Tracking Adaptation Success

Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of adaptation initiatives is critically important for their long-term success.  M&E helps implementers determine how well projects are working, improve the quality of their work over time, and decide which efforts to scale up as climate impacts intensify. Finance providers in particular require strong M&E systems, so that they know their money is being used effectively. However, M&E for adaptation is especially challenging due to the complexity and uncertainty associated with climate change.

In this context, being ready to learn has never been more important. Adaptation plans and programs must build the learning process into their structure to allow for feedback to reach planners and decision makers, so that assumptions and hypotheses can be continuously tested and revised. Monitoring then becomes an integral part of the adaptation process, and evaluation serves both learning and accountability purposes.

WRI’s work in this area aims to provide practitioners with practical solutions for tracking the success and failure of adaptation initiatives in the context of sustainable development. WRI is currently working with the United Nations Capital Development Fund’s Local Climate Adaptive Living Facility (LoCAL) to create a tracking and performance assessment system that will be rolled out to 11 least developed countries that are receiving LoCAL funding. WRI is also working with the United Nations Environment Programme and the United Nations Development Programme on a program in Fiji to create an M&E framework that connects monitoring and reporting efforts across multiple scales and different bodies of work.