Evaluating what matters: an evaluation tool for vulnerability risk assessments in local climate change adaptation planning

Abstract

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has set out guidance to move countries forward via National Adaptation Plans, but many of these have proven nonimplementable because they are generic and lack details of community needs. Here we review what vulnerability risk assessments (VRA) characteristics are considered desirable but absent, and thence develop an Evaluation Tool, for systematically analyzing VRAs as used for adaptation planning at the local level. We test it experimentally on an innovative VRA process claiming better outcomes -it uses a pre-process of crystallizing shared-values of participants before considering climate issues. The evaluation results show that the Tool can successfully discriminate the quality of this approach and captures many distinct characteristics and differences. The Tool, which can also be a practitioner's checklist, should thus be helpful in identifying and accelerating improvements in VRAs, and hence in adaptation planning, with affiliated local and global benefits.

Sociocultural environmental factors and childhood stunting: qualitative studies – a protocol for the Shared Values theme of the UKRI GCRF Action Against Stunting Hub

“…Open access later extended to rigorously bring local values into climate adaptation planning in Botswana 22 and land regeneration plans in Nigeria. 23 Formal descriptions of the design-based WeValue InSitu values elicitation subprocesses are still being developed 24 25 but they involve cycles of meaning-making related to Polanyi's Personal Learning Theory, whereby the facilitator leads the group to discuss their own tacit knowledge of 'what is important to us as mothers in East Lombok' with mentions of related experiences and selfcomparisons of what was most meaningful about them.…”

“…WeValue InSitu was originally developed by the EU ESDinds Project 20 to make tangible the values dimension, which interlinks the social, financial and environmental pillars of sustainable development 16 and in particular to produce locally valid values-based indicators for civil society groups in Europe, South America and Mexico 17 21 ; later extended to rigorously bring local values into climate adaptation planning in Botswana 22 and land regeneration plans in Nigeria. 23 …”

Identifying barriers and potentials of integrated assessments of sustainable urban development and adaptation to rising sea levels

“…Furthermore, climate impacts on coastal areas depend strongly on local specificities (such as topography, economic structure, and adaptive capacities) that, in turn, determine local vulnerabilities (Arnott et al, 2016;Salehi et al, 2019). Thus, assessments of adaptation strategies and their contribution to sustainable urban development need to be carried out at the city scale (Hallegatte et al, 2011;Sethamo and Harder, 2021).…”