Advancing Effectiveness of Climate Adaptation

Evaluating the effectiveness of adaptation policies and actions is key to understanding whether they have reduced climate risks and achieved other intended outcomes. The goals are to ensure that adaptation is adequate to address climate risks, do not foster negative unintended consequences over space and time, and inform adaptation financing. Adaptation effectiveness is vital to inform both national and local-level adaptation actions as well as progress towards the Global Goal on Adaptation and the UNFCCC global stocktake (GST). However, despite the urgency to implement effective adaptation at scale, understanding adaptation effectiveness is still evolving and the development of ways to measure it is ongoing. The diverse contexts and adaptation interventions make it challenging to understand and operationalize adaptation effectiveness. Specifically, measuring change requires a definition of the baseline conditions and measurement of change against that baseline. Attributing outcomes to investments is also challenging.