Monitoring and evaluation, vulnerability reduction assessment

A final yet vital element of this paper focuses on M&E. It is now generally agreed that indicators need to be developed to monitor adaptation implementation, to follow-up on project activities and to respond to changes over time. Indeed, given the uncertainty of predicting climate futures, flexibility is a key ingredient of robust and long-term adaptation. However, vulnerability, and its reduction, is a difficult thing to measure and the development of tools to monitor progress is in its infancy. Notably, UNDP and the GEF are developing a toolkit called the Vulnerability Reduction Assessment (VRA) that may be fit for purpose.

Vulnerability reduction assessment

The VRA is designed to measure the changing climate vulnerabilities of communities, and to be comparable across different projects, regions, and contexts, making it possible to determine if a given project is successful or unsuccessful in reducing climate risks. The VRA can be compared to a guided participatory rural appraisal, focusing on community perceptions of vulnerability to climate change and capacity to adapt. It is based on a composite of four indicator questions, posed during a series of three or four community level meetings over the period of a project. Table 4.4 gives an overview of the VRA

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method, drawing on the example of drought, which is particularly relevant to the WASH sector. The VRA’s perception-based approach is a compliment to quantitative indicators that are also used to measure project results.

Some lessons have been learned about the VRA from the UNDP’s pilot experiences in Jamaica, Namibia, Niger and Guatemala. First, a VRA has to be targeted and must speak to the community’s experiences and livelihoods. Second, the process holds the project accountable to the communities and provides ongoing information that can guide adaptive project management. Third, communities may not be immediately forthcoming with their perspectives and may reserve judgement until the project yields tangible results (Crane et al. 2008).

Table 4.3: Vulnerability Reduction Assessment (VRA) methodology APF

Step VRA Indicator VRA Questions Logic

Assessing current vulnerability

1. Vulnerability of livelihood to existing CC and/or CV.

Example  Addresses present climate-related development issues – often the main climate concern of the community.

: Rate the impact

Example  During the first VRA consultation, this question will describe baseline adaptation. During subsequent consultations, it will assess progress against that baseline.

: Rate your community’s ability to cope with negative impacts of drought.

Assessing future climate risks

3. Vulnerability of livelihood/welfare to developing CC risks.

Example  Once present context of variability has been discussed, this question focuses the community on their perceptions of likely impacts of CC.

Example  This question compliments the previous one by focusing the community on potential actions to respond to CC.

: Rate how your community would be able to cope with doubled drought frequency.

Formulating an adaptation strategy

5. Magnitude of barriers (institutional, policy, technological, financial, etc) barriers to

adaptation.

Example  This question will qualify the above question, and focus it onto the needs of the community in successfully achieving adaptation.

: Rate how effective you think this project will be in reducing your risks from increasing

droughts.  This question will identify policy barriers, forming useful lessons for the country and global programmes.

Example  This question measures project sustainability and ownership, essential if adaptation to long-term CC is to be successful. and to carry it beyond the specific project focus

Example  This question measures adaptive capacity more directly than other questions, as it seeks to determine to what extent communities will continue to adapt, and to what extent they feel that they are able to do so.

: Rate your ability to cope with increasing droughts after this project is over.

Source: Crane et al. 2008

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4.7 Key messages

Actors

• There are a range of actors from the international to local level, who can fulfil important, but differing, pro-poor adaptation roles and functions. However, to date, many of these roles and functions are only being partially fulfilled or are not fulfilled at all.

Toolkits and approaches

• WASH and WRM investments, programmes and projects can be screened for climate risks and levels of vulnerability using new toolkits such as ADAPT, ORCHID, WELS and Cost-Benefit Analyses.

Effective screening aims to: ascertain the extent to which existing development projects already consider climate risks, identify strategies for incorporating climate change into future projects, and guide project managers to options that can minimise risks. A major challenge with such screening is to ensure that ‘its top-down’ approach is combined with ‘bottom-up’ inputs and that reliable local climate information is available.

• To promote pro-poor adaptation, a community-based screening tool, CRiSTAL, has been developed, drawing on a SLF. It aims to help users understand links between livelihoods and climate and to assess a project’s impact on community adaptive capacity. Potentially, this toolkit could be applied to WRM interventions, yet further analysis and field-testing is required to determine its effectiveness.

• Alternatively, existing approaches such as Water Safety Planning could be extended to include screening for climate change risks and impacts. In view of the ‘data gap’ in most developing countries, and difficulties in downscaling climate projections at the basin scale and below, scenario-based approaches which consider a range of different climate futures are recommended.

Experience

• Experiences of climate mainstreaming illustrate that: effective mainstreaming requires complex policy and institutional coordination; WASH-sector adaptation needs to be prioritised in the budgetary allocation process; and, capacity-building and consultation are key. ‘Mainstreaming’, however, usually focuses at the level of government. The extent to which the poor are represented in such processes is questionable.

• Lessons have been learned from implementing community-level adaptation projects. These lessons include: a wide-reaching communication strategy is needed; interventions should build upon existing coping strategies; focus should be placed on livelihoods and clear benefits should be provided to the community; national and local ‘political’ support markedly increases the probability of project sustainability; and, issues of equity, access and water resource distribution have only been patchily integrated into adaptation project design.

• A key element of adaptation is a flexible and long-term approach to M&E. Preliminary evidence from UNDP field experience suggests that its ‘VRA’ tool – designed to assess vulnerability and measure project impacts over time – may be fit for purpose.

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