Monitoring and evaluation of Community Based Adaptation: Where we are now?

Developmental practitioners have been monitoring and evaluating (M&E) developmental interventions using diverse set of participatory tools and concepts since time immemorial. Oftentimes it is done by comparing outputs and outcomes with the objectives and targets set by the project in a participatory manner which worked very well in a well understood field of development where boundaries are well defined and baselines stay static for all practical purposes. However, the concept of climate change adaptation is not at the same level of maturity as that of development, neither boundaries are clear, nor the diverse players engaged in climate change adaptation have come to the same terms as their engagement in development. This brings us to a set of well acknowledged challenges for M&E of climate change adaptation which include uncertainty in nature of impacts at time and geographical scales which makes difficult to pinpoint baselines which are not static as in a non-changing climate, long-term nature of climate change adaptation benefits accrued from adaptation projects while most projects are planned and implemented at relatively short periods, and different opinions, concepts, contexts and scales in which adaptation takes place. The overarching questions for M&E of CBA are how far can we use traditional/existing tools for M&Eing adaptation and what additional concepts/tools are needed for M&Eing adaptation? Specific questions are who decides what and how to be M&Ed, should different expectations of stakeholders from adaptation means different M&E frameworks/concepts/tools, and how to communicate and ensure M&E doesn’t become a burden on resources?

The session discussions have revealed that the same participatory tools that have been engaged in developmental planning could be well used for M&E of climate change adaptation (Robin James and Mike Wiggins).  Tools that bring greater integration of different actors, time and three-dimensional space appear to have greater value in understanding vulnerability and resilience (Robin James) and without fail be able to capture the most significant change brought by the project (Mike Wiggins). However, there is a need for stronger conceptual framework within which these tools can work well and communicate the right message from the evaluation outcomes.

Participatory tools have become standard protocol of entry into local level interventions for many agencies, whether for research or development or for both.

The session has clearly brought out that the conceptual frameworks are better developed if they are developed bottom up i.e. by distilling experiences and messages from M&E of on-the-ground projects (i.e. inductive) rather than through deductive means. The Participatory Monitoring, Evaluation, Reflection and Learning (MERL) is one such framework that has evolved bottom up from the experience of Action Research for Community Adaptation in Bangladesh (ARCAB) and other experiences that the IIED-CARE team has considered while developing MERL (Jessica Ayers). MERL employs learning by doing approach where in communities and practitioners are able to track, respond to, and take advantage of changing contexts and surprising events and emphasizes ‘accountability downwards’. Since the framework is based on several on-the-ground experiences, it has been able to identify a common set of indicators that all partners have chosen to evaluate the effectiveness of their actions.

ARCAB is an innovative long-term community based adaptation project that aims to generate scientific evidence for community based adaptation with the involvement of several local, national and international partners (Sumana Tanchangya). Being an innovation in itself, ARCAB has encountered several challenges which include difficulty defining CBA and the wide range of action and research partners working in different communities with different approaches, indicators and frameworks. On the positive side, these differences and commonalities have provided a fertile ground for crystallising M&E framework that was eventually emerged as ARCAB M&E Framework.

One major limitation with the M&E frameworks and approaches appears to be approaching resilience and adaptation ex ante i.e. informing project planners what would work and wouldn’t work with reasonable confidence before the project is designed and implemented. However, the Climate change and Environmental Degradation Risk and adaptation Assessment (CEDRA) pilot program appears to have overcome this limitation to a certain extent by putting emphasis on participative processes leading to identification of adaptation actions (Mike Wiggins). This program also recognizes the fact that communities are not just facing climate change but many other issues and a means to address all these issues in the M&E framework.

The session has clarified that the communities has to be the ones who determines what need to be measured and evaluated as is evident from the work presented in the session. However, it was observed that most often community tend to focus about immediate responses and the participatory adaptation interventions should be able to help them to see that short-term responses won’t help much for climate change adaptation. Frameworks/tools developed only based on ‘common elements’ tends to miss important lesson that differences and reason behind the existence of these differences has to offer. Avoiding tipping points is absolute necessity and it can be done by taking climate risks out of risk category and tracking what people are doing, outcomes around adaptive capacity and vulnerability relative to climate risks. 

Prepared by SVRK Prabhakar (IGES) based on discussions at the session on Monitoring and Evaluation of CBA, 6th International Conference on Community Based Adaptation, Hanoi, Vietnam. 

Bringing Evidence to the Table: Reflections from the 6th International Conference on Community Based Adaptation, Hanoi, Vietnam

Attending 6^th CBA in Hanoi, Vietnam I started realizing that people are getting more comfortable speaking about CBA. They don’t anymore talk about what is CBA and why CBA is needed but rather have moved to a next higher level of discourse i.e. sharing their experiences in a more articulated manner.

On the positive side, considering that this conference is about and for practitioners of CBA and most representation of speakers are from on-going projects,most speakers have spent considerable time explaining about their project and what it aims to achieve. It is evident that more and more projects are putting efforts involving multiple actors into their projects, and surprisingly even government-driven programs talk about involving communities. Most of this change could have come both from self realization that adaptation is all about participation, ownership and empowerment; but partly must also have come from emphasis by NGOs, bi- and multi-lateral agencies such as GEF, World Bank and others.

On the down side [probably a better word would be ‘work in progress’], still very less evidence is being presented on how CBA project have benefited communities and other stakeholders and actually have led to adaptation or climate risk reduction. Probably this could be done by selectively inviting participation from projects that have finished implementation. It is tricky since very less or no resources would be available for project staff to travel and present in conferences after the project is finished.

A plenary from 6th CBA, Hanoi, Vietnam

Presenting empirical evidence would have made lot of difference to the conference gathering and to the CBA in general. Most work presented talks about what communities believe and think and stress on how to involve various stakeholders in CBA in ‘textual’ terms. While these are important operational aspects, we need more refined information being presented in a much more analytic manner. This preference could be just for me, since I recall people saying this is not the venue for presenting analytic work. Nevertheless, analysis results can always be tailor-presented to the audience. One area where CBA literature can improve is presenting reasons and framework/methodology behind identifying practices and policies that projects chose to implement. Why only X and why not Y, how much of the decision to chose X over Y was influenced by community preferences and those of outsiders? There are questions raised about right to adaptation, fairness in decision making, and even more importantly if inequality is being well addressed.

There is still a larger question that lingers in my mind. How much a project planner or even a researcher should weigh in on what communities think and believe [We don’t give second opinion on what a doctor prescribes as a medicine even for cold] and how to cross-check what communities think is good for them is really good for them. Probably this can be done by emphasizing and help converting unfelt needs and wants into felt needs and wants. Probably this is happening on the ground but nothing much has come into presentations and articulations. 

I think CBA has passed the stage of saleability; however this doesnt mean that we stop hiring sales men to sell it [I changed this sentence after hearing the speech of Richard Bossi]. We also need more people who have reached a stage of providing more emphatic, empirical, and analytical evidence (even if it is qualitative), and sharing experiences of CBA working on the ground; clarifying operational overlaps, as against conceptual ones, that exist between development, DRR and CCA; and measured benefits from mainstreaming CCA/CBA/DRR. M&E can help achieve lot of this. It would be interesting to see M&E staff from projects sharing their experiences of M&Eing adaptation and what they expect from M&E researchers or those who tailor M&E tools for adaptation.


More to come...

アジア農村地域の産業振興 成功例と課題

This article is also posted in English at my previous blog post.

Source: 月刊ビジネスアイエネコ（2012年3月号）日本工業新聞社

Bringing businesses to rural Asia: What is working and what is not

SVRK Prabhakar, Senior Policy Researcher, Natural Resource Management Division, IGES, Japan

To be published in Business i. Eneco, March 2012

Asia is one of the fastest growing regions in the world, both in economic and population terms. In 2010, the economies in the region have grown at a rate of 8.2% while the rest of the world grew only at a rate of 5%. This story appears to be phenomenal by any standard. However, examining the role of rural Asia in contributing to the overall growth will reveal a different picture to us. The contribution of agriculture sector to the total GDP has been declining over the years in the region, standing at 10% in 2010. This means that nearly 58% of Asian population, of which 81% is dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods, that lives in rural areas contribute to only 10% of the total wealth produced in the region. This appears to be, by any standard, a gross mismanagement of valuable human resources in any corporate firm’s strategy book. As a result, rural Asia is characterized by highest unemployment rate, high poverty and resource-deprived.

The organized private sector employs 30-35% of the total work force in many ASEAN countries, which is second only to the unorganized agriculture sector putting government at third as an employer and similar trend could be expected in other Asian countries too. However, the penetration of organized private sector in rural Asia is almost negligent due to limited purchasing power in these areas and limited manpower that can cater to the services offered by the sector. Most governments in the region operate with limited financial resources and cannot offer gainful employment to rural population. This further leaves the rural areas out of mainstream economic activities and hence often don’t attract corporate attention for investments.

Reasons behind poor wealth creation in rural Asia

Several issues play a role in poor contribution of rural areas to the total wealth created in the region and most often these issues are interlinked with each other as in daisy chain. Some important issues include wide prevalence of manual- labor oriented agricultural production systems that engage only seasonal employment, poor infrastructure facilities such as energy and transportation, high poverty and most importantly the lack of educational and vocational training facilities that can produce the talent for the needy industrial production and service sectors. One important argument that explains the existence of these problems is the ‘growth-center approach’ adopted by many countries as a developmental model wherein developmental investments are often concentrated at a single or few locations in an administrative unit. Though this approach has helped in developing certain regions as industrial hubs and eventually urban growth centers, the rest of the areas were deprived of the talent with the talent available in rural areas migrating to these ‘growth-centers’ as internal migration and brain drain. Though the growth-center approach is expected to be undertaken at the initial phases of development and to be supported by income distribution policies, it is the later part that has failed in most Asian countries. As a result, much of the rural areas were deprived of the talent and other resources. This has continued over the years taking the rural Asia in a downward spiral depriving them of their fair share in the overall economic growth story of Asia.

Strategies for greater business penetration in rural areas

The situation in rural Asia is changing, though, as suggested by recent developments. Realizing the potential of rural markets for untapped markets (read consumers) and source of human resources, the private sector is devising new strategies to reach out to these areas. One example to be cited is the Grameenphone in Bangladesh. Grameenphone has achieved a 98% of coverage area in Bangladesh with 35 million subscriber base within few years of its establishment. For most people, Grameenphone is a telecommunication revolution while very few know that it created record revenue and employment from predominantly poor and rural subscriber base. Grameenphone has become a source of livelihood for more than 300,000 people (working as its dealers, retailers, scratch card outlets, vendors etc) in a country of 149 million while producing a revenue worth one billion dollars per year (a per capita income of 6.7 USD by Grameenphone itself). Such cases suggest several lessons for other corporate ventures that consider capturing potential rural markets in Asia. Technology ventures need to make products affordable for rural population, make them within the reach of technical and educational abilities of the rural consumers, design secondary services that provide local gainful employment, and stress the need for wider social benefits apart from the intended direct benefit of the product.

A multi-utility vehicle using water pump. Sustaining local innovations would be one of the greatest role that corporate sector can play in rural Asia.

The public-private partnerships are enabling the greater corporate penetration in rural Asia. In South Asia, self-help groups are being formed to utilize these emerging development opportunities. Micro-finance in Bangladesh and installation of bioenergy production plants in India can be taken as examples for this wherein financial institutions and energy technology firms work with local governments to support micro-finance schemes and installation of bioenergy based power plants. Here too, designing products and services simple and affordable has enabled rural consumers to accept them at a rapid rate. Combining capacity building programs along with product introduction is helping rural artisans to take up new income generation activities associated with the products being introduced. For example, as a part of the rural electrification program through solar power panels, technology firms and local NGOs are training rural artisans in assembling and repairing solar panels and servicing batteries. These approaches are creating an entirely new local economy that is supplementing the agriculture income in most rural areas. However, more could be done to further hasten the rural economic growth. Ideas such as ‘Pura’ (Provision of Urban Amenities in Rural Areas) put forward by Dr A.P.J Abdul Kalam, the President of India, have even greater potential to kick-start rural economies. Seen as an overarching concept, ‘Pura’ encourages greater public private partnerships between Gram Panchayats (lowest tier of self governance system in India) and private sector for developing urban amenities and advanced infrastructure such as warehouses, integrated business hubs, in rural areas while enhancing the rural income and skill base. There is even more potential for rural employment generation through schemes such as reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD), ecotourism and soil carbon sequestration wherein local communities can get benefit from related payments and from the employment generated through these activities while safeguarding the environment. 

To be published in Business i. Eneco, March 2012

My performance in lecturing students

This is a long pending task I just managed to finish & put on the blog! Sorry, this entry is not about climate change but my performance in communicating the message of climate change to the graduate and post-graduate students at Nagoya University!

I have been a visiting lecturer at Nagoya University at the Nagoya University Global Environmental Leaders Program for the last two years. I was asked to teach graduate and post-graduate students on the topic of climate change and developing countries. The class consisted of mixed nationalities with most of them are from Asian and European countries. The total strength of the class was 35.

As I do with most other things I do, I requested the students to evaluate my lecture using 20 indicators (See Table below) consisting of 4 on students, 8 on the content and 8 on content delivery on 1-5 scale where 1  means bad and 5 means excellent. This evaluation was not the standard part of my TOR to the course but was done on my initiative.

Some quick observations from the evaluation:

I couldn't analyze the responses for long time. Just got some time to do it and I am surprised to see that most  students have rated my lecture on level 4 or 5 on most indicators. Below is the figure showing the results. The ones rated 3 are mostly for indicators related to the students self evaluation of their English understanding skills and prior knowledge on the subject.

• Most indicators stayed the same in both years. However, there was an improvement in indicators of audibility and organization of the lecture delivery from the first year to the second year.
• Most students have rated 4 or 5 on various indicators related to the lecture content and delivery.
• Most students rated 3 or 4 for their English skills and their prior knowledge on the subject.
• Most commented that I talk too fast and don't give time to imbibe concepts (one expression that particularly caught my attention was 'WOW he is too fast').
• Few complained that I used too many slides with figures and I explain figures too fast.
• The students who said the topic was new to them rated my lecture as difficult to understand.
• The students who rated their prior knowledge on the subject as good have rated my lecture as good to excellent.
• Very few students with excellent English skills have rated my lecture as average. Most of these students thought I should have spent more time in explaining concepts.
• On overall, most students thought they learning was either good or excellent from the lecture. 

Figure: Rating distribution of students on various indicators of the lecture.

Table: Indicator list used for evaluation of the lecture.

Fitting the Radiation Safety Piece into the Jigsaw Puzzle: Restoring Agriculture and Food Sector Aftermath the Great Tohoku Disaster

Time and Date: 1-5PM on 8th November 2011. Venue: Room #801, Kokukaikan, Tokyo

Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, Hayama, Japan

For general participants: please get in touch at prabhakar@iges.or.jp or call if you wish to register your attendance in this event.

The Great Tohoku Earthquake that occurred on 11^th March 2011 is the most powerful earthquake in the known history of Japan. A chain of events unfolded after the earthquake that included a tsunami of historical magnitude that damaged critical infrastructure such as nuclear power plants located in Fukushima leading to release of unknown quantities of nuclear radiation into the environment. As a consequence of these series of events, lives of more than 25,000 people were lost, many went missing, and hundreds and thousands were displaced into various prefectures of Japan. Though Japan is known for its advanced earthquake and tsunami risk mitigation measures, these events have clearly overwhelmed the national and prefectural administration leading to a national emergency that is still unfolding.

Subsequently, many policy makers and disaster risk reduction specialist in Japan and abroad have been focused on how to rehabilitate the displaced people and how to reconstruct the affected areas. The national and affected prefectural governments have put in place several measures for rescue, rehabilitation, compensation, and reconstruction in the affected areas. Amidst all these discussions and developments, one aspect seemed didn’t not get much attention as much as it deserves i.e. the radiation safety aftermath of damage to nuclear power plants in Fukushima. The release of unknown quantities of radiation into environment has several implications in terms of health safety of citizens even beyond the disaster affected areas, mistrust on Japanese exports, delayed rehabilitation in areas with high radiation exposure, demand for imported food, and implications in terms of economic growth for a country whose economy primarily depends on exports.

This raises important questions that need immediate answers from the perspective of civil society and disaster risk reduction professionals: what radiation related issues are faced by the civil society, how food safety regulations in Japan consider radiation contamination, what specific limitations are posed by the radiation for speedy disaster recovery, and what it all means for the resilience of the Japanese society as a whole? These are also the questions that the civil society in Japan is interested to know answers for, as evident from several discussion boards and networks that have emerged on Internet. This informal event aims to address these questions in a greater detail with an objective of finding way forward. This initiative is funded by the Asia Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN) through the project CRP2010-02CMY-Pereira.

Contact: prabhakar@iges.or.jp; +81-80-5631-0541

Agenda

13:00  Welcome remarks                                                         SVRK Prabhakar

13:05  Session I: Rehabilitation of food and agriculture in Japan post-Fukushima

>The impact of Fukushima event on food and agriculture and measures for it [Mr.Toshihiko TAKEMOTO, PRIMAFF

>The impact of low concentration radiation on food in Japan [Mr.Seiichi Oshita ]
>The radioactivity found under cooperative work of agriculture [Ms. Tomoko M. Nakanishi, University of Tokyo]

>Consumers’ voice and activities of Pal-System for food contaminated by radiation [Mr.Michimoto MATSUMOTO, COOP, Japan]

>People’s  voice and activities to ensure food safety from radiation [Ms.Setsuko YASUDA, Vision 21]

14:25  Session II:

 Managing radiation hazard: Information management and linking civil and nuclear administration  

>Health safety post Fukushima: Study findings from radiation doses in education institutions: [Mr.TSUZI Masayoshi]

>Information of radiation and civil society[Mr.Mikio NAKAYAMA]

>Presentations from Disaster Risk Management Professionals [Prof Hari Srinivas]

15:25  Coffee Break:  

15:40  Session III: Citizens Charter: Civil Society Perspectives  

>Citizens perspective: Antonio Portela
>Issues and experience from Network I: Pieter FRANKEN, Safecast

>Issues and experience from Network II: David Sidney Moore, Tokyo Kids and Radiation

16:40  Session IV: 

Discussion on implications of Fukushima on the resilience of Japan and policy suggestions

>Open Discussion among all participants

Implications of Fukushima on the resilience of Japan

The Great Tohoku Earthquake that occurred on 11^th March 2011 is the most powerful earthquake in the known history of Japan and definitely a major catastrophe that Japan has to deal after the second world war. A chain of events unfolded after the earthquake that included a tsunami of historical magnitude that damaged critical infrastructure such as nuclear power plants located in Fukushima leading to release of unknown quantities of nuclear radiation into the environment. As a consequence of these series of events, lives of more than 25,000 people were lost, many went missing, and hundreds and thousands were displaced into various prefectures of Japan. Though Japan is known for its advanced earthquake and tsunami risk mitigation measures, these events have clearly overwhelmed the national and prefectural administration leading to a national emergency that is still unfolding.

Subsequently, many policy makers and disaster risk reduction specialist in Japan and abroad have been focused on how to rehabilitate the displaced people and how to reconstruct the affected areas. The national and affected prefectural governments have put in place several measures for rescue, rehabilitation, compensation, and reconstruction in the affected areas. Amidst all these discussions and developments, one aspect seemed didn’t not get much attention as much as it deserves i.e. the radiation safety aftermath of damage to nuclear power plants in Fukushima. The release of unknown quantities of radiation into environment has several implications in terms of health safety of citizens even beyond the disaster affected areas, mistrust on Japanese exports, delayed rehabilitation in areas with high radiation exposure, demand for imported food, and implications in terms of economic growth for a country whose economy primarily depends on exports.

This raises important questions that need immediate answers from the perspective of civil society and disaster risk reduction professionals: what radiation related issues are faced by the civil society, how food safety regulations in Japan consider radiation contamination, what specific limitations are posed by the radiation for speedy disaster recovery, and what it all means for the resilience of the Japanese society as a whole? These are also the questions that the civil society in Japan is interested to know answers for, as evident from several discussion boards and networks that have emerged on Internet.

Resilience of Japan:

Japan is known for the resilience it has shown by emerging as a stronger state each and every time it is hit by  major catastrophe in the past, let it be a man made (i.e. second world war, or dealing with environmental pollution within its boarders) or natural (e.g. Kobe earthquake).

From the point of Tohoku and Fukushima events, both positive examples (e.g. on the way the local communities and businesses dealt with event) and not so positive ones (e.g. on the way the governments fell apart in reaching a consensus on what can be done and how best can be done as represented by civil movement in the country). It seems to show that there is a lot of factors that are playing at the local level to make them resilient which doesnt seem to reflect at the larger level of governance (say at the level of elected leadership either at prefecture or national level). This conclusion could be baseless since my understanding of events happening around in Japan are far from close due to language barrier and as some say due to the state control of media. Nevertheless, there is a need to look into the factors that play into this confused state of affairs. Any leads on how to go forward on this?