Step 6. Monitoring and evaluating adaptation

At the early stages of the implementation process, your efforts should be directed towards undertaking monitoring and evaluation activities, as it serves both learning and accountability. Monitoring can thus help to determine if adaptation measures are effective and if they have incurred any unanticipated side effects. It is important to note that useful monitoring and evaluation does not start at the very end of the adaptation policy cycle but is included in every step: by setting goals and well-defined objectives that are as specific as possible in planning documents (step 2 and 5), and when identifying and assessing adaptation options (Step 3 and 4), as well as monitoring the baseline conditions and progress over time.

To ensure the effective and sustainable implementation of your regional or local authority’s adaptation measures over time, it is important to evaluate the progress of planned activities and to check actual outcomes against their initial objectives. Knowledge management and active and continued engagement of stakeholders from the public and private sectors and civil society are required because all stakeholders playing a role and having a responsibility for implementation need to be part of the monitoring and evaluation process.

Indicators should address, if possible:

Progress towards reducing climate impacts

Progress towards reducing risks and vulnerabilities and increasing adaptive capacity

Progress towards meeting adaptation priorities

Progress towards addressing barriers to adaptation

Your objective setting (Step 2) and risk assessment (Step 2) should provide a sound basis for identifying these indicators.

Monitoring adaptation outcomes can be challenging. It may take decades to deliver adaptation outcomes due to the scope and scale of required actions and the time that it can take some measures (e.g., ecosystem-based measures) to mature and deliver benefits. It is also worth bearing in mind that long-term monitoring requires continuity of your approach to monitoring. The burden can be eased by only monitoring outcomes, e.g., your region’s adaptive capacity, on a long cycle (e.g., every decade) and in the short to medium term focusing more on annual monitoring of processes and outputs (e.g., the progress of implementation). Monitoring the justice dimensions of the adaptation process or outcome is another challenge that is described in more detail in the following publication Just Resilience for Europe: Towards measuring justice in climate change adaptation.

Measurable indicators are attractive to policy- and decision makers, as they provide quantifiable “evidence” of progress and performance of a region. Gathering stakeholder views and perspective can help to validate quantitative data and enable the exploration of the questions "how" and "why". A useful source of inspiration on such indicators can be the Adaptation Dashboard.

Lastly the results of the evaluation need to feed back into the adaptation policy cycle, described in this RAST. When you revise your regional or local adaptation policy framework, your revision process and the result of the revision should rely on the results of monitoring and evaluation.

For sources of information on the broader monitoring and evaluation process, please see below: