New policy brief: How bottom-up M&E insights can inform national adaptation planning and reporting

A woman fills water into a watering can

Photo © GIZ / Sumi Teufel

Most adaptation actions are local and closely related to development needs, so it is important to develop and use local monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems to capture what is happening on the ground and integrate lessons from this into national and global M&E systems. This new briefing by the International Institute for Environment and Development explores how learning from the local to national level informs planning and reporting from the bottom up, providing stronger evidence for adaptation assessments. Drawing on experience in Mali, Senegal, Morocco and Kenya, it unpacks how effective vertical integration of subnational and national M&E can improve national planning and lead to more robust reporting while saving time and resources by making use of existing data collection mechanisms.

Key messages:

  • Learning from robust local-level evidence can improve the contribution climate adaptation interventions make to achieving sustainable development now and into the future.
  • Integrating climate adaptation into devolved national planning will lead to more resilient development and help achieve synergies in climate actions delivery. To leave no one behind, we must know what works where, when and for whom.
  • Developing bespoke climate adaptation M&E that ensures learning from the local level informs national-level planning and reporting will make national and global assessments more robust.
  • Although systemising results from a range of scattered local adaptation actions remains a challenge, combining information across scales can improve planning.

Please read the full policy brief here.

Learn more about how governments will need to think differently about how they monitor and evaluate their adaptation initiatives if they want to keep sustainable development on track in the brief “How integrated monitoring and evaluation systems can help countries address climate impacts” here.

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