Developing countries are not yet well adapted even to current climate risks: floods, droughts and storm. Yet those risks are becoming harsher as the world warms, climate extremes become more intense, and the oceans rise – the consequences of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. This presentation highlights the findings and lessons learned from the evaluation of World Bank Group Experience in Cliamte Adaptation.

1. Adapting to Climate Change:
Assessing World Bank Group Experience
Using monitoring and
evaluation to accelerate
adaptation and development
Kenneth Chomitz, Senior Advisor, IEG
kchomitz at worldbank.org
ieg.worldbankgroup.org
Istanbul, 6 November 2012

2. Outline
• In a nutshell: monitoring and evaluation can be a
mechanism for accelerating adapation and making it
more efficient.
• Two kinds of climate risk
• Two kinds of (desirable) adaptation, with inspirational
examples of monitoring and evaluation
• Early lessons from national adaptation projects
• Recommendations for monitoring national progress
towards resilience.

3. World Bank Group accomplishments against
strategic framework goals: highlights
► Accomplished:
• Strong increase in attention to climate in CAS/CPS
• Upsurge in projects dealing with climate change
• Significant analytic work
► Not accomplished:
• Initiating screening of projects for climate risks
• Setting up results framework that is outcome-oriented
► Overall:
• Significant innovation and investment, but:
• Lack of strategic focus
• Lost opportunities to learn from projects

4. Three types of adaptation, with examples
Net benefits later Net costs later
Net benefits now Resilient adaption to Maladaptation:
(Adaptation to current climate variability: Unsustainable
climate variability) • Capacity building extraction of
• Hydromet services groundwater
Net costs now Anticipatory No adaptive benefit:
adaptation: Unsustainable
• Climate-proofing groundwater
long-lived extraction for
infrastructure uneconomic crops
• Coastal zone
planning

5. Adapting to climate variability:
ex am ples of things w e need to know
► Sustainable land management (SLM)
• Median reported ERRs of 20%
• info on SLM impacts on water availability and sensitivity of
household income to droughts
► Index insurance
• Apparent success in Mongolia, though sustainability in question
• Generally low uptake in many pilots, though replication
continues
• impacts of insurance on welfare; efficacy of selling to
households vs to banks.
► Disaster risk reduction
• Cost-effectiveness and sustainability of soft vs. hard approaches.

6. Measuring project impacts on resilience is useful;
measuring expenditure on adaptation is fruitless
► Nicaragua Atencion a Crisis Program provided small
grants to rural households for business investment
► Rigorous randomized control trial evaluation
► Household income increased 8% compared to controls
AND
► Recipients were completely insulated against drought
shocks – while control groups suffered
► Take-aways:
• This doesn’t look like a stereotypical ‘adaptation project’ – but it
measurably boosted resilience
• No meaningful way to allocate expenditure between ‘poverty
reduction’ and ‘adaptation’

7. Real time learning pays off: the Sujala (Karnataka
watershed) project
► M&E costs integrated into project
► Real-time feedback led to improvements in efficiency
and in targeting benefits to women and landless.
► Demonstration of 25% income gains, plus environmental
gains, led to scale up and replication of project
► Bottom line:
• Costs are manageable (Bank spends $600m/year on
knowledge!)
• Techniques are known
• Benefits are large

8. Introduction 3 Kinds ClimVar Maladaptation Anticipatory Adaptation National Projects Towards a Solutions Bank
Maladaptation: a cautionary tale
► Trees in the drylands: sponges or vampires?
• Afforestation in the Loess Plateau: exotic species reduced
sedimentation, increase carbon storage – but depleted
groundwater.
► Info needs: model and then monitor hydrological and
social impacts of land management and forestry
interventions

9. The need for anticipatory adaptation
TA project in
Indian Sundarbans
addresses long
term spatial
development
planning
NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data obtained from the University of Maryland’s
Global Land Cover Facility

10. Anticipatory climate adaptation and land use
planning: biodiversity
► Example: Western Cape Province, South Africa
► There are few examples of long-term success in shaping
land use patterns
► M&E needs: track the success of ongoing efforts --such
as India Coastal Zone Mgt, Western Cape, and other
projects – in influencing land use patterns.

11. Introduction 3 Kinds ClimVar Maladaptation Anticipatory Adaptation National Projects Towards a Solutions Bank
Climate risk management in WBG projects
► Currently, screening for climate risk is ad hoc
► World Bank
• FY 11: 23 of 179 projects identify a climate risk; 1 a long-term
risk.
• Some hydropower projects did climate sensitivity analyses
► IFC:
• has only looked at climate risks within the period of its
investment exposure
• climate risks not identified in hydropower
• However, climate risk analysis now enshrined in Performance
Standards;
• IFC has undertaken insightful analysis of how climate risks affect
private sector

12. Introduction 3 Kinds ClimVar Maladaptation Anticipatory Adaptation National Projects Towards a Solutions Bank
Climate models: limited applicability to
project
Divergence of precipitation forecasts for 2030s for
8380 basins
2500
Number of basins
2000
1500
1000
500
0
(max forecast –min forecast)/current mean
Source: Data from Strzpek, McCluskey, Boehlert, Jacobsen and Fant 2011

13. Introduction 3 Kinds ClimVar Maladaptation Anticipatory Adaptation National Projects Towards a Solutions Bank
Recommendation: climate risk management
Develop reference guidelines for incorporating climate risk
management into project and program design, appraisal,
and implementation.
► Not meant to be rigidly prescriptive
► Guidance on when to worry, what tools to use:
► The challenge is widely shared; Bank Group could
convene scientists, industry experts to formulate
approaches

14. National-level adaptation projects
Caribbean Colombia Kiribati

15. Lessons from national-level projects
► A focus on current concerns has been more attractive
than anticipatory adaptation to long-term
transformational threats.
► Adaptation issues are deeply interlinked with
development issues.
► Projects have tended to spread themselves across too
many locations and issues, straining limited capacity.
► A strong theory of change is needed to guide actions.
► Planning and execution need to be concurrent and
iterative.
► Coordination is best vested in a powerful central agency.

16. Recommendations
Track national progress towards resilience
► Measures of institutional capacity
• Agricultural research and extension service performance
• Hydromet system performance and use
► Direct measures of household resilience
• Sensitivity of household consumption to weather shocks
► Biophysical measures of resilience
• water consumption
• recurrent flooding
• Population and infrastructure exposed to storm surges and
floods

17. Recommendations: more attention to
anticipatory adaptaiton
► Promote attention to anticipatory adaptation to long-run
climate change. Especially for:
• Urban coastal areas
• Floodplains
• Estuaries
• National biodiversity strategies

18. Please visit ieg.worldbankgroup.org
to read the report.
Contact: kchomitz at worldbank.org Thank you!
Image creative commons license K Chomitz