Guidance on evaluating action
taken for adaptation is now emerging as more projects get beyond the
awareness raising and scoping phases of the process. Frameworks of
evaluation for adaptation are available but may not been extensively
trialed. In many situations evaluation adaptation may be done through
the refinement of existing M&E frameworks rather than requiring
completely new frameworks to be created. However, adaptation does have
a number of features that make it more challenging to evaluate
including developing appropriate indicators, baselines and targets
given the longer time-horizon of many adaptation initiatives. As
adaptation is location specific much of the available advice needs to
be tailored in order to make sense in a particular context. Although
frameworks offer guidance on what should be being measured and what can
be considered as ‘successful adaptation’ we may not
know the answer to this for several decades.
The
frameworks, tools and methods provided here offer some ways to evaluate
both content and process. Evaluations of adaptation need to be asking
two key questions ‘are we doing things right? (i.e. did we
achieve the objectives we set out when we planned the adaptation
initiative?) and ‘are we doing the right things?’
(were the objectives reasonable and do they will they result in
effective adaptation?). There are a number of different things that
could be measures e.g. building adaptive capacity or delivering
adaptation actions and this is discussed in the
Pathfinder section
on Monitoring and evaluation.
A number of different
resources for designing and implementing evaluations of adaptation are
explored here from guidance on the design of the whole process, reviews
of experience to date, descriptions of commonly used approaches and
tools including methods that capture the complexity (or lack of linear
causality) e.g. outcome mapping and most significant change. There is
often a need to get different perspectives on
‘success’ in an evaluation. Funders may see the
project as suiting their needs but the intended
‘beneficiaries’ see no positive change. Need
methods that can effectively bring in different perspectives and
resources offering guidance on participatory evaluation processes is
given in the subsection on
Participatory
evaluation tools. Evaluation processes provide a valuable
opportunity to learn and ensuring that this learning can be shared with
others and used to inform work in the future should be considered in
the design of the evaluation. This is considered in the subection on
Evaluation
as an opportunity for learning.
