Page - (000249) - in Evaluating Climate Change Action for Sustainable Development

Chapter13 WhatDoEvaluationsTellUsAboutClimate ChangeAdaptation?Meta-analysis withaRealistApproach TakaakiMiyaguchi andJuha I.Uitto Abstract 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 evaluationsofCCAprogrammesusing 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 evaluatingCCA interventions, the authors hypothesized a number ofkeycontext,mechanism,andoutcomeconfigurations,whichareconsideredvital in realist evaluation approach but have not yet beenwidely 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 interventionsmaywork for whom, how and in what circumstances for futureCCAprogramming. Keywords Realist approach •Climate change adaptation •Meta-analysis T.Miyaguchi (*) RitsumeikanUniversity,Kyoto, Japan e-mail: takaakinet@gmail.com J.I.Uitto IndependentEvaluationOffice,GlobalEnvironment Facility,Washington,DC,USA e-mail: juitto@thegef.org ©TheAuthor(s) 2017 J.I.Uitto et al. (eds.),EvaluatingClimateChangeAction for Sustainable Development,DOI10.1007/978-3-319-43702-6_13 235