Challenges for Evaluating Adaptation in Africa

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Challenges for Evaluating Adaptation in Africa

• Evaluating Climate Change and Development
• 10-13 May 2008
• Alexandria, Egypt

Fatima Denton IDRC Team Leader CCAA
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Presentation Outline

• Challenges on evaluating climate change
• CCAAs approach to evaluation
• The so what question.

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Evaluation for What Purpose?

• Objectives and outcomes matter
• Vulnerability Reduction
• Capacity Development
• Accountability
• Feedback Learning

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What is Adaptive Capacity?

• D designing and implementing effective
  adaptation strategies,
• R ability to respond to evolving hazards and
  stresses reduce harmful outcomes
• L learning from past experiences
• A applying lessons to current and future
  climates

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Africa Evaluation Challenge

• Availability Access - data is often problematic
  and sources may be unreliable
• Governance - what you see is not what you get
• Institutional Inertia - evaluation externally
  prescribed
• Capacity Constraint- limited pool of expertise

• Participation - marginalised groups as alibi
  not as active participants
• Multiplicity of Factors context differ
  climate dynamics differ
• Other Job the rather you than me attitude !

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Climate Change Adaptation Challenge

• Knowledge Deficit
• What is adaptation?
• How can you evaluate what you dont know?
• How can you evaluate what has not happened yet?
• Attribution Gap
• Climate as the tip of the iceberg
• Difficulty in distinguishing climate risks
  impacts from other stresses

• Immediacy Versus Long Term Benefits
• Climate change is a long term problem
• Evaluating adaptive capacity proxy progress
  markers
• Calibration A moving baseline
• Intensity, frequency of CH different baselines
• Evaluating adaptive capacity changing variables
• How do you deal with uncertainty, issues of
  distribution scale?

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Vulnerability Challenge

• Vulnerability is contested - Who should decide?
• definitions of vulnerability vary - biophysical
  versus social no single coherent body of
  literature -
• Vulnerability is multilayered multifaceted
• Biophysical Social
• Vulnerability is complex geographically specific
• Africa is vulnerable with the least capacity to
  adapt
• Our natural environment is sensitive and fragile
• Most of our sectors are highly dependent on
  ecological goods and services
• Our capacity to resist perturbation and withstand
  hazards is low
• Our climate is diverse and poorly understood
• The continent has one of the lowest human
  development indicators

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Programmatic Challenge

• Forgotten Element - an afterthought - evidence
  budget, substance and approach
• Perceptual evaluation is seen as a must do
  one more box to tick
• Tool Deficit Few tools to evaluate progress
• Precedence rich experience in indigenous
  practices but poor evaluative culture
• Results building evaluative capacity remains a
  key priority

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WHAT IS CCAAS POINT OF DEPARTURE?

• Lack of capacity affecting the ability of
  African people to adapt to climate change
• Action research can deepen our understanding of
  vulnerable people and institutions
• Managing climate risks is about creating spaces
  to learn, communicate and share knowledge
• Influencing policy making choices and decisions
  through evidence based research is important

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CCAA Changing the Paradigms?

• Building evaluative capacity thru LEARNING
• Evaluation as a now activity a process
• Building a community of practice
• Space for knowledge to be acquired, shared and
  contested

• Focus not on the tool but the functionality of
  the tool
• Process is as important as the outcome

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Changing behaviors mindsets

• outcome mapping and PAR evaluation as a shared
  business
• Creating an evaluative space - DGroup
• incentives for evaluation (training, funds,
  mentoring)

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Capacity Development

• Cycles of reflection and action learning and
  adjustment of adaptation strategies
• Evaluation of vulnerabilities and capacity gaps
  can catalyse action self-evaluation
• Individual learning is fine but, complementary
  capacity development is essential

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Communications Building Networks of Reciprocity

• Scientific evidence is a key ingredient
• Sharing lessons is as a gratifying as achieving
  outcomes
• Using different communications tools (videos,
  narratives) to repackage information
• Socialising the scientist!

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So What Factor Optimising opportunities

• Learning from what exists - Exploit models that
  facilitate the measurement of adaptive capacity
• Social capital - Build on social capital that
  would lend weight to ME in CCA
• Vulnerability as a holistic concept - under
  competing factors that mediate against reduction
  of vulnerability
• Push versus Pull Factor - take on board demand
  side stakeholders policy makers and vulnerable
  groups as part of the process

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• people in vulnerable situations,
• real people, adapting to change
• creating new choices,
• and living in harmony with their environments
• but most of all, it is about PEOPLE

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