Monitor, review and evaluate

Monitoring, reviewing and evaluating your adaptation arrangements, and the difference between the three components, is critical for success.

Monitor and report progress

Monitoring is a form of observation that takes place during a project to track progress and make changes, where necessary. Your adaptation arrangements should be monitored periodically to understand whether you are achieving your aims and objectives, to understand what progress has been made and whether your actions are appropriate and cost effective.

Review regularly

Reviews can be carried out at a particular milestone in a project or in response to specific issues. Findings and recommendations from reviews can be used to improve your adaptation work. Monitoring and reviewing can be undertaken at the same time so that as you notice changes that need to be made they can be implemented. This allows new information to be included as it becomes available, and plans to be maintained and kept up-to-date.

Reflect on your learnings

Climate change adaptation is an ongoing process, through which it is important to invest time to reflect on what has worked and why. Regular reflection on process and content enables continuous learning and sets the tone for a flexible and reflexive adaptation planning process.

Evaluate the outcomes

An evaluation is usually undertaken at the end of a project or after the implementation is complete. However, the planning of an evaluation should be carried out when considering what you want to achieve at the start of a project. Those managing an evaluation need to focus on asking the right questions to assess the data collected.