Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Decentralized renewable energy (DRE) projects have the potential to contribute to climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation, and sustainable development objectives. DRE systems are considered for emissions reduction or poverty alleviation purposes while their role for climate change adaptation has hardly been analysed. In terms of adaptation, DRE provides electricity that can be used both to prepare for and recover from disasters, and to provide additional income and livelihood opportunities, thus reducing dependency on natural resources. For example, DRE can power early warning systems, telecommunication systems, health clinics and potable water systems. Although it might be said that climate change adaptation applications of DRE systems have already been implemented, the vulnerability of these systems towards climate impacts, and the robustness of these systems to climatic impacts are oftentimes not even considered.

The assessment of 15 community-owned renewable energy projects in Guatemala and Nicaragua show that, under certain conditions, renewable energy projects can simultaneously meet the triple objective of sustainable development and climate change mitigation and adaptation. Research also points to specific drivers which can facilitate or hinder projects meeting their own stated objectives and, consequently, the triple objective, and their long-term functioning. These drivers include the specific background of the beneficiary community, the financing and implementing entities and the local governance structures in place.

In 2005, the international carbon market was launched under the Kyoto Protocol, creating an innovative financing design for low-emissions development initiatives. Just over 10 years after its inception, the carbon market can now provide insight on the opportunities and limitations of “blended finance” approaches, whereby private-public partnerships are employed to pursue global development goals such as poverty alleviation and development. Utilizing process-tracing and value chain methods, this chapter adds granularity to debates on whether and how carbon markets can support local economic development, as measured through the creation of local enterprises and the support of local livelihoods. It offers a “Livelihood Index” to assess the employment impact of the carbon intervention in order to address the core question: how is the carbon credit pie divvied up? Three carbon projects in Cambodia, aimed at household level interventions (water filters, biodigesters for cooking and fertilizer production, and fuel-efficient cookstoves) are evaluated through the livelihood index and results indicate that distribution strategies matter for local economic gains. Distribution strategies to deliver low-carbon technologies within the carbon market are currently a “black box”, understudied and undocumented in the project pipeline; this paper argues that opening the black box may be useful for policymakers, standard setting organizations and academics interested in promoting pro-poor impacts through carbon market interventions.

Evaluating climate change adaptation (CCA) interventions has yet proved to be a difficult task, as they involve a number of different stakeholders, time and geographical scale and political jurisdictions. As one effort to shed light on the subject, this paper presents the methodology and the results of a meta-analysis of ex-post evaluations of CCA programmes using a realist approach. This paper analyses CCA programmes in nine countries: Armenia, Egypt, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, the Philippines, Tanzania, Turkey and Zimbabwe. Together with their respective host governments, these programmes were implemented by either UNDP or various United Nations partner agencies and have already been evaluated by independent evaluators. Based on the analytical frameworks for evaluating CCA interventions, the authors hypothesized a number of key context, mechanism, and outcome configurations, which are considered vital in realist evaluation approach but have not yet been widely tested in the field of CCA. Although ex-post evaluations of multi-donor funded projects tend to be prepared out of bureaucratic requirement, the analytical method used in this paper, if used carefully, can unearth otherwise hidden important lessons and provide useful explanations. The results of the analysis can indicate that adopting a realist approach to complex development projects, such as these CCA programmes, is indeed a useful way of providing applicable explanations, rather than judgments, of what types of interventions may work for whom, how and in what circumstances for future CCA programming.

This chapter focuses on the evaluation of adaptive capacities of community-level human systems related to agriculture and food security. It highlights findings regarding approaches and domains to monitor and evaluate behavioral changes from CGIAR’s research program on climate change, agriculture and food security (CCAFS). This program, implemented in five West African countries, is intended to enhance adaptive capacities in agriculture management of natural resources and food systems. In support of participatory action research on climate-smart agriculture, a monitoring and evaluation plan was designed with the participation of all stakeholders to track changes in behavior of the participating community members. Individuals’ and groups’ stories of changes were collected using most significant change tools. The collected stories of changes were substantiated through field visits and triangulation techniques. Frequencies of the occurrence of characteristics of behavioral changes in the stories were estimated. The results show that smallholder farmers in the intervention areas adopted various characteristics of behavior change grouped into five domains: knowledge, practices, access to assets, partnership and organization. These characteristics can help efforts to construct quantitative indicators of climate change adaptation at local level. Further, the results suggest that application of behavioral change theories can facilitate the development of climate change adaptation indicators that are complementary to indicators of development outcomes. We conclude that collecting stories on behavioral changes can contribute to biophysical adaptation monitoring and evaluation.

This article highlights the process of using participatory approaches in measuring resilience using the Tracking Adaptation and Measuring Development (TAMD) Framework. The utilization of participatory approaches in Isiolo County using the TAMD framework is aligned to the recent thinking of measuring ‘subjective resilience’ using people’s perceptions to quantify household resilience. This article outlines the process of developing subjective indicators with communities, collection of baseline, monitoring and early outcome data by communities who were assisted in the development of their own adaptation theories of change. It also highlights the lessons and implications for policy if the approach is to be replicated at sub-national and community levels.

Whilst the principles of evaluating climate change adaptation are widely documented, there are many challenges in applying these principles in practice to evaluate, improve and learn from multi-sector, multi-scale and multi-stakeholder CCA initiatives with uncertain and future-oriented outcomes.

This chapter documents a research-evaluation approach applied during a 3-year, child-centred, community-based CCA project implemented in 40 barangays across four vulnerable provinces in the Philippines. The research aimed to help project implementers to learn from real-time feedback and perspectives from children and their communities and other participants. Researchers from the Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney and practitioners from implementing NGOs Plan International and Save the Children collaborated on translating theory-based and development evaluation techniques into the field. We developed local-level indicators of adaptation, participatory focus group discussion and interview methods, and a guidance document for gathering and analysing evidence against these indicators.

Key to the success of this method was its participatory foundations – operationalising the principle that since ultimately adaptation is local, local voices and perspectives matter in understanding the impact of a project. Whilst there are limits to the “ideal” evaluation process, it is possible to achieve evaluative rigour in a process that is sensitive to the practical realities and pressures of project implementation. Embedding research and learning within practice – in the inherently uncertain context of supporting a community to adapt to climate change – provided new pathways for realising and sharing learnings to achieve better adaptation outcomes.

Brazil has historically coped with drought, a phenomenon that especially impacts the semi-arid lands of the Northeast. To deal with the various impacts of a current multi-year drought (2010-ongoing), the Government of Brazil, led by the Ministry of National Integration, partnered with the World Bank (WB) on a technical assistance program to foster proactive drought policy and management. The program works across sectors (climate/meteorology, water and sanitation, agriculture, environment, and disaster risk management) and levels (local, river-basin, urban, state, regional and federal) in relation to the outcomes and stakeholders it aims to engage and influence, and trough the integration of WB Global Practices and programs.

Inspired by successful models and lessons from other countries, the program aims to contribute to greater climate change resilience and reach a broad community of beneficiaries. To achieve these objectives, partners convened to (1) build a Northeast Drought Monitor; and (2) pilot drought preparedness plans across Northeast.

This chapter showcases the program and highlights key-milestones and direct and indirect outcomes identified by 2015. The institutional change process was assessed using qualitative analytical tools that integrate Outcome Mapping, the Capacity Development Results Framework, and Outcome Harvesting. Strengths, challenges, and outcomes (institutional changes) were identified, by tracking the program’s contribution throughout its duration and at its completion.

The evidence shows that the initiative was able to convene key-regional and federal level multi-sector stakeholders at a decisive moment, resulting in an unprecedented bottom-up and regionally-led collaboration. Through the engagement and commitment of the partners, the program fostered and coordinated continuous sharing of knowledge, data, and work between service providers, secretariats, municipalities and other stakeholders from distinct sectors and scales of decision making. Thus, it influenced progress towards overcoming some of the historical challenges related to drought management in Brazil.

With increasing implementation of climate change adaptation policies and projects as well as continued integration of adaptation into planning processes, there is an increasing need to understand the results of these adaptation interventions. Are they achieving their objectives? Are they actually leading to a reduction in vulnerability to climate change?

Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) can help answer these questions. However, due to the context specific and cross-sectoral nature of adaptation there is no one-size fits all approach to M&E. The Adaptation M&E Navigator helps to select a suitable M&E approach by providing a list of specific M&E purposes and matching them to relevant approaches. Key characteristics of each approach are highlighted to enable informed decision making. The Adaptation M&E Navigator also provides links to further guidance and examples from practice. The chapter outlines the rational and structure of the Adaptation M&E Navigator and how it can be used in practice.