Browsing by Author "Jaurimaa, Anna"

As climate change is already affecting our planet, it is urgent to ensure adequate support to the most vulnerable communities, sectors, and ecosystems to adapt to the changing climate. The scale of the financial resources that are expected to flow into climate change adaptation is likely to lead to a stronger emphasis on measuring and verifying results as there is international consensus that climate change adaptation interventions should be results-based. However, currently, there is no scientific nor political consensus over what effective adaptation is and how it should best be measured. As a result of this, efforts are needed to improve both methodologies and guidance for assessing adaptation. Through a systematic review of projects funded by the Adaptation Fund, I categorize 30 adaptation projects. The act of cataloguing adaptation measures and further analysing their similarities and differences produces insights in two main areas: identifying how projects have been designed to address and assess adaptation effectiveness; and enhancing understanding on the role of trees and forests in adaptation initiatives. I analyse the ways these projects are planned to assess their effectiveness using three main research indicators: reducing vulnerability and increasing adaptive capacity; reducing exposure; and sharing of lessons-learned and increasing climate change adaptation science. This includes studying the defined expected project results, indicators and baselines stated in projects’ results frameworks. The project proposals are further studied to gain understanding on how trees and forests are used to address and assess adaptation. The projects are analysed to test whether projects that address climate change adaptation similarly have also similarities in assessing effective adaptation. In order to do that the projects are categorized into four categories based on their approach: 1. ecosystem-based adaptation projects; 2. engineered or sectoral adaptation projects; 3. community-based adaptation projects; and 4. small-scale funding modality projects. I focus on exploring the objectives, types, and limitations of adaptation metrics used in assessing adaptation but also provide recommendations. Since the first years of the Adaptation Fund the projects have developed in regard to assessing their expected results with a few exceptions to the general trend. The national and regional implementing entities were more often struggling to set proper results frameworks. Trees and forests had a more prominent role than would be assumed by the limited number of projects classified as forestry projects as 80% of the projects included trees and/or forests as part of activities, outputs, outcomes, or indicators. It can be concluded that the studied projects had differences in addressing and measuring of adaptation. Effective adaptation was mostly framed to contribute to reducing vulnerabilities that include measures to increase adaptive capacity. Significantly less expected outcomes and outputs were set to reduce exposure to climate change impacts. Interestingly successful adaptation was also framed as sharing of lessons-learned or communicating other findings to a wider audience, and also to measure channelling of funding, project management, or social inclusion aspects.One of the key findings is that how the project is to address adaptation also influences how effective adaptation is to be measured and verified leading to different typical strengths and challenges in assessing effectiveness.