As the funding for national, sectoral, and project-based adaptation plans becomes increasingly available there is a need to understand what makes adaptation action effective in order to demonstrate value for money, protect investments and judge which efforts are suitable for scaling-up. Although initiatives that focus solely on adaptation are still relatively recent, projects in which adaptation is a component have been in place for some time. In many cases, the evaluation of adaptation activities requires the refinement of existing monitoring and evaluation (M&E) frameworks rather than completely new frameworks. However, adaptation does have a number of features that make it more challenging to evaluate including developing appropriate indicators, baselines and targets given the longer time-horizon of many adaptation initiatives. Monitoring and evaluation tools can be used to identify good practices and learn from these as well as less effective approaches.
Guidance on monitoring and evaluation for adaptation is now emerging. In 2008, the World Resources Institute "Bellagio Framework" was produced to identify strengths and gaps in adaptation capacities in a given country, in order to prioritise actions and encourage investment, and also to provide a reference against which progress on adaptation could be assessed. At a national level, in 2010 the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in the UK published a proposed approach for measuring adaptation to climate change.
Many of the aspects of adaptation evaluations, particularly those involving communities and multiple stakeholders have much in common with evaluations taking place in other contexts and so it is possible to learn from this experience. For example, studies suggest that 6 activities are essential in preparing for an evaluation for capacity development (Horton et al, 2003):
- clarify why and for whom the evaluation is being done;
- involve intended users throughout the evaluation process;
- cultivate the necessary support for the evaluation;
- mobilise adequate resources to carry out the evaluation;
- discuss possible results of the evaluation;
- agree on basic principles to guide the evaluation.
Recent work by the World Resources Institute (Spearman and McGray, 2011) describes broad early lessons on the use of M&E specifically for adaptation:
defining adaptation success requires consideration of the context in which adaptation activities occur
a diversity of inputs - including information and participants - contributes to successful adaptation M&E systems
tracking assumptions is an important component of M&E systems for adaptation, in order to contend with the uncertainties associated with climate change.
Evaluation as an opportunity for learning
The WRI report suggests that M&E systems play two critical roles in ensuring effective adaptation:
- they support the long-term process of learning "what works" in adaptation and
- they provide a tool for practitioners to manage their work in the context of the uncertainty surrounding climate change impacts.
Evaluation processes can be specifically designed to enhance learning by encouraging the use of all insights from evaluation of indicators in order to adapt the current plan, improve the design of the next project, or compare with other evaluations in an iterative cycle. Evaluations are often spoken of as an opportunity to learn but this needs to be consciously to be built into the process if it is to be effective. This requires thinking through who needs to be learning, how people can provide insight and feedback, what kind of things can be learned (facts, skills, stories) and what level of challenge is available to move people beyond 'business as usual' thinking. It also requires that 'spaces' are made available for this in the process. For this learning to feed into later programmes of work there has to be a process for how feedback from the evaluation feeds into other processes when the evaluation is complete.
The WRI report (Spearman and McGray, 2011) concludes by highlighting ways to "learn by doing" in the development of M&E practice for adaptation and proposes several important areas for further development and research.
- Think outside the project box: The challenges of M&E for adaptation are largely shaped by factors outside the individual project cycle. Therefore, developers of M&E systems need to move toward measuring changes in broader systems.
- Explore options for overcoming barriers to participation: Further work is needed to understand how technology, capacity building, and wise use of financial resources can reduce the costs associated with stakeholder participation in M&E, improve inclusion processes, and scale up use of participatory approaches.
- Link existing M&E systems: Stronger connections between bottom-up and top-down information and decision making could help focus scarce resources by eliminating duplicate reporting structures, sharing common relevant information, and potentially improving accessibility and transparency. Integrated adaptation M&E systems could also be used to link disparate sectoral or thematic activities.
- Promote experimentation: Useful experimental Promote experimentation: Useful experimental approaches for adaptation from the developed world are beginning to gain traction in the development sphere. M&E will play an important role in helping to learn when such approaches have value and how they can be adjusted to specific locations.
- Face tensions and trade-offs openly: M&E of adaptation presents challenges in a world of limited resources, where it is rarely possible to manage multiple processes for a given place, issue, or activity. Open discussion of tensions and trade-offs can ensure that a given system is used appropriately, and that its results are not misunderstood, misinterpreted, or used for cross-purposes
