‘How Well Are We Adapting?’, WAGA’s project to develop a monitoring, evaluation and reporting framework for adaptation performance by councils, is gaining international recognition.
In June, Heather McClaren, WAGA’s Adaptation Project Officer, attended a workshop in Thailand organised by the Asian Institute of Technology on Climate Compatible Development in Asian and Pacific Cities. WAGA was invited to attend because ‘How Well Are We Adapting?’ is one of the only projects in the world to develop a framework for tracking adaptation, particularly at a sub-national level (as opposed to national), and test it with practitioners. Tracking adaptation progress through monitoring and evaluation (ME) frameworks is an emerging field, acknowledged in the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris as an important area for further development.
ME is critical for assessing and accurately reporting on adaptation performance, benchmarking against others, finding the gaps and planning effectively for the future. For service organisations such as councils, clear data on impacts they can expect will enable them to take into account climate change in setting service levels for their ratepayers/customers. In developing the ME framework for councils, WAGA has also found that it engages staff across departments to find out exactly how climate change affects their operations and services now. In other words, it’s a communications tool with immediate value.
The workshop in Thailand provided useful comparison of approaches and valuable reflection on WAGA’s project in the light of other countries’ and cities’ experience. It will also contribute to a policy brief to the United Nations University on measuring climate compatibility of cities.
For further information including a summary report on the workshop, please contact WAGA.
