A key challenge for adaptation interventions and investments is establishing whether they have delivered, or are likely to deliver, genuine adaptation and resilience benefits. A number of factors make this challenge especially difficult, including the timescales over which climate change will occur, the lack of any universal adaptation metrics, and the need to account for changing climatic ‘baselines’ (e.g. if development performance is deteriorating in the face of intensifying climate risks despite adaptation actions, have these actions been ineffective, or have they prevented an even worse situation?).
Garama’s work has sought to address these issues, and to shift the focus of evaluation beyond the outputs of interventions, to their outcomes and impacts. We have undertaken pioneering work in the development of methodologies to assess the effectiveness of adaptation through the following:
- Our leading role in the development of IIED’s Tracking Adaptation and Measuring Development (TAMD) framework, which links institutional climate risk management with resilience outcomes on the ground and ultimately with human wellbeing and development performance.
- Our development of a methodology for measuring improvements in resilience for the UK’s International Climate Fund.
- The development of a framework for establishing whether interventions are likely to produce tangible adaptation and resilience benefits ‘on the ground’, as part of our work with the StARCK+ programme.
- Our identification of lessons around adaptation and resilience results from StARCK+, and our input to the subsequent StARCK+ final evaluation.