Context
Climate protection and adaptation to the impacts of climate change are among the biggest challenges for sustainable development. Industrialized countries have therefore committed themselves to provide USD 100 billion per year for mitigation and adaptation measures in developing countries, starting in 2020. With increasing volumes of adaptation finance, and growing numbers of adaptation activities and strategies at the national level, the need for robust monitoring and evaluation (M&E) approaches is growing alike. Indeed, it is important not just to secure sufficient financial resources but to ensure that investment in adaptation to climate change actually contributes to climate resilient sustainable development. Measuring results of successful climate change adaptation holds particular methodological challenges since the impacts of climate change extend over longer time periods and are often connected to other social and ecological problems. Thus, in contrast to mitigation of Greenhouse Gases, no unified standards for measuring adaptation results have been established. There are only a few methods and instruments for monitoring adaptation and they are not systematically applied yet.
Objective
Partner governments improve the tracking of results of their climate policy and climate financing for adaptation to climate change.
Approach
The project develops, in part jointly with international partners, methods and tools for monitoring and evaluation of adaptation and its results. They are disseminated to partner countries and to the international community, e.g. through side events at the Conference of the Parties of the Framework Convention on Climate Change or through presentations at international conferences. The project thereby contributes to creating awareness for the importance of monitoring and reporting of results in the context of international climate financing.
Furthermore the project supports partner countries in their efforts to capture the efficacy of their adaptation policies. This includes technical advice for the development and introduction of country specific monitoring systems, respectively the integration of climate adaptation aspects in existing national monitoring systems. As a result, partner countries are enabled to better assess and report on the progress of their efforts towards climate resilient development.
Results
Up to now the project has already developed and disseminated solid methods and tools for capturing adaptation results. They are requested and actively used by partner countries for (further) developing their country specific monitoring systems. Among the methods and tools are for instance the repository of indicators, which supports government representatives in defining their country specific adaptation indicators as well as the M&E Navigator and one of the first overview studies of existing national monitoring systems for climate adaptation. Together they provide support for partner countries for the development of appropriate monitoring systems. All publications, methods and tools of the project are available for download on the website www.AdaptationCommunity.net under "Monitoring and Evaluation". With the support of the project, partner countries like Mexico and South Africa have already taken important steps to capturing their adaptation results. Moreover, the project has contributed significantly to further rising awareness for the importance of results orientation in the field of climate change adaptation.