 Ladies and gentlemen, you are very welcome to this session of the CBA 14 action toward monitoring evaluation and learning that support agency in adaptation. And this session is co-hosted by what resources Institute represented by Tamara and myself David from presenting list of optic countries consortium on climate change. Maybe we may want to introduce ourselves tomorrow. Do you want to introduce yourself. Sure. Hi everyone. I'm Tamara Koja from WRI. I work in our climate resilience practice and I also co-lead the locally led action track of the global commission on outpatient along with David and other colleagues and looking forward to having this conversation with everyone. Thanks for joining. Yeah, thank you Tamara and along the way we are a couple of colleagues co-hosting this session that to be introduced to you when we get to part of the session that is be dealing with breakout sessions so they'll be on their way putting Barry, Roby, Eric's and then others and the rest of the team behind the scenes. So let's begin with the goals of the session, the goals for our session. The first goal is to provide feedback on preliminary findings and recommendations on how monitoring evaluation and learning can support locally led adaptation for a forthcoming global commission adaptation publication. The next slide I quickly talk about the global commission adaptation. So essentially the first goal is to get feedback on the work that's being undertaken by the commission to come up with that paper, which we'll look at it a bit more later. And then we'll also have to discuss how we can encourage uptake of recommendations coming out from the paper that's being worked on so that we can be able to realize improved monitoring evaluation learning for locally led adaptation moving forward. So I talked about this being part of the work for the global commission on adaptation. Those of you may not be very familiar with the global commission on adaptation global commission adaptation was initiated in 2018 and the essential the main purpose of the commission is to accelerate adaptation at global level, including by elevating the visibility of adaptation at political level, but with much more focus on concrete adaptation solutions. So the commission is structured into two phases. Phase one involved which was between 2018 and 2019 when a report was commissioned. The essential that first involved doing an analysis to understand what's happening on adaptation and coming up with three specific revolutions. And those revolutions included in the report, those of you who may have seen it and those who may not have may reach us and then we share with you the report. And then that part of the commission's work involved building a coalition of actors who are involved in adaptation so that together through a coalition of very many actors, we can be able to work together to realize the goals of the commission. But not only for the commission, which is for two years, but to move forward with the work that has been initiated and is being initiated by the commission. So the second phase works and is based on the recommendations of the reports where and that is called the year of action and that year of action is just moves from the time the report was commissioned in October 2019 during the climate summit in New York to December 2020. And so that was like I've mentioned the report commissioned a number of action tracks that I've seen the next slide. And these action tracks, the eight action tracks, those are the action tracks one food security and rural livelihoods, cities, finance, preventing disasters, nature based solutions, infrastructure, water, and then this work and the session is specifically focused on locally led adaptation. And the goal of the local data adaptation focuses on the broader adaptation process by the focus of this action track is much more on sparring the various adaptation partners and intermediaries involved in adaptation financing to increase the volume, the quality and the quantity of adaptation resources reaching the lowest level and in a way that definitely supports devolved adaptation action and financing so essentially the focus of this session is contributing to that action track, like I've said, which is one of the recommendations with the concrete actions that the commission has been able to recommend and for the worker that is ongoing. So the, in terms of local lead action track as we have on the next slide. Essentially, the local lead action track like I've said is involved a number of things, some of those, like I measured a forecast on increasing the volume and the quality and the quantity of adaptation financing that's reaching local level. And it has many actions by the focus for the purpose of this session, the focus will talk about two aspects, which are all around developing mechanisms, mechanisms to support locally led adaptation. So in regard to this specific session, the key things to note is that the action track is involved in the work to raise global ambition and establish fundamental and foundational principles for locally led adaptation and like Tamara will present later a set of principles to guide effective and equitable adaptation and raise global ambition prior to for local lead adaptation is in progress being developed and a number of actors, about 30 institutions are actively involved in that kind of work and over 100 individuals are involved in the process of developing such a piece of work. And with that we hope to develop an alliance of the champions who will be able to endorse these principles so that they can come to support advocacy accountability and learning for local lead adaptation beyond the action like I mentioned the process of developing and building a coalition of actors is to move beyond the two years of the commission. So within that the other piece of work that's ongoing is improving monitoring evaluation and learning to enable locally led adaptation, which is the real heart of this session. So currently there's a paper or I will quote a report that is being developed and there are recommendations coming up that we shall see and discuss. And we focus on trying to see how the approaches coming out can be able to support donors and community institutions and may practitioners to implement and support locally led adaptation. We hope that this advancement in monitoring and evaluation learning that are going to be advanced through part of the work that we're going to do through decision this session will be able to contribute more effective and equitable adaptation outcomes. So with that said, our agenda for the session is going to include the presentation of preliminary findings from the paper from the ongoing work and that will be done by Tamara just take time is to talk about what's coming out from the work that has been done so far. And then later after that presentation going to smaller groups, they will have five small, small groups for small groups and then after those small groups will take 45 minutes will have a report out session through which will be able to converge and try to reflect on what will have transferred in the small groups. So I'll hand over to Tamara. I very much look forward to to our deliberations through the discussions and thank you very much. We are very glad that you've joined us once again. Thank you. Great. Thanks so much, David. So, before I dive into talking about some of the highlights from our draft working paper which is focused on monitoring evaluation learning for locally led adaptation. I just wanted to briefly review these principles for locally led adaptation that David introduced. So these are principles that are being co developed under our action track with IED. The Global Central Adaptation, ECAD and many other partners, and essentially these principles are meant to serve as foundational guidance to support and enable locally led adaptation. So while this session isn't focused on these, some of you may have seen or attended a consultation that we had earlier today as part of CBN these principles, we did want to to review them just briefly because they have implications for Mel and serve as a basis for how we have been analyzing how Mel can support locally led adaptation. So the work we're doing is intended to essentially support implementation of these principles through Mel and we're seeking to understand how Mel can either support or discourage locally led adaptation and what are specific practices, approaches, and examples of how monitoring learning aligns with these principles. So some examples of that just to provide a brief sense are, you know, an emphasis on learning as part of supporting this principle on flexible programming and being able to mitigate the risk that may be associated with flexible programming. Another is this principle on devolution of decision making principle one, you know how that applies to Mel and decentralizing the decisions that are involved in the Mel cycle. Another example is just the role of Mel to support transparency and accountability to the local level by capturing information and what knowledge and information is captured through the Mel cycle. So that's just a quick grounding there in the principles. But to move on to the next slide, which just provides a very brief overview of the purpose of this work in this paper. We're reviewing opportunities and challenges in Mel for locally led adaptation based on a review of existing Mel practices and concrete examples from adaptation Mel which which many of us are familiar with and also Mel. We don't necessarily focus on adaptation but is looking at community involvement and the role of Mel as a social undertaking how power dynamics may influence the Mel cycle. So kind of bringing those two areas of work together and really focusing on concrete examples which I won't have time to go through now but just to find that we are trying to build on on really comfortably what this looks like in practice and have this be a practical piece of work. And so, you know if folks on the call have examples that they think are relevant. We will be all ears and and love to hear about those. Next slide please. So, this is just a very brief summary of the preliminary findings and conclusions that we have from our, our research and other consultations that we've been doing over the past couple months. And just to emphasis on preliminary this is a draft so these may change, but one and hopefully this provides enough of a sense for everyone to provide some feedback and, and work off of. So essentially what we found is that now offers a lot of potential to support locally led adaptation but these practices that align with principles of local adaptation are often represent a pretty significant shift from conventional now that may be more focused on reporting and upward accountability. And as such, that does come with with challenges and with limitations in terms of additional investments of time and resources and, and just what it takes to kind of change practice so we do really recognize that what we're talking about is is different and, and that there are challenges and limitations to some of these practices. We also recognize that while this is a nascent field and there's a lot more work to be done and research to be done as as the field of locally led adaptation itself evolves. There are many many practices and tools and technologies out there that are accessible and available that they can help support this shift that they can align and help support locally led adaptation through the motorcycle. So just recognizing that Mel isn't a neutral process because it involves decision making it involves use of knowledge involves sort of defining what resilience looks like that it can either help build social capital or can sort of reflect existing inequities. So based on my place so based on this research and these these initial conclusions we have currently we have 11 preliminary recommendations that we have and these are oriented more towards those who are involved currently in driving the mel cycle and design of mel practitioners funders intermediary organizations but we do hope that they will have broader relevance, especially as, as more actors are getting involved in mel. So I'm going to quickly run through these policies for having to to speed through but we want to make sure that we leave enough time for discussion. So, sort of building on on these principles of locally led adaptation we're encouraging local agency throughout the mel process and some ways to do that include hiring local experts and, and having balance on mel teams and trying that local actors say in decisions about theories of change about learning goals and processes for learning, as well as metrics and indicators. The second one is is about understanding how structural inequalities may influence the mel process so you know thinking about whose objectives mouth serves and and our different definitions of resilience and different types of knowledge equally valued. We talk about balancing accountability and learning. Oftentimes, as we all know there can be tensions between these two processes but we take the stance that these can be balanced and and one way to do this maybe having distinct processes for learning and for accountability. An example of an other recommendation that may require more resources but but does support the learning that is so important for local adaptation. Another is thinking about how now creates value for local participants we talk a lot about thinking thinking crucially about this and if we're asking for resources and time and and knowledge from the local level that that mel is is also creating value at the local level. Next slide please. We talk about enlisting appropriate methods to understand complexity and uncertainty which is, as we all know just sort of a something that we all have to navigate in adaptation interventions, both in terms of bringing the climate information to inform rigorous understanding and vulnerability at the local level but also making sure that those involved in designing the mel. The mel system have a strong understanding robust understanding of local context. We talk about indicator frameworks and adaptation metrics and some specific recommendations that we have are considering using adaptive capacity as a as a foundation to inform indicators. We also talk about integrating social economic and environmental dimensions into indicator framework since these are all recognize the interconnectedness of these systems, these systems for adaptation. And of course just how metrics and indicators can reflect what is viewed as a sort of definitions of vulnerability and resilience at the at the local level. So we encourage taking a demand driven approach to building capacity and bringing in extra knowledge which will inevitably be part of these processes that making sure that those are demand driven. Next slide. And then collaborating with knowledge brokers is one approach that we discuss as an opportunity to help enable ownership and contribution of local partners and and navigate some of those cultural or terminology differences. We also encourage emerging technologies and process innovations to increase local ownership. Recognizing that technology is not a silver bullet in this context but that but that it can help and that mobile applications remote monitoring systems. These services and other technologies can be used to increase access to climate information and informed decision making and also facilitate locally driven data collection and governance platforms. So emerging adaptive management experimentation and learning from failure is really critical in this context and this is sort of a more of a cultural shift that we're recommending from now and in terms of, and something that that is many of your comments with this is growing in the male field but recognizing and sort of the importance of learning from failure in order to be able to course correct and sort of embracing embracing that and then, last but not least, it's just encouraging that we encourage learning throughout the cycle but that it's also applied and documented and share both horizontally at the local level and across sectors but also vertically so that we're sort of learning is coming full cycle to inform future adaptation interventions. And we're also talking about leveraging platforms like this like CBA, like GoBeshina, like coxsum of the global platforms that we have to share learning and inform sort of the evidence base that we have around locally led adaptation. So those are our recommendations and just a quick snapshot of sort of what's come out of our research so far but that we really are looking for for more feedback on and keen to get your thoughts on so next slide please. So with that, I guess before we the next step is we're going to we're going to quickly pivot to breakout discussions but I did want to pause briefly in case any of my colleagues have anything to add or in case there are any clarification questions will have time for discussion at the end or through the breakout groups but in case there's anything that that needs to be clarified before we dive into breakout groups. Okay, great. I'm glad that my speedy overview was relatively clear. So here's some discussion questions that that came from some of the gaps that we actually have that we're looking to fill and things issues that we think are particularly important to make sure that are covered in this final publication. So colleagues, David and Robbie and Barry are going to help facilitate these breakout groups. And we want to make sure that we cover all the questions so we're going to just have each group start with a different question hopefully the 45 minutes will be enough to cover all our bases but just to make sure we don't get tons of feedback on one question and not enough on others. Group one is going to start with question number one on incentivizing changes in practice David's group to is going to start with this question on knowledge and information on number two. My group group three is going to start with a question on integrating gender equity and various group four is going to focus on mutual accountability and learning. And then one last point before we break into discussions. I think this is the last one and hopefully folks are familiar with with breakout groups by this point in the conference is just one just to encourage open discussion we hope everyone feels free to contribute your ideas. All ideas are welcome, you know we really want to hear your feedback so please don't be shy. And we hope that we can have sort of more informal discussions around this. One is that after the breakout groups want to come back together and just report out and share the highlights from the breakout groups. So we will ask for volunteers at the start just for participants who are willing to give that two to three minute report We also want to make sure that we're capturing all the feedback accurately so we will also ask for note takers so that we're having participation and things in advance for anyone who's willing to contribute to those tasks. Hopefully this will feel really participatory and just create more active discussion. I think with that, I think we might be ready to jump into breakout groups, and we will come back together in about 45 minutes, maybe a little less. Hi everyone. Welcome back. Hello everyone. Welcome back from the breakout sessions. I don't know about we we had a very exciting session and now I would like us to go into discussions will have two to three minutes report back from each group. And I will leave it open. Any group that wants to jump in with the reports. What came out highlights. I'll have to jump in. Thanks Barry, go ahead. No, no worries. Okay, so we principally focused on question four. And that was how can mutual accountability and learning work and practice and support local priorities. And so we had, we were quite fortunate to have and Vincent from the UK government, and he started he kicked it off by saying well basically accountability there is always going to be tension down the chain. We can work with small organizations that's just the reality of it. However, that can be managed as an example is given a brace and the work with local organizations that multi layer accountability, and those checks and balances at each of these different layers. But I think a key thing that came out of that was the fact that learning and accountability one. They were built into the design of the project and the program, and it was bringing on stakeholders from an early, early juncture so again this is the design, and it had built in that flexibility as well so they built in learning spaces, and it would come together and iterative and learn and then sort of course correct and calibrate as needed. And one thing that did come out of that so that's from a design perspective from an implementation perspective, the knowledge manager where came online afterwards and then there were sometimes a bit of sort of confusion between accountability and learning. And I think the lesson for that is that the accountability and learning need to be considered at the very beginning baked into the design, and the local stakeholders need to be engaged very very early on. And what else did the results of the so some other positive examples was any county climate funds and Kenya and some of the lessons from DCF as well. But one of the interesting things that came out from the conversation was in terms of before we even start talking about mail and accountability and learning a precondition for this and for effective mail is that there needs to be information that is flowing to the local local level there needs to be knowledge in the first place and local actors need to be imparted this knowledge that so that they know whether the mail is going to be good or not and whether you know learning can be integrated or not. And that there does need to be this sort of I guess this baseline of knowledge first before you can start start looking at a melon where their responsibility for that life is still a little unclear. And in terms of again a way in which accountability and learning and work and practices. Another thing came up was around the decentralization of melon and the accountability component could be quite a difficult one. But there does need to be sort of distributed responsibility for that so it's not it can't just all fall onto the local actors to do this that there does need to be because they're, you know, they're the coface of where adaptive action needs to take place. So they very much need to, you know, be empowered to do that but it can't be their sole responsibility so it needs to sort of be, I guess accountability and learning needs to set different, different actors across the chain. I think I'll probably stop there because I'm taking up a bit too much time, but it was a good conversation. So, thank you. Cheers. Many, many, many thanks Barry. I wanted to pick from your thoughts in terms of the incentives. What, what, what came out from your group. So, again, we were quite fortunate to have Vincent because I asked him how, as a donor with his donor hat on how you can actually incentivize it. Because again, sort of moving away the incentivization of climate finance away from outputs and results and impacts that can actually conceive of adaptation success as including learning and I think the idea is that like his response was that learning can stand on its own and as a conceptual adaptation success is a worthy one. But as a short term result, the same as adaptation is quite nebulous and difficult to measure. It doesn't necessarily mean that it needs an impact indicator, but it can be into a learning journey can be integrated as a sort of perspective on adaptation success. But he did acknowledge that there's still some persuasion to be done because there is accountability, the donor accountability to the constituencies. You know, they do have to be seen again, the parlance of donors value for money. So, yeah, I think it's maybe just shifting this conception of what success looks like for adaptation. Okay, thanks Barry. Who was next, which group wants to go next, two to three minutes please. Should I go, should I go now on behalf of group one. Please Robbie go ahead. So we looked at the first question in a bit more detail. And what we looked at was kind of aligning the incentives between three overlapping groups so donors and funders as one group, local level stakeholders as another, and then male practitioners as a as a kind of group that and we really talked about emphasizing the shared value in and recognizing the shared value in learning as as kind of the focal point of the of how we incentivize this. And then we talked about how that needs to be built into design and planning of male systems, particularly evaluations from the outset. And that perhaps we need to recognize that the value of learning ultimately in terms of better locally led adaptation outcomes. So, so there is almost an accountability value in the learning. And we had a discussion about what that meant in terms of in changing changing behaviors. And we felt that what we need is kind of to start demonstrating that better. And then finding platforms that not just produce individual male outcomes, but how we share though the value of evaluation across those platforms, both in terms of the actual content the learning, but also in terms of the value of doing it slightly differently and demonstrating that that is is valuable and and and has a contribution to make. Let me just check my notes to see if there's anything else. I'm not sure if I've missed anything. Let me let me pause there and go to some others. Okay, many thanks for all the do. Kenneth, do you want to go next. Yes. So, for question number two on on the, how wish, how, how should mail be used to combine LLA with a local knowledge with climate science to support LLA. And we touched on the fact that knowledge and knowledge and science indicators are not quantitative so they're complex and it's a bit hard to capture them as compared to numeric indicators so there's a suggestion on how to code them to be able to understand how many or to have ratios of to balance local knowledge and climate knowledge and incorporate them into mail. We also talked about setting up policies that ensure more representation between the two aspects and ensuring gender representation also to ensure all everyone is represented. And also the learning aspect of mail came about where it was mentioned that there needs to be more feedback or learning from the monitoring and incorporating that into into future systems. And we also talked about exchange between there's an example from Brock Bangladesh about exchange of knowledge between the local local knowledge and scientific knowledge in in the mangrove areas and and also exchange between the submersion dry areas that we suggested that to apply also in the context of rural and urban areas, the rural urban continent. Yes, so they shared understanding knowledge and that was all from us. Also, sorry, sorry, one one final point was about the issue of trust whereby one of the participants mentioned that local people sometimes do not share their knowledge because they don't trust the policy makers so I wanted to try to emphasize ways to to build trust between all actors in the in mail implementation. That's it. Thank you. Oh, many thanks. Tamara. Yeah, we had all of you from our groups. So we had questions three say the question that focused a bit on on gender and I think we address more or less the question five of it as well at the end of the of the conversation so I will try to summarize the points and please the others joining the way to support gender integration and gender equity we said that it was important to disagree, disaggregate data for sure that's kind of obvious but important to say again, and also to integrate gender specific analysis to complement the climate analysis that are generally done for local adaptation and look at important key figures on how gender inequalities are appearing in the area we are working in, so it could be about education, etc. We talked about the importance to have a strategy to reach the most vulnerable, whether a woman or men or other type of vulnerability and not only gender related looking at having an intersectional approach, and we made the parallel with the different groups that have been done on how to reach the ultra poor, and it's really important to have a strategy to reach to reach them because they do not turn out, generally in community meeting, etc. So, our mail approach needs to be really careful about that. We also talked about the importance about participatory monitoring and betting that from the start. Particular tools such as the more significant changes tool to monitor unintended and intended outcomes. And we also say that it's important that even the decision about what are the outcomes we want to reach need to be in the end of local groups, local authorities, etc. So, I think we didn't say it like that, but sometimes our project monitoring is not the right place at monitor in increasing adaptive capacity or increasing resilience and sometimes having more participatory process really led by communities is really a better way to do that. We also, in terms of approaches or methods, we were also saying that we could do like post disaster analysis evaluation to see how resilience has been built. And so, yes, and maybe the additional point on the same issue was to really not see mail only as like lock frame, a lock frame thing, but really look at a broader approach to use like comparative comparative approach, outcome mapping, etc. And also the learning path that also discussed was is quite critical in our mail approach. Maybe one last point we discussed is the importance of the do no arm. It was not really in the question. But the importance of the no arm in our mail approach and the data protection and data protection because we are all going into like using technology to gather data about residents but sometimes we are not very, not enough careful or not very careful about how the data will be used and by who and for what. So it's really important that we are all conscious of this point. And I hope I have not forgotten point, maybe as a conclusion, one of the participants say that on gender gender is not neutral and as male. So, really, really we need to pay attention to, to the outcome that we are, because it can really have impacts on the communities we are working with. Excellent to many thanks. And do you have a quick highlight what you consider that came from your group about incentives to mail that support local and later adaptation. Maybe the one point we said we said that don't need to embrace flexibility and adaptive management but how we were not really, we did not really discuss the how. But we're saying that it's important that budget are a bit more flexible and live space for human resources, because you need human resources to do good monitoring and evaluations. Excellent. Very many thanks. So any questions coming from we have some quick reflections that come from the participants one or two minutes on that.