The sixth step of the Climate Resilience Guide focuses on the critical process of monitoring and evaluating adaptation efforts. This phase ensures that adaptation strategies remain effective and sustainable over time by implementing a structured approach to track progress, measure outcomes, and adjust actions, as necessary. The key tasks in this step include developing a monitoring and evaluation approach, defining appropriate indicators, finding examples of effective monitoring indicators, using monitoring results to enhance the adaptation process, and conducting a self-check to ensure thorough evaluation.
Developing the monitoring and evaluation approach is the first task in this step. It involves creating a dedicated monitoring and evaluation plan or strategy as part of the adaptation action plan. This approach helps local authorities track the implementation of adaptation actions and assess whether the main objectives set in the adaptation strategy are being met. Clear and specific objectives are crucial for a meaningful monitoring and evaluation process, and these objectives should be made measurable through well-defined indicators.
Defining monitoring indicators is the next crucial task. Indicators are essential for tracking a city’s progress and learning from the results. They provide quantifiable evidence of impacts, progress, and performance, making them attractive to policymakers and decision-makers. However, selecting the most appropriate and practical indicators can be challenging due to data availability and the complexity of measuring actual progress toward increased resilience.
Finding examples of adaptation monitoring indicators can provide valuable inspiration. Local authorities can look to indicators developed by other cities and communities, research institutions, national frameworks, or international organizations. These examples can help shape a robust set of indicators tailored to the city’s specific needs.
Using monitoring results to enhance the adaptation process is a vital part of the monitoring framework. Monitoring results should be used to revise and readjust the adaptation strategy and action plan, turning them into living documents that support continuous and consistent adaptation planning and implementation. Additionally, monitoring outcomes provide insights into the effectiveness of the monitoring system itself, indicating if any adjustments are needed. Lastly, evaluation results should be communicated to various stakeholders, from decision-makers to citizens, to inform and incentivize further action.
For the successful implementation of this step, the following activities should be undertaken:
6.1 Developing a monitoring and evaluation approach
6.2 Defining appropriate monitoring indicators
6.3 Finding examples of effective monitoring indicators
6.4 Utilizing monitoring results to enhance adaptation processes
6.5 Monitoring and evaluating adaptation: Self-evaluation
How to move ahead
The MISSION CE CLIMATE partners have developed two guides proving insights on monitoring and evaluation aspects:
- The guide on Strategy for Climate Resilient Communities of Europe,
- The methodology for implementing a comprehensive Risk and Vulnerability Assessment.
Both documents can be downloaded from the project’s website (www.interreg-central.eu/projects/mission-ce-climate/) as well as from the www.climatehub.si platform.
The Urban Adaptation Support Tool (https://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/en/knowledge/tools/urban-ast) from the Climate ADAPT platform also provides useful recommendations.
