Adaptation Policy Credibility (APC)

Objective(s)

The Adaptation Policy Credibility tool is designed to assess the credibility of climate change adaptation plans, policies, and strategies at the local level. The tool's output serves as an estimate of how successful an adaptation plan is likely to be, and it allows users also to compare and prioritize different plans, allocate funds more effectively across regions, and identify best practices in adaptation.

Short description

The tool is organized into three main categories - policy and economic credibility, scientific and technical credibility, and legitimacy. The tool contains 17 indicators and 53 metrics that focus on both policy process and content. They provide an overall idea of the probability of adaptation policies being successfully implemented and sustained in the future. As such, the APC can serve as a valuable tool for cities and policymakers seeking to assess and enhance their adaptation planning and policy-making processes.

Free keywords

Evaluation, Credibility, Adaptation Tracking, Planning, Local Climate Plans

Readiness for use

Applications

Since 2019, the tool has been tested in more than 100 cases in Denmark, Spain, Poland and outside the EU.

It was tested in 2019 in four early-adopting cities of climate adaptation planning, showing the remaining gap between adaptation planning and actual implementation. For 11 Spanish cities, the tool allowed identifying the strengths, areas for improvement and opportunities in adaptation planning. For 59 cities worldwide it provided an overall idea of the likelihood of adaptation policies being delivered and sustained in the future. The tool was also applied in 44 municipal adaptation plans of the largest Polish cities as part of a governmental program.

A version of the self-assessment tool was developed for RegionsAdapt, a project of the international network of regional governments Regions4. The tool is being used by the BC3 team as an educational resource in the Master of City Resilience and Design at the International University of Catalunya (UIC).

Strengths and weaknesses, comparative added value to other similar tools

Strengths:
(+) Easy-to-apply method that allows the creation of a composite credibility index to evaluate and compare adaptation plans and policies across regions.
(+) The tool evaluates multiple aspects that contribute to the credibility of adaptation policies. This includes how the policy was developed (legitimacy), the resources available for its implementation (policy and economic credibility), and the scientific basis for the plan (scientific and technical credibility).
(+)The tool considers not just the existence of a plan, but also the resources allocated, past performance, stakeholder engagement, knowledge utilization, monitoring & evaluation mechanisms, and the potential for adaptative management.

Weaknesses:
(-) Less useful for evaluating specific adaptation interventions at the local scale.

In terms of integration, the tool works well in combination with other climate adaptation assessment tools such as the Climate Change Adaptation Scoring Tool (Euro LCP Initiative).

Input(s)

Data and information of local municipality adaptation policy and planning documents. The user must know the plan well to be able to score the indicators and metrics. In addition, the GDP of the city should be known, and the results of previous local, regional or national citizen surveys.

Output(s)

The tool produces a composite credibility index and sub-indices per category or component. Importantly, the tool does not provide thresholds to take as a reference on what is sufficiently good to go. Rather, through the metrics and indicators, it helps to develop: (1) self-assessments where cities can use the tool as a checklist for building more credible adaptation policies and identify their weaknesses and work to improve them. In this sense, every item included in the tool is seen as a necessary step towards successful adaptation. Therefore, any aggregated score below 53 potentially indicates an area for improvement. (2) It can also be used by an overseeing entity (e.g. regional or national government) to develop large comparative studies of local adaptation plans to: distribute funding, identify capacity-building needs, identify regulatory needs etc.

Replicability: Cost/effort for (new) usage

This tool already covers all the different regions in European countries

Materials or other support available

More information and an example are available here: Olazabal et al. 2019 Olazabal, M., Galarraga, I., Ford, J., Sainz de Murieta, E., Lesnikowski, A., 2019. Are local climate adaptation policies credible? A conceptual and operational assessment framework. International Journal of Urban Sustainable Development 11, 277–296.
https://doi.org/10.1080/19463138.2019.1583234

https://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/en/mission/external-content/pdfs/008-assesstemplate_apctool-ed2.xlsx/@@download/file

Website and maintenance

The tool is available at the following link: https://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/en/mission/external-content/pdfs/008-assesstemplate_apctool-ed2.xlsx/@@download/file.

Contact

imagineadapt@bc3research.org

Associated project(s)

The Project CLIC: Are cities prepared for climate change? (https://clic.bc3research.org/) supported by AXA Research Fund (Grant Agreement No. 4771) and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) (Grant Agreement No. IJCI-2016-28835).