Six nations to share progress on measuring adaptation to climate change

The governments of six countries will share their experiences of assessing the effectiveness and developmental impacts of climate change adaptation, at an international meeting in Kenya on 24-27 March.

News, 19 March 2014
Senbetge, in Ethiopia's Amhara region is prone to droughts and flooding. Credit: EC DG ECHO (Creative Commons Licence)

Senbetge, in Ethiopia's Amhara region is prone to droughts and flooding. Credit: EC DG ECHO (Creative Commons Licence)

Each of the countries — Mozambique, Pakistan, Kenya, Cambodia, Ethiopia and Nepal — has been testing a new framework and tools that aim to ensure that adaptation and development work in tandem (see related blog posts on Mozambique, Ethiopia and Pakistan).

IIED and partners developed the approach — called 'tracking adaptation and measuring development' (TAMD) — because other ways to evaluate efforts and investments to address climate change have not managed to address the comparative effectiveness of such measures. Nor have they been able to track national progress towards adaptation and development goals, rather than just assessing individual projects.

Adapting to climate change could have very real impacts on the success or failure of development plans. The opportunity costs of investing in climate adaptation are high and need to be justified. There is a risk that nations will spend money on adaptation projects without ensuring that these also contribute to long-term development. It is therefore crucial that governments have tools and frameworks to track their progress and ensure their efforts to address climate change are effective in the long term.

Each of the nations that have begun to implement the 'tracking adaptation and measuring development' framework will send representatives to the meeting in Kenya. They will exchange information on how they have been using the approach, develop plans to consolidate it, and learn things from other countries that they can apply at home. Researchers will present progress reports on work in each country and discuss technical issues that arise from TAMD work.

The meeting's participants will also hear about Kenya's National Adaptation Plan and its new county-level adaptation funds, through meetings with government officials.

"The TAMD framework and tools are flexible enough for each participating country to adapt them to their own context and challenges," says Susannah Fisher, a researcher at IIED and manager of the TAMD initiative. "We hope these countries will build on their experiences of TAMD and integrate the approach into their national and local planning frameworks. This will help them to better manage investments in adaptation while supporting social and economic development."

Government representatives from Tanzania and Uganda will also attend the meeting as they are interested in seeing whether they could also apply the TAMD approach.