Why is monitoring, evaluation and learning framework important for climate actions?
Monitoring, evaluation, and learning (ME&L) frameworks can help decision-makers ensure that adaptation investments effectively build climate resilience. Tracking progress not only demonstrates accountability to donors, but it also enables practitioners and decision-makers to identify successful interventions, learn from past failures, adjust activities as circumstances evolve, as well as recognize when projects’ benefits are disproportionately distributed. These findings can also contribute to a growing body of literature documenting good adaptation practices and inform practitioners implementing similar approaches around the world.
ME&L systems are especially needed for
Ecosystem based Adaptation (EbA), an approach that links biodiversity and ecosystem conservation strategies with sustainable, socioeconomic development to help people adapt to the adverse effects of climate change. Yet its
evidence base remains weak in practice, with very few countries widely or consistently adopting EbA measures.
Introducing the capstone project
Conducted with overall facilitation support from the Friends of Ecosystem-based Adaptation (FEBA) network, the project undertaken by graduate students from Yale University (School of Forestry and Environmental Studies) in partnership with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and The Mountain Institute (TMI), seeks to narrow two knowledge gaps prioritized by countries within the Andean sub-region in the context of the Lima Adaptation Knowledge Initiative (LAKI): lack of tools for evaluating climate change effects on ecosystem services and on the populations whose quality of life depends on those services as well as limited data on the socioeconomic impacts of climate change.
IUCN in partnership with the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the United Nations Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) developed a questionnaire to assess the impact of 13 EbA projects across 12 countries.
This project not only explores this effort to measure adaptation outcomes across a global portfolio, but it also examines the ME&L approach of one of the 13 EbA projects – a seven-year initiative implemented by The Mountain Institute (TMI) in partnership with IUCN, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Peru’s Ministry of Environment (MINAM), and the National Service of Natural Protected Areas (SERNANP) that improved the resilience of two indigenous communities and the ecosystems on which they depend in the Peruvian Andes.
Outcomes
Florencia Zapata and Mirella Gallardo from the TMI noted “M&E is a key component to the TMI work for documenting the impact of our EbA measures, generate evidence on their effectiveness, and scale up the EbA approach in Peru. The Capstone project is an opportunity to share our progress on developing a comprehensive and participatory M&E system with a broader audience."
Monitoring, evaluating and learning from adaptation projects often remains difficult in practice, and programs that seek to build resilience to climate change impacts require nuanced ME&L frameworks that address a set of challenges that are often, but not always, unique to adaptation programs.
Six good practices from the TMI’s framework stood out as particularly useful for practitioners implementing similar projects around the world. These include:
- Designing ME&L frameworks that can measure adaptation outcomes beyond project cycles by building local capacity to develop and implement ME&L systems, strengthening institutional commitments to track progress over the long term, and mainstreaming project ME&L indicators into partners’ existing plans and programming.
- Placing a participatory approach at the center of ME&L systems to define success in the context of local vulnerabilities, manage uncertainties, build trust, cultivate long-term ownership of ME&L among beneficiaries, and ensure the validity of data collected.
- Using ME&L systems, like action learning or scenario planning, to integrate flexibility into adaptation projects to better manage uncertainties and more effectively respond to unexpected changes.
- Including a wide range of indicators – both those that capture qualitative and quantitative information as well as those that measure process and results – in ME&L frameworks to assess progress across different scales and priorities.
- Integrating screenings for maladaptation and unintended consequences into ME&L frameworks.
- Measuring capacity to adapt – rather than adaptation, itself – over long timescales.
Findings from the study could prove hugely significant at a time when ME&L systems are especially needed for ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA), an approach that links biodiversity and ecosystem conservation strategies with sustainable development to help communities adapt to the adverse effects of climate change.
Read here for more information
To learn more about ME&L challenges and good practices identified, view the online story map here: and click here for a case study on the AKP