Keywords Climate change adaptation • Community-based adaptation • Children
and youth • Participatory approaches • Evaluation • Developmental evaluation •
Indicators
16.1 Introduction
Supporting communities to adapt to climate change is a complex, uncertain exercise, and there is significant potential to learn directly from the practical applications of adaptation projects and the people whom they aim to assist. Interventions
that focus on communities recognise that impacts and vulnerabilities are specific to
local contexts, livelihoods are often directly dependent on local environments, and
communities are at the front line of responding to the impact of climate-related
disasters. Yet adaptation invariably requires concerted, coordinated action across
multiple scales, sectors and actors, and community-based projects increasingly
focus not only on the relationships and actions within local communities, but also
whether and how government policy, planning and programs are informed by
community priorities and needs.
Consequently, there is no one size fits all for community-based climate change
adaptation (CCA) – and there is no singular way to evaluate or draw learnings from
such projects. Nevertheless, key principles and general characteristics for monitoring and evaluating (M&E) of CCA interventions are widely articulated. In particular, it is well understood that conventional M&E approaches are ill-suited to
CCA
1 ; and that because adaptation constitutes pathways rather than end-points,
evaluating CCA requires investigation of qualitative processes, rather than just
solely relying on measurement of quantitative inputs or outputs. However, questions remain: how can project practitioners, researchers, evaluators and donors
(interested in learning as well as accountability) operationalise these principles in
practice? And, given the need for CCA interventions to generate and communicate
transferable learnings about CCA activity design, implementation and impacts,
how can we draw on good evaluation practice and theory to apply to the complex
context of understanding a CCA project on the ground?
This chapter responds to a need for documented case studies of CCA evaluation
in practice that generate and share methodological learnings about how to do
rigorous, participatory and useful evaluations of CCA interventions. We share
one example of an evaluation method applied over a 3-year community-based
CCA project, implemented by Plan International and Save the Children in cooperation with communities and key government stakeholders, with research partner the
Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney. This
project acknowledged that children are amongst the most vulnerable to climate
change,
2 but that they have the potential to advocate for adaptation practice and
1 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 2014. Climate Change 2014: Impacts,
Adaptation and Vulnerability. Wgii Ar5 Technical Summary. Geneva, Switzerland.
2 Risdell, J and C McCormick. 2013. Protect My Future: The Links between Child Protection and
Disasters, Conflcit and Fragility: Plan International and Save the Children.
290
J. Chong et al.
and youth • Participatory approaches • Evaluation • Developmental evaluation •
Indicators
16.1 Introduction
Supporting communities to adapt to climate change is a complex, uncertain exercise, and there is significant potential to learn directly from the practical applications of adaptation projects and the people whom they aim to assist. Interventions
that focus on communities recognise that impacts and vulnerabilities are specific to
local contexts, livelihoods are often directly dependent on local environments, and
communities are at the front line of responding to the impact of climate-related
disasters. Yet adaptation invariably requires concerted, coordinated action across
multiple scales, sectors and actors, and community-based projects increasingly
focus not only on the relationships and actions within local communities, but also
whether and how government policy, planning and programs are informed by
community priorities and needs.
Consequently, there is no one size fits all for community-based climate change
adaptation (CCA) – and there is no singular way to evaluate or draw learnings from
such projects. Nevertheless, key principles and general characteristics for monitoring and evaluating (M&E) of CCA interventions are widely articulated. In particular, it is well understood that conventional M&E approaches are ill-suited to
CCA
1 ; and that because adaptation constitutes pathways rather than end-points,
evaluating CCA requires investigation of qualitative processes, rather than just
solely relying on measurement of quantitative inputs or outputs. However, questions remain: how can project practitioners, researchers, evaluators and donors
(interested in learning as well as accountability) operationalise these principles in
practice? And, given the need for CCA interventions to generate and communicate
transferable learnings about CCA activity design, implementation and impacts,
how can we draw on good evaluation practice and theory to apply to the complex
context of understanding a CCA project on the ground?
This chapter responds to a need for documented case studies of CCA evaluation
in practice that generate and share methodological learnings about how to do
rigorous, participatory and useful evaluations of CCA interventions. We share
one example of an evaluation method applied over a 3-year community-based
CCA project, implemented by Plan International and Save the Children in cooperation with communities and key government stakeholders, with research partner the
Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney. This
project acknowledged that children are amongst the most vulnerable to climate
change,
2 but that they have the potential to advocate for adaptation practice and
1 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 2014. Climate Change 2014: Impacts,
Adaptation and Vulnerability. Wgii Ar5 Technical Summary. Geneva, Switzerland.
2 Risdell, J and C McCormick. 2013. Protect My Future: The Links between Child Protection and
Disasters, Conflcit and Fragility: Plan International and Save the Children.
290
J. Chong et al.