Indicators to assess the effectiveness of climate change projects

Determining reasonable indicators for mitigation and adaptation climate change projects is complex.

Actions taken now are often designed to have an impact in the uncertain and distant future and may not directly affect climate change, but be taken as a step to prepare for future actions.

In addition, there is a spectrum of projects, from the pure climate change-focused projects to those that provide climate change benefits as one part of an overall development program, and finally to those with only incidental indirect effects.

The IDB just published a new working paper on Indicators to assess the effectiveness of climate change projects including those that seek to adapt to the expected impacts of climate change and those that promote low carbon emissions growth strategies to mitigate greenhouse gases.

The objective of the paper is to discuss SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely) indicators that can be used for assessing the impact of climate change projects.

The paper discusses at length the challenges in identifying these indicators, and organizes the discussion around four stages.

The indicator examples cover each of these four stages and include:

• Projects that collect data to perform vulnerability assessments to droughts and floods,
• Projects that build national technical capacities and improve information
• Investments in in-situ and ex-situ seed banks
• Projects that improve ability of energy facilities to withstand climate chocks
• Factory energy efficiency projects
• Gas fuel switch projects
• Methane recovery projects
• Reforestation

Finally, the document discusses the main pitfalls and “indicators” to avoid on the basis of their SMARTness.