Tracking Adaptation and Measuring Development (TAMD): Country work

Tracking Adaptation and Measuring Development (TAMD) is being piloted in countries in Africa and Asia. Each country adapts the framework to its own needs and contributes towards the further development of the framework.

Article, 28 October 2014
In Kenya's Isiolo County, repeated droughts are forcing pastoralists out of herding and into farming. The county has used TAMD to assess climate risk management schemes (Photo: Martin Karimi/ECHO)

In Kenya's Isiolo County, repeated droughts are forcing pastoralists out of herding and into farming. The county has used TAMD to assess climate risk management schemes (Photo: Martin Karimi/ECHO)

TAMD was piloted in Kenya, Nepal, Pakistan and Mozambique from 2012. Work subsequently took place in Cambodia, Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania. Each country case contributed to developing the TAMD framework as well as supporting effective adaptation planning in that context. The framework was applied in different ways in different countries. It was used to support local planning, to do a retrospective analysis and to support national indicators.

Watch this video on how TAMD proved useful within Kenya, Pakistan and Cambodia.

Supporting local planning

Work in Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania focused on using TAMD to support effective local planning for climate change.

In Kenya, Isiolo County used TAMD to identify county-level climate risk management (CRM) processes that enabled adaptation or development interventions at ward level. The County Adaptation Planning Committees and Ward Adaptation Planning Committees, supported by LTSA, developed a monitoring framework for Isiolo from 2013-14.

It included theories of change that attributed adaptation benefits to CRM processes, indicators, assumptions and monitoring and evaluation plans. This framework was used to assess adaptation benefits at the ward level and linked these to national-level development indicators. IIED published a research report on the results of the  TAMD feasibility testing phase in Kenya. The approach in Tanzania was similar to that taken in Kenya.

In Mozambique, the TAMD framework was used to establish and examine plans for climate adaptation by a district council (Guijá District – Province of Gaza) and, as part of that district development plan (this was the first Local Adaptation Plan in place in the country), to identify how to assess the performance of the planned interventions. In December 2014, IIED published a research report on the results of the TAMD feasibility testing phase in Mozambique.

Assessing effectiveness

In Pakistan, the TAMD framework was used retrospectively as the basis for assessing the actual outcomes of two large-scale interventions – rainwater harvesting in earthquake affected Kashmir and Khyber Pakhtunkwa, and biogas generation across different parts of the country – from the perspectives of climate adaptation. Read more about about this approach in our briefing paper 'Forwards and backwards evidence-based learning on climate adaptation'. IIED  also published a detailed research report on TAMD in Pakistan.

In Ethiopia, the Ministry of Agriculture, in partnership with IIED and Echnoserve, tested the TAMD approach in assessing and developing the country's climate risk management. The project had two aims: one is to assess TAMD as a way of understanding how a national climate adaptation programme – in this case the Sustainable Land Management Programme (SLMP-1) – affected local communities and how better evaluation can help the government improve the programme's ongoing implementation. The second was to look at how decision-makers manage climate risk at local, regional and national levels.

In December 2014, IIED published a research report on the testing of the TAMD framework in Ethiopia.

In Nepal, TAMD specifically aimed to understand how changes in community and household resilience might be measured and aggregated across different interventions. Nepal has many different climate change programmes and interventions, each with their own monitoring and evaluation frameworks. The TAMD research tested a method to help the government track progress and measure effectiveness as a whole, looking beyond individual projects. This usied a quasi-experimental approach to the TAMD framework.

National approaches

In Cambodia, the TAMD work focused on institutional indicators at the national level. The team developed a core set of five cross-cutting indicators that will assist in understanding the extent of institutional readiness and climate risk management at the national level. These indicators were developed in iterative stages and validated and refined at a national workshop in December 2013.

The indicators were finalised and tested through a participatory focus-group discussion with Ministry of Environment staff. These scorecards used an innovative 'readiness ladder' approach, which enabled an understanding of where Cambodia was placed in an overall process of climate change policy and institutional development, and illustrated progress towards milestones. 

News and events

International TAMD workshop and framework launch, February 2015

The TAMD framework was formally launched by IIED and partners at a workshop in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The workshop featured government representatives and researchers from eight countries discussing their experience of developing the TAMD framework.

Publications, December 2014

The TAMD team published a range of new publications from their country work. We'll be writing more about these, but here is a summary of the latest items, including the full research reports on the country work and some reflections on the application across countries.

Briefings on the framework and conceptual development:

  1. Tracking Adaptation and Measuring Development through a gender lens
  2. Evaluating institutional responses to climate change in different contexts
  3. Indicators for the monitoring and evaluation of adaptation
  4. Using wellbeing indicators and climate information to assess adaptation effectiveness.

Research reports (full report on the process of applying TAMD in these countries and the feasibility results):

  1. Pakistan
  2. Ethiopia
  3. Kenya
  4. Mozambique.

Supplementary studies:

Step-by-step guide to TAMD:

Phnom Penh, November 2014

Cambodia's transport sector was the focus for a workshop on TAMD organised by IIED and Cambodian government departments in November. Workshop delegates included officials from Cambodia's Ministry of Public Works and Transport, the Cambodian Ministry of Environment's Climate Change Department and the Cambodia Climate Change Alliance (CCCA), as well as several NGOs.  

The establishment of a national framework for monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of climate change responses is one of the priority actions identified in Cambodia's Climate Change Strategic Plan (CCCSP), launched in 2013. The workshop focused on sharing lessons on national climate change responses, and how the TAMD approach could be used in the national monitoring and evaluation framework for climate change in Cambodia.

Copenhagen, October 2014

TAMD was presented at a lunchtime seminar at the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) to an audience of government staff, NGOs and consultants. Susannah Fisher presented the main findings from the country work and a lively discussion was had afterwards focusing on how to make adaptation monitoring and evaluation (M&E) processes sustainable, how to keep participatory processes an integral part of M&E and how to use M&E processes as part of planning.

Edinburgh, September 2014

Members of the TAMD steering committee met in Edinburgh in September to draw cross-cutting lessons from the country work so far. The team spent the first day working on cross-cutting lessons for the framework around using scorecards, the importance of gender in adaptation M&E and using climate data to understand changes in development indicators.

The second day was focused on the broader field of adaptation M&E and had invited guests from the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). The TAMD team heard more about the perspectives of the other organisations. Conversations were around the barriers to adaptation M&E and the existing support mechanisms out there to bring people together around the issue.

On the third day, the team focused on planning for the future, identifying possible gaps in the TAMD work so far, and where evidence is still needed on adaptation M&E.

On the final day, the team worked particularly on two publications coming out soon – one is on the costs and values of using an approach such as TAMD and the other is a manual on how to do TAMD.

Meru, Kenya, March 2014

Participants from eight countries gathered to share their experiences of working with the TAMD approach. Teams from Kenya, Pakistan, Cambodia, Nepal, Mozambique and Ethiopia gave presentations on changes to the monitoring and evaluation context of their countries and their country-specific development of a TAMD framework.

The progress made over the last year in testing the different evaluative frameworks was discussed in detail, and plans were made for the next six months. Participants from Uganda and Tanzania presented their climate change policy contexts and explored how they would develop a TAMD framework for their own situations.

A Summary Report outlines the content of each session and provides links to all the presentations.

Read coverage of the four-day event compiled in a Storify format or scroll through the report below.

Participants discussed how Pakistan, Kenya, Nepal, Ghana, Mozambique and Cambodia are currently assessing climate adaptation, and how TAMD can enhance the measuring of development in the context of adaptation to climate change.

The workshop enabled the people who have been working on the TAMD appraisal and design phase over the last year to come together to discuss findings. They presented the evaluation frameworks to be tested for feasibility and utility in the second phase of the initiative over the coming year.

A Summary Report outlines the content and outcomes of the different workshop sessions, and the actions and thematic issues that were raised.