Challenges in Evaluating Adaptation Projects

\label{challenges-of-evaluation-of-climate-change-adaptation-projects}The evaluation of projects constitutes an essential element of the adaptation process. Successful adaptation will be assessed by how well different measures and interventions contribute to effectively reducing vulnerability and building resilience within a specific context. Lessons learnt, good and bad practices, gaps and needs identified during the evaluation of completed projects will inform new ones, creating an iterative adaptation process based on continuous learning. Given the complexity and long-term nature of climate change, adaptation should be designed as a flexible process subjected to periodic review and if necessary corrections. The implementation of adaptation needs to be evaluated regularly and revised in terms of both the validity of the underlying assumptions and the appropriateness of the measures and interventions undertaken (UNFCCC 2010).
In order to shed light on the challenges related to the evaluation of adaptation process, it is necessary to understand their particular nature and key characteristics. Given a specific historical climate baseline, there is a coping range within which a system (i.e. a community, an urban area, an economic sector, an ecosystem) is able to deal with climatic variability. By way of illustration, some years are naturally wetter than others, but for the most part rainfall does not exceed the amount that the system under consideration can tolerate. However, beyond these thresholds the system is vulnerable. The coping range is a measurement of the resilience of the system. Under the backdrop of a changing climate, which implies the modification in the means and variability of crucial climatic variables, the normal resilience of the system is under stress and the existing coping range is no longer as suitable. There is therefore a need to adapt to changing conditions and this can be achieved by implementing specific adaptation measures. It can be argued that the essential aim of adaptation projects is to expand the coping range of the system by implementing measures that reduce exposure and sensitivity or increase adaptive capacity (GEF 2008).
The problem is that adaptation projects are not implemented in a vacuum and climate variability is not the only factor affecting the coping range of the system. Other key variables (e.g. socio-economic conditions, political context, governance arrangements, demographics, availability of infrastructure services) play a fundamental role in determining the ability of the system to cope and these are also constantly shifting thereby altering the coping range. As a result of this condition, the project baseline which is used to evaluate adaptation interventions, has to take into account not only future climate scenarios and their potential impact but also the evolution of socio-economic, political, institutional and technological dimensions of the system.
This is just one of the reasons why evaluating adaptation projects is inherently complex and fraught with difficulties, without considering the fact that adaptation interventions tend to cut across many sectors, are implemented at different scales, over different timescales, and take a broad range of approaches (from hard structural adaptation measures, to soft policy measures). Even though conventional evaluation methodologies remain applicable to evaluating adaption projects’ progress and results, their particular nature and characteristics call for ad hoc approaches.
On the one hand, the evaluation of adaptation projects may be characterised by conventional methodological challenges, which characterise the evaluation of all developmental projects. For example, there may be general capacity issues due to the low level of technical capacity available or the scarce financial resources for implementing sound and robust evaluation frameworks, baseline data or historical trends may not be available, and it may be difficult to attribute a particular effect or impact to a certain adaptation intervention due to the lack of a counterfactual. On the other, adaption projects present some additional methodological challenges that derive from their particular nature and characteristics. These will be reviewed in some detail below (GEF 2011, UKCIP 2011, UNDP 2007, UNFCCC 2010, World Bank 2005, World Bank, 2010).