You need to know where you’ve been and where you are if you want to know where you are going.
That’s one of the fundamental tenets of good monitoring and reporting (M&R).
Having been involved in the design and implementation of the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR) M&R system over the last three years, I thought I’d share some of the reflections and takeaways from my exciting journey.
First things first – why do we need M&R in the first place, and particularly in the climate change context? There’s a number of reasons including increasing knowledge on climate impacts and vulnerabilities as a basis for planning and decision making, ensuring effective accountability to domestic and international stakeholders and promoting evidence-based learning.
It’s crucial though that the process is country-led not top-down. For the PPCR, multi-stakeholder engagement and consultation is an essential part of M&R. It has always been central to the development of countries’ Strategic Plans for Climate Resilience (SPCR), particularly the identification of priority actions to increase resilient development. So it makes sense that the PPCR Programmatic M&R System design is rooted in the desire to maintain the programmatic and inclusive thrust of the SPCR during implementation through projects and programs.
It aims to engage key stakeholder groups, including government institutions at national, sub-national and local levels, as well as civil society, indigenous peoples groups and the private sector, and academic institutions, in charting implementation progress using the agreed PPCR five core indicators.
Four Principles of PPCR M&R
Lesson learned
These principles have guided country-driven results reporting, and have become part of the PPCR intervention itself over the last three years. As a result, some lessons have been learned, successes achieved and some challenges identified.
Successes
Challenges
Anchored in its core principle of Learning by Doing, the PPCR programmatic M&R system has been designed as a living, breathing system which evolves and adapts over time. The system recognizes that monitoring and reporting is an iterative and learning process. Therefore, it is expected that as the system is applied and lessons around its use generated, the system is continuously reviewed and improved each step of the way.
In the first semester of 2017, the CIF in coordination with MDB partners, donor countries and pilot countries will carry out a stocktaking exercise to provide an in-depth assessment of the usefulness, feasibility, and sustainability of this system. Lessons learned during this exercise will inform further development of the system as well as the broader climate resilience community’s quest for an effective M&R system to better track climate adaptation interventions. Stay tuned for more on this.