How Adaptation Insights is making climate adaptation evidence easier to use

Governments, practitioners and investors need reliable evidence on whether climate adaptation is working. Yet data on implemented actions and the methods used to assess their effectiveness remain uneven and difficult to compare, particularly in African agriculture. This makes it challenging to accurately identify approaches that reduce risk in a given context, learn from experiences and direct resources where they can be most useful without contributing to maladaptive outcomes.

Adaptation Insights was established to address this gap. Led by the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, with the International Livestock Research Institute and the International Water Management Institute as implementing partners, the project is supported by the Gates Foundation. It works to improve the availability, quality, and use of adaptation data by synthesizing evidence, enhancing analysis methodologies, and designing resources around the needs of the adaptation community and decision-makers. At ILRI, the contribution begun under the former CGIAR Climate Impact Platform is now being carried forward through the CGIAR Climate Action Program.

Innovating and refining adaptation tracking data and analysis methodologies 

For Adaptation Insights, user engagement is part of technical work. Through ILRI's contribution, the project team completed a series of structured consultations to identify what would make an adaptation-tracking resource most impactful to the adaptation community. The consultations generated 47 questionnaire responses and 11 interviews across five stakeholder groups. Respondents described the features, functions and support that would make a future platform gathering metrics and methods for tracking adaptation useful in day-to-day work, and relevant in the long-term.

Alongside the consultation, the ILRI team developed a codebook and screened a corpus of adaptation-related publications and reported CGIAR outputs from 2022-2024. These results provide the foundation for ongoing coding and analysis to inform a searchable adaptation tracking methods resource and an updated methods and metrics dashboard. The Alliance is developing a complementary indicators resource, while ILRI's work on gender and social inclusion examines how tracking can better capture who benefits, who carries costs and at what scale change occurs.

These resources are still being developed. A shared community engagement strategy is also taking shape across project partners to keep the work connected to researchers, governments, development organisations, finance institutions and other users. Across these workstreams, the project is asking how users can find suitable methods, understand what they measure and apply them with the data, skills and resources available.

Connecting the project with IPCC’s new global guidelines on adaptation

The same challenge is central to the new IPCC Technical Guidelines for Assessing Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation (TGIA), which update the 1994 TGIA. These guidelines are being developed as part of the Working Group II contribution to the IPCC Seventh Assessment Report. They are intended to help users move through the adaptation process, from assessing impacts, vulnerability and risk to planning, implementation, and monitoring, evaluation and learning.

From 1 to 3 September 2026, members of the 18-person international author team selected by the IPCC worked together in person and online at ILRI's Nairobi campus, joined by members of the IPCC Working Group II Bureau. ILRI and the TGIA author team organized the author-led workshop, supported by Adaptation Insights and separate from formal IPCC Lead Authors Meetings. It gave authors more time to advance their First Order Draft and hear directly from prospective users.

“Adaptation Insights is also about how we measure adaptation, so there is a very close link.”
Aditi Mukherji, ILRI principal scientist and TGIA Coordinating Lead Author

Mukherji said the project's support opened an opportunity for the author team to work together in person. Across three days, the authors moved between plenary stock takes, parallel drafting sessions and whole-document review. They examined findings from a systematic review of existing adaptation guidance, identified evidence gaps and figure needs, aligned the language, structure and rationale of different sections, and worked through cross-cutting issues. The objective was to strengthen the First Order Draft ahead of formal review, not to produce or approve final guidance.

Welcoming the team to ILRI, Director General Professor Appolinaire Djikeng thanked the authors for keeping evidence at the center of the process. “Pushing for evidence is really important, and we appreciate you doing that,” he said. He also situated the meeting within ILRI's wider climate commitment: “We have put climate change at the center so that whether you are working on animal health, animal nutrition, genetics or policies, we can all contribute towards addressing issues related to climate change.”

Working Group II leaders stressed the practical ambition. Co-Chair Professor Bart van den Hurk described the TGIA as “an almost once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to make climate assessment “tangible, measurable and practicable” for decision-making. Vice-Chair Professor Cromwel Lukorito said, “The world out there is waiting for sound guidelines on metrics, indicators and methodologies that they can adopt.”

That emphasis on usability shaped the stakeholders' engagement session on the first afternoon. More than 30 participants joined the hybrid consultation in person and online, including prospective users from government agencies, research institutions, civil society and disability organizations, development organizations, financial institutions and practitioner groups. Through live polling and open discussion, they described where current guidance falls short and what the new TGIA should enable them to do.

What users need from adaptation guidance

“What can we do that is of most help to most people in most situations?”
Timo Leiter, TGIA Coordinating Lead Author

Prospective users favored a common framework adaptable to local conditions. Tiered methods could help people choose approaches suited to the data, skills and resources available, while links to context-specific tools and case studies could turn principles into practical choices. This closely reflects the Adaptation Insights focus on making methods easier to find and apply.

Participants also asked for tracking that distinguishes activities from outcomes. Counting what has been implemented does not show whether climate risk fell, for whom, or for how long. They urged the authors to consider people's capacities alongside their vulnerabilities and to connect monitoring with learning over different time horizons.

Accessibility and inclusion were equally prominent. Disability advocates highlighted formats such as Braille and the need to design for different levels of literacy, numeracy and technical knowledge. Participants wanted local and Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge, as well as lived experience, to inform the whole process, with practical methods and examples showing how inclusion can be applied. These priorities reinforce the project's work on gender and social inclusion, and its use of consultation to shape resources around users' needs.

Applying the lessons beyond the workshop

The consultation gave the TGIA authors perspectives to consider as they continue developing the First Order Draft. Responsibility for the guidelines remains with the IPCC-selected author team, and participants were encouraged to contribute to the IPCC formal review process when it opens. Adaptation Insights supported a space where emerging guidance could be examined against user needs at an early stage.

The exchange also reflects the project's wider approach. Strategic engagement with global forums and the CGIAR climate community of practice forms part of its plan for sharing findings and gathering feedback. This connects the project's evidence and methods to the broaderplaces where adaptation monitoring, evaluation and learning practices, and guidance are debated.

Work continues on coding and analyzing evidence, developing the adaptation methods resource, refining the shared engagement strategy and translating findings into accessible knowledge products. The Nairobi exchange reinforced a lesson already visible in the project's consultations: data become useful when people can find suitable methods, interpret results and adapt guidance to their own contexts and circumstances. Adaptation Insights is working across those connected needs so governments, researchers, practitioners and investors can make better-informed choices about what to fund, implement and improve.

Author: Regina Edward-Uwadiale