Successful coastal adaptation projects? The role of multi-lateral climate funding.

<p><strong>This thesis investigates the evaluation of climate change adaptation success of projects in coastal zones of developing countries, specifically focusing on those financed through multilateral organisations. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) underscores the critical nature of adaptation for communities in these areas, particularly given the compounded impacts of rising sea levels and climate variability (Pörtner et al., 2022). This thesis examines the critical role of climate adaptation interventions in coastal zones in contributing to coastal communities' resilience, where pressures on their well-being and the environment they depend on are increasing. A widening funding gap for adaptation strategies persists despite global efforts to bolster adaptation through climate finance mechanisms. The complexity of climate change adaptation, coupled with the specific contexts of implementation, shapes the understanding of its success. This complexity also challenges the effectiveness of current Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) systems in assessing the impact of adaptation interventions, raising questions about whether the right tools are being used and if they are sufficient to understand climate adaptation success at the local community level.</strong></p><p>The latest assessments of the fulfilment of previous climate negotiation commitments, such as achieving USD 100 billion per year by 2020, half of which should go to adaptation funding, show these targets remain unmet, despite noticeable increases in tracked climate finance flows. The Paris Agreement, under Article 14, mandates a global stocktake to evaluate the collective adaptation efforts and support of country parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. However, the process focuses predominantly on national programme efforts, leaving a gap in understanding the aggregated adaptation achievements at the project level. Consequently, this research confronts a pivotal question: How does multilateral climate funding influence the evaluation of success in coastal adaptation?</p><p>A mixed-method approach incorporates expert interviews, practitioner surveys, and content analysis of project proposals and their M&E systems. A grounded theory framework underpins this methodology. The analysis focuses on climate adaptation projects in coastal areas funded through the three leading multilateral institutions under the UNFCCC finance mechanisms: the Adaptation Fund, Green Climate Fund, and two funds under the Global Environmental Facility. The study identifies six key challenges to measuring adaptation success from existing literature. It examines M&E systems against these parameters: long time horizons for intended beneficial impacts to manifest, shifting baseline data and changing contexts as a result of climate change being an incremental problem, uncertainty regarding regional and local climate trends, lack of a standard "off the shelf" methodology to evaluate adaptation, attributing outcomes directly to specific adaptation efforts, and the mismatch between divergent adaptation values, perceptions, and goals among stakeholders and technical experts.</p><p>The practical findings indicate that climate adaptation success remains a concept open to debate, with little consensus among practitioners involved in project implementation and M&E design. Project M&E systems mainly focus on observing outcomes, with limited application of Programme Theory elements due to project requirements and time constraints. However, emerging practices in evaluation systems are incorporating elements that look at the impact of interventions in the long term and assume a more holistic view to understand contributing factors for communities' vulnerability and resilience. While some progress has been made in evaluating interventions by incorporating Theory of Change approaches, challenges persist in detaching adaptation concepts and goal setting from the influence of definitions established by funding and implementing institutions. The involvement of communities impacted in the decision-making process is not evident in project designs, and ex-post evaluations to understand sustainable and long-term adaptation achievements are still nascent among multilateral funds.</p><p>On the theoretical side, the findings highlight the need for new paradigms to redefine adaptation success in coastal areas, considering the complexities of nature–human interactions and the integration of sustainable development and risk management without negative impacts on livelihoods and ecosystems. Rethinking success factors in coastal adaptation will necessitate changes in the current climate finance architecture, as the need for holistic, transformational, and strategic climate interventions is currently challenged by the short-term and narrow scope of projects funded through the climate finance mechanisms. The role of evaluation will need to be elevated to meet the challenges of understanding climate adaptation achievements in an integrated and interdependent manner.</p><p>This thesis contributes to the broader discussion on climate change adaptation evaluation and the meaning of adaptation success in coastal areas. It offers insights into the constraints and challenges of evaluating climate adaptation in coastal areas, identifies alternatives for evaluation systems, and proposes a framework to assess whether the success of adaptation interventions is likely.</p>