Evaluating Transformational Adaptation in Smallholder Farming: Insights from an Evidence Review

The literature on smallholder farming and climate change adaptation (CCA) has predominantly investigated the barriers to and determinants of farmer uptake of adaptation interventions. Although useful, this evidence fails to highlight the changes or persistence of adaptation responses over time. Studies usually adopt a narrow focus on incremental actions that provide limited insights into transformative adaptation pathways and how fundamental shifts in policy can address the root causes of vulnerability across different sectors and dimensions. Drawing on an evidence synthesis commissioned by the International Fund for Agricultural Development’s Independent Office of Evaluation, this chapter outlines how lessons from CCA interventions can be transferred via three learning domains that are essential for transformational change: scaling-up (in its multiple forms), knowledge management, and the human-environment nexus. We discuss the implications of our findings on monitoring, evaluation, and learning, highlighting the challenges that evaluators may face in capturing (a) the persistence or durability of transformational pathways, (b) the complexity of “super-wicked” problems, and (c) the relevance of context-dependent dynamics, within a landscape setting. We also address the contribution of evidence reviews to contemporary debates around development policy linked to climate change and agriculture, and the implications and value of such reviews to provide independent scientific rigor and robustness to conventional programmatic evaluations.

Evaluating for Resilient and Sustainable Livelihoods: Applying a Normative Framework to Emerging Realities

Evaluation has to reflect the evolving priorities of development and measure progress on their achievement. At the same time, evaluation must also incorporate newer demands from within the field such as increasing equity focus in evaluations, gender mainstreaming, and human rights. Environment and climate change became mainstreamed into the programming of development organizations following the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and formation of financing mechanisms such as the Global Environment Facility (GEF) in 1991. This chapter reflects on how the Independent Office of Evaluation (IOE) of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) addressed the growing demands on the evaluation function in terms of incorporating concerns on environment and climate within existing methodological frameworks, and also adapting its methodology to meet internal and external evaluation demands. The chapter considers how evolving methodologies, methods, and tools have helped IFAD overcome these issues.