Climate Change Adaptation Indicator Good Practice Draft Study Report Available for Comments!

Over the past months I have been blogging about indicators, measures and metrics, some good discussion took place on various LinkedIn groups on counterfactual analysis beyond 'no intervention', maladaptation was touched upon in a blog post and we ended the month of October with discussions on indicator principles; SMART, CREAM and SPICED ? and a variety of other principles were put forward by others!

All of these discussions have informed the good practice study on 'Indicator Development, Selection and Use Principles for Climate Change Adaptation M&E', on which I have been working together with my colleague Punji Leagnavar over the past three months. The study is commissioned by the Climate-Eval community of practice and undertaken by the Independent Evaluation Office of the Global Environment Facility.

At this point we proudly present to you the draft study report, which can be downloaded here.

The composition of the draft study report:

Part I: Introduction and Background first takes you through the study?s purpose and structure, after which the current discourse of climate change adaptation monitoring and evaluation is discussed in Chapter 2. Key M&E challenges in climate change adaptation are discussed, some of which are M&E specific, while others are adaptation-specific or adaptation-influenced. The various scales of interventions and their specific focus is discussed and this part ends with a small paragraph on the importance of having a clear picture regarding evaluation utilization from the onset of the M&E endeavor and how this informs your indicator development, selection and use.

Part II: Climate Change Adaptation M&E Frameworks and Classifications starts in Chapter 3 with an overview of commonly used climate change adaptation M&E frameworks, discussing their relevance towards the identification and development of indicator development, selection and use principles. Various indicator classification principles are discussed in Chapter 4, linking them to indicator purpose and evaluation use.

Part III: ?Good Practice? Principles for Developing and Selecting Climate Change Adaptation Indicators. Where the previous Chapters laid the groundwork for the good practice discussion, the following Chapters is where this discussion is taking place. Chapter 5 focuses on what constitutes a ?good? indicator, discussing a number of indicator principles and considerations to take into account at the onset of M&E planning. Good practice principles for selecting and developing climate change adaptation indicators are subsequently discussed in Chapter 6.
Chapter 7 completes this part with a matrix of assessment questions one should ask when formulating indicators.

Part IV: Policy Relevance and Conclusions starts with discussing the disconnect between evaluative evidence and policy-making in climate change adaptation. It provides a number of good practice principles to improve the uptake of evaluative evidence in policy making.
In the final report, Chapter 8 will be further expanded and a final chapter will be added that recaps the conclusions coming from the various chapters.

We?d appreciate your comments!

We would like to invite you to comment on this draft version of the ?Good practice study on principles for indicator development, selection and use in climate change adaptation M&E?. Any comments received before December 24th 2014 will be taken into account in the development of the final report.
We would like to thank you in advance for your thoughtful feedback!