between country-level andglobal-level data sources to inform progress on adaptation,a distinction can be made between government reported
progress and information provided through third parties.
From Chapters 3 and 5 it can be deduced that a very
comprehensive framework might generate a better
understanding of the overall progress towards the global
goal. But would require a significant effort to collectthe necessary data and would be much more difficult
to establish in terms of achieving consensus on themethodologies used. On the other hand, a looser framework
would be more manageable both politically and practically,
and could be implemented at lower costs and within atimeframe to contribute to the first global stocktake in 2023,
but would make a quantitative aggregation of country-level
information less detailed and informative.
Given the complexities of monitoring and evaluating progresson adaptation, a way forward might be to start with a basic
framework and build in enough flexibility into the design
to accommodate changes over time that would lead to amore integrated and comprehensive adaptation assessment
framework in the future. The underlying assumption is thatsuch a framework would be sufficiently: a) broad to absorb theentire diversity of information sources and formats provided
through national and global channels without adding undue
burden on Parties; b) rigorous in capturing existing data toperiodically characterize progress towards the global goal inline with the requirements of the global stocktake; and c) open
to addition and change to accommodate new and innovative
ways of assessing progress on adaptation.

50 Chapter 6 | Considerations for a future framework for assessing adaptation progress at the global level6.3 COUNTRY-LEVEL INDICATORSFOR GLOBAL ASSESSMENT
For national adaptation monitoring and evaluation
frameworks to usefully feed into assessing progress on the
global goal on adaptation, there need to be ways throughwhich to capture, structure, and interpret their huge diversity
in approaches, indicators, and metrics, which was presented
in Chapter 4. Aspects that appear relevant to the selectionof indicators for country-level reporting are outlined in thefollowing sub-sections.

DESCRIPTIVE INDICATORS CAN BE
TRACKED AND AGGREGATED MOREOBJECTIVELY OVER TIME
Whereas evaluative indicators are often influenced byperceptions, values, and expectations (Chapter 3), descriptive
indicators are better suitable for country-level reporting
to support assessment of adaptation at global level,
because they can be tracked more objectively over timeand aggregated at global levels, although their ability tomeaningfully assess adaptation progress is unclear.

BASELINES AND TARGETS CAN HELPTO MEANINGFULLY AGGREGATEPROGRESS ON ADAPTATION
Indicators containing proxies of national adaptation baselines
and targets or goals can help to meaningfully aggregate
countries’ individual progress towards the global adaptation
goal. Self-reporting could ensure that these baselines
and targets or goals adequately reflect national climate
risk perceptions and thereby follow a proximity-to-target
approach conducive to assessing progress on adaptation in anationally determined way (Chapter 5).

INDICATORS ARE NEEDED TO
SYSTEMATICALLY COLLECT ALL
DIMENSIONS NEEDED FOR REPORTING
Indicators can ensure that all dimensions deemed relevant
for reporting on adaptation progress are, in one way or
another, covered. Such dimensions can include: a) levelsof vulnerability, resilience, and adaptive capacity; b)
adaptation targets or goals; c) adaptation planning processes,
mainstreaming, and coordination; d) implementationof actions; e) documentation of results achieved; and f )financial, technical, and capacity-building efforts.

INDICATORS CAN BE TAGGED TO
COUNTRY-LEVEL REPORTING TO
INCREASE EXPLICATIVE POWER
Tagging information that is part of Parties’ adaptation
communications to the indicators would facilitate
aggregation of countries’ self-reported progress towards
goals and targets. This would ensure that information
provided by Parties can be interpreted in the appropriate
categories and would enhance its explanatory power.

FOR COMPARISON ACROSS COUNTRIES,INDICATORS NEED TO FOLLOWCONSISTENT FORMATS
To ensure that indicators on progress are comparable acrosscountries, they would need to follow a consistent format. This
would enable periodic comparison of progress on the global
goal on adaptation. Complementary context-specific information
could be added through qualitative assessments that would give
substance, depth, and validity to the assessments.

6.4 CONSIDERATIONS FOR DEVELOPINGA GLOBAL ADAPTATION ASSESSMENT
FRAMEWORKOf the adaptation assessment frameworks analyzed in Chapter
5, few allowed aggregation at national levels. Of those thatdid, there were unavoidable trade-offs between the ability
to provide contextually meaningful information on the one

hand and the availability of comparable data and consistencyof methods on the other. Yet, a few characteristics andprinciples considered important for the development of such aframework can be identified, and these are summarized below.
The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessment

51

WHERE POSSIBLE USE STANDARDIZEDINDICATORS TO ASSESS PROGRESS ON
ADAPTATION

adaptation activity, and to ensure that global assessments
are sensitive to national contexts.

The use of standardized indicators to assess adaptation
progress based on proximity to nationally-determinedtargets and descriptive metrics to outline the types
and nature of processes, activities, and results would
facilitate assessing collective progress across countries.
The framework could be designed so that individual
countries maintain their discretion to define the degree
to which they adopt these indicators. Where standardized
indicators cannot be used, devising ways through which
information provided at the country level can be linked tostandardized indicators, can help overcome challenges forinterpretation.

EXAMPLE SCORING CRITERIA AND
GUIDELINES CAN HELP MINIMIZEREPORTING VARIATIONCOMBINE ACTIVITY- AND RESULTS-BASED
INDICATORS FOR A MORE HOLISTICASSESSMENT
Within the existing assessment frameworks there is wide useof both activity-based and results-based approaches, andspecific indicators from both categories lend themselves toglobal assessment. Activity-based indicators can more easily
be monitored at several points in time, while results-based
indicators can help in assessing ‘adequacy’ and ‘effectiveness’of adaptation interventions. A combination of both typesof indicators could provide information for both reviewing
progress against the global goal and on the success of activities.

CLEARLY ARTICULATE AND JUSTIFY
THE ASSUMPTIONS UNDERLYING
THE CHOICE OF INDICATORS
Clear and explicit articulation and justification of assumptions
underlying the use of indicators or proxies of adaptation
as well as of targets or goals is critical. This would makeassessment frameworks: a) more transparent; b) link withcausal narratives and logic models; c) facilitate learning as
to the causal pathways expected to drive adaptation; and d)accessible to testing, validation, and revision.

REPEATEDLY COLLECTED DATA CAN
CLARIFY LONG-TERM ADAPTATIONPROGRESS
A framework that reviews collective adaptation progress
will need to be able to repeat data collection overtime. But it will also need to differentiate two types of
information: what countries, collectively, have achieved
towards the global goal, and how much progress has
been made since the last reporting period. This is criticalto recognizing national adaptation achievements, evenfor countries starting with relatively limited resources or

The provision of examples of scoring criteria andguidelines for standardized indicators would allow
countries to self-report progress and ensure theirdiverse contexts are appropriately reflected in aconsistent and comparable way, while minimizing thevariation across countries that would invariably resultin challenges for aggregation. Development of scoring
criteria could involve stakeholders at government levels,
different sectors, and civil society as well as peer review(described below). This allows validation of scoring
without prescribing the specific ways in which countries
might choose to meet their goals, and without overstandardization of methods. At the same time, such a
process is consistent with provisions within the Paris
Agreement for shared learning and cooperation.

NARRATIVES CAN JUSTIFY AND
CONTEXTUALIZE TARGETS RELATEDTO NATIONAL BASELINES
The use of theories of change, logic models, and causal
narratives as documentation mechanisms for progresson adaptation provides countries with a strong rationale
for justifying and contextualizing their targets or goals
related to national baselines. Such an approach also
reduces the danger of using prescriptive indicators forassessing adequacy and sufficiency of specific targets,
which would likely result in normative statements about
what constitutes ‘good’ or ‘appropriate’ adaptation.
Reporting on the logic behind adaptation efforts provides
relevant background information for peer-reviewed indepth assessments, meta-analysis, and, to some degree,
systematic review.

CONTRIBUTION, RATHER THAN
ATTRIBUTION, IS A USEFUL CONCEPTFOR ASSESSING ADAPTATION
A focus on contribution of national efforts to certain
adaptation outcomes and climate risk impacts appears to
be a more useful concept than direct attribution, which is
hard to establish and unlikely to be reliable across countries.
Narratives and theories of change could be used to provide
complementary qualitative justification of underlying
assumptions to aggregated indicators of efforts and results.
Focus on contribution also avoids much of the contentions
related to additionality of adaptation efforts vis-à-vis
development interventions.

52 Chapter 6 | Considerations for a future framework for assessing adaptation progress at the global level

STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENTLEGITIMIZES AND VALIDATESTHE ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORKDEVELOPMENT
Stakeholder engagement underscores the spirit of
the Paris Agreement and is relevant across all stagesof developing an assessment framework. Stakeholder

participation in selection and articulation of national
adaptation targets, as well as development of coding
criteria for scoring, could contribute to reconciling thetrade-offs between context specificity and comparabilityof indicator results. Countries developing coding criteria
will more easily be able to explain their choices, if there
is a clear and well-documented stakeholder engagement
process to justify the process.

6.5 LINKING THE GLOBAL REVIEWOF ADAPTATION PROGRESS WITH THE
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS AND
THE SENDAI FRAMEWORK FOR DISASTERRISK REDUCTION
The linkages between the Sustainable Development
Goals, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction
and the Paris Agreement were described in Chapters 1
and 5. While there are many complementarities, there arealso differences between these three agreements that are
equally relevant for the assessment of adaptation progressat global level. The SDGs and the Sendai Framework
measure global progress towards achieving the goals
and targets laid out in these agreements, using clearly
articulated indicators (IAEG-SDGs, 2017; UNISDR, 2015;

UN, n.d.). The Paris Agreement’s global goal on adaptationand other adaptation provisions intend to ensure anadequate adaptation response in the context of holding
the increase in the global average temperature to well
below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing
options to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above
pre-industrial levels, but without much guidance on
what this means. A few considerations on making use of
indicators defined in the SDGs and the Sendai Framework
are provided below.

Photo: © Neil Palmer (CIAT)The Adaptation Gap Report 2017 – Towards Global Assessment

53Chapter 5 listed several SDG and Sendai Framework
indicators related to adaptation, suggesting that anassessment of the progress on adaptation could benefit
from streamlining relevant indicators into an adaptation
framework at global level. While utilizing the regularlycollected information would be desirable to avoid
duplication of efforts, create synergies between theframeworks, and minimize costs, it would be important
to ensure its relevance to the goals of assessing
adaptation at national and global levels (Leiter andOlivier, 2017). Similar to the expert working groups
detailing the mutual adoption of the Sendai Framework
and SDG indicators (IAEG-SDGs, 2017), joint initiatives
could be set up to facilitate collaboration and integrationin the context of the Paris Agreement.
There is also great opportunity for coherence among
the agreements at all stages of development andimplementation at national levels. Opportunities forthis arise from joint collaboration on the definition ofindicators, mapping how goals, targets, and indicators
across the frameworks relate to each other, andpromotion of joint implementation, sensitization, capacity
development, branding, and marketing initiatives tostrengthen national ownership and communicate strong
political will (Peters et al., 2016). While there are limits
to integration, such an approach would not only avoid
duplication and minimize costs, but would also facilitate
an enhanced understanding of the differences between
the multiple agreements, thereby potentially increasing
political support. Yet, due to the distinct content of eachagreement, monitoring adaptation progress will require
going beyond the currently agreed frameworks andindicators of the SDGs and the Sendai Framework (Leiterand Olivier, 2017).

6.6 TOWARDS A FUTURE FRAMEWORKFOR ASSESSING ADAPTATION PROGRESSAT GLOBAL LEVELThe Paris Agreement places the global goal on adaptation
firmly in the context of sustainable development andthe long-term goal of holding global warming to well
below 2 °C compared to pre-industrial levels, and of
pursuing efforts to limit warming to 1.5 °C. The UN
Environment Emissions Gap Report (UNEP, 2017) clearlyshows that current mitigation pledges point towards alikely temperature increase of around 3 °C in 2100. There ishence an urgent need to strengthen mitigation ambition
and action to avoid locking into emissions trajectories thatwould make reaching the long-term temperature goal
untenable (UNEP, 2017). The 2016 Adaptation Finance Gap
Report found that the costs of adaptation in developing
countries could range from US$ 140 billion to US$ 300
billion per year by 2030 (UNEP, 2016). The mitigation
investments needed to limit temperature increase would,
over the longer term, pale in comparison to the increasing
costs of climate impacts, the brunt of which would beborne by developing countries (UNEP, 2016).
Strong mitigation action is indispensable to keep theadaptation challenge manageable. However, regularassessments of the adaptation gap, defined in the
Adaptation Gap Reports as the difference between theactual level of adaptation action and the level required toachieve a societal goal, can help inform adjustments inpolicies and investments over time. The global stocktake toreview collective progress in achieving the global goal on
adaptation will be an important milestone in this regard.
Taking into account the mitigation context, the main
adaptation questions of whether, collectively, the adaptation
gap is being narrowed and eventually closed, and whether
the efforts made towards achieving the global goal on
adaptation are, indeed, adequate and effective, will increasein importance in the coming years.
There are many sources of information outside the UNFCCC
that can contribute to complementing and deepening
the understanding of progress towards the global goalon adaptation. These include reports prepared by the
IPCC, information on progress towards the SDGs and the
Sendai Framework, and third-party assessments of bothcountry-specific and global level data. It will be important toconsider how these different and heterogeneous sources of
information can give the best available insight into how weare collectively progressing towards closing the adaptation
gap. This will be the ultimate litmus test in providing
countries with the information they need to adjust planningand decision-making with regard to national adaptation
gaps.

54 Chapter 6 | Considerations for a future framework for assessing adaptation progress at the global level

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