There are a number of reasons why MRE for adaptation is difficult and thus the development of indicators including:
- Adaptation is not an outcome in its own right; in order to assess adaptation progress, proxies for measuring ‘reduced vulnerability’ or ‘increased resilience’ will often be required (Bours et al., 2014).
- Adaptation is context specific, a characteristic which must be reflected in the indicators used. This can make it harder to develop meaningful indicators over a large geographical area or across many sectors.
- Long timeframes. Climate change will unfold over many years; adaptation is often not an outcome that will be achieved within a normal programme cycle, typically 3-5 years.
- Uncertainty – about the scale, timing and spatial nature of how the climate might change (ASC, 2011) and how society might respond makes it challenging to define good adaptation. Thus indicators of flexibility can be valuable as well.
- Adaptation has no prescribed target – there is no single metric (ASC, 2011), unlike climate change mitigation which can be quantified in terms, for example, of tons of carbon. This means that gathering a set of indicators together that provide a comprehensive picture is challenging.