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Measuring Adaptation: Increasingly Necessary but Not Always Easy

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27 May, 2024

This post was originally published on Climate Links

Measuring Adaptation: Increasingly Necessary but Not Always Easy
jschoshinski
Thu, 05/23/2024 – 15:38

As climate change impacts increase around the world, more and more development programs include climate adaptation actions. With this increased effort comes a greater need to track how adaptation supports climate resilience so practitioners know if and how their activities are working, and how to spend the increasing flows of adaptation finance for greater effectiveness. 

Despite this need, measuring adaptation is not easy, and there is no “one size fits all” approach. A recent literature review conducted by the USAID-funded Resilience Evaluation, Analysis and Learning (REAL) Award details some of the approaches, challenges, and opportunities for adaptation measurement.

Climate adaptation encompasses many approaches. In some cases, adaptation takes the form of physical structures that can be seen and touched, such as constructing flood control infrastructure like dams and weirs. In other cases, adaptation focuses on more intangible behavior-change investments, such as altering the time of planting a crop. 

To add further complexity, adaptation is often scale-specific, meaning what a household might do to adapt is different from what a national government might do to adapt.

In many cases, adaptation actions can only avoid losses, which is difficult to measure. For example, even when an adaptation is a physical structure that can be observed, the success of that structure in reducing climate risk is often only evident when a climate hazard occurs.

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Heavy rainfall in the central parts of Malawi in March 2024 led to the death of six people and displaced more than 14,000, with several areas cut-off after floodwaters destroyed roads and other infrastructure including critical bridges.

The evolving nature of the changing climate and what society considers to be acceptable risk mean that adaptation actions are less likely to be one-off decisions or investments. Instead, they are a process of decisions, investments, and iterations over time. So-called adaptation pathways provide more flexibility for risk reduction but further complicate measurement, as the metrics of success may also need to change.

So what does this mean for how we measure adaptation?

Diverse approaches to measuring adaptation progress have evolved to meet the current state and need. At the global level, the Paris Agreement mandates a regular global stocktake of adaptation progress, which is based on submissions from countries that then underwent a technical review.

The big adaptation finance mechanisms under the UNFCCC, such as the Green Climate Fund, all have their own results frameworks and indicators to which their funded projects must report.

At the local level, more qualitative tools exist, which are more appropriate for the context and able to capture differences over time. Examples include Tracking Adaptation and Measuring Development and Participatory Monitoring, Evaluation, Reflection and Learning.

Although there is no “one size fits all” approach to measuring adaptation, some underlying principles can help determine the most appropriate metric.

It is critical to have a clear theory of change that outlines the mechanism through which an intended action brings about adaptation. For example, if the logic for a modified seed is that it will enable a farmer to harvest a crop in times of below-normal rainfall, then the measure of adaptation success has to be linked to the harvest and the weather conditions.

Having a clear theory of change helps to overcome the typical challenges that arise because adaptation looks different in different places, its success is linked to avoided losses, and it is part of an ongoing process. Outlining a logic that can be checked for contextual appropriateness and against which progress can be tracked also provides the opportunity for a flexible approach that can account for the changing nature of climate risk.  

To learn more about these and other insights, read Climate Adaptation and Its Measurement: Challenges and Opportunities.

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Measuring adaptation is not easy, and there is no “one size fits all” approach.

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Thu, 05/23/2024 – 12:00

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ABB receives EPD status for gearless mill drive ring motor

ABB receives EPD status for gearless mill drive ring motor

ABB has gained Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) status for its Gearless Mill Drive (GMD) ring motor — technology used to drive large grinding mills in the mining industry.

An EPD is a standardised document that provides detailed information about the environmental impact of a product throughout its life cycle. Based on a comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study, the EPD highlights ABB’s commitment to transparency, environmental responsibility and supporting customers in making informed decisions on sustainability in their supply chains.

ABB analysed the environmental impact of a ring motor across its entire life cycle from supply chain and production to usage and end-of-life disposal. The study was conducted for a ring motor of a semi-autogenous grinding (SAG) mill with an installed power of 24 MW and was based on a reference service life of 25 years.

“Sustainability is at the core of our purpose at ABB, influencing how we operate and innovate for customers,” said Andrea Quinta, Sustainability Specialist at ABB. “By earning the Environmental Product Declaration for our ring motor, we emphasise our environmental stewardship and industry leadership for this technology. We adhered to the highest standards throughout this process, as we do in the ABB Ring Motor factory every day. This recognition highlights to the mining industry what they are bringing into their own operations when they work with ABB.”

The comprehensive LCA was conducted at ABB’s factory in Bilbao, Spain, and was externally verified and published in accordance with international standards ISO 14025 and ISO 14040/14044. It will remain valid for five years.

The ring motor, a key component of the GMD, is a drive system without any gears where the transmission of the torque between the motor and the mill is done through the magnetic field in the air gap between the motor stator and the motor rotor. It optimises grinding applications in the minerals and mining industries by enabling variable-speed operation, leading to energy and cost savings.

The full EPD for the ABB GMD Ring Motor can be viewed on EPD International.

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