Abstract

National level monitoring, reporting and evaluation (MRE) of climate change adaptation is a topic of growing interest to policymakers, researchers and practitioners across Europe. The 2015 EEA report on national level MRE for adaptation in Europe illustrated the considerable progress made in implementing national level MRE systems and highlighted a number of interacting issues that make MRE for adaptation challenging. These include long timescales, uncertainty, attribution and shifting baselines (EEA 2015). Individually, these are not unique to climate adaptation therefore there is potential for learning between evaluation communities working on different policy domains and facing similar challenges.

This paper highlights transferable lessons learned that may inform MRE practice for climate change adaptation from evaluation communities working in the following three policy domains: biodiversity, adaptation and international development, and sustainability. The aim of this working paper is to reveal insightful, inspirational and relevant perspectives for those working on MRE for adaptation in Europe, in particular at national level. It builds upon some of the key themes identified in the EEA 2015 report, including the purposes of MRE, issues of governance and stakeholder engagement, and methodological approaches.

The three domains were chosen following a two-stage review to identify policy areas that exhibit similar characteristics or face similar MRE challenges to adaptation. For example we looked for policy areas characterised by long timescales, high degrees of uncertainty or shifting baselines. The first stage assessed policy domains against a set of criteria to understand their likely relevance to adaptation MRE at national level. The second stage comprised a literature review for three short-listed policy domains that was then supplemented by interviews with relevant stakeholders. At this point we also considered the differences in the approaches to MRE as these can also be a valuable source of transferable knowledge.