Abstract
Resilience-building activities are increasingly evident in development projects, and as a result, there is a growing focus on monitoring and evaluating the associated outcomes of these projects for improved climate risk management. Significant challenges in measuring resilience, however, contribute to both a tendency towards imperfect quantified metrics, and a quest for universal resilience indicators that can be aggregated across projects, institutions, and geographies. In this paper, we draw from lessons across various sectors typically outside of the traditional resilience and climate risk management realm to highlight potential pitfalls and unintended consequences of such metrics. We then discuss several “thought experiments” to identify the desired characteristics development practitioners would want projects to demonstrate, but for which there exist risks for imperfect aggregated indicators to create perverse incentives. Process-based metrics that focus on the quality of a project’s design and implementation are more likely to avoid these pitfalls and should be considered a viable alternative to aggregated universal resilience indicators.
Highlights
Resilience-building activities are increasingly evident in development projects, and as a result, there is a growing focus on monitoring and evaluating the associated outcomes of these projects for improved climate risk management
There is increasing demand on development practitioners to demonstrate “results” of investments and interventions. This pressure is both well intentioned and necessary, as tax-payer money should be used most efficiently and effectively, and the lessons from successes and failures should be used to improve development aid. This focus on “results” is evident in the field of climate risk management, as it relates to the concept of resilience measurement
We use the term “resilience”, as defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)1 in its broadest sense as it relates to managing climate risk to include shocks and stresses
Summary
There is increasing demand on development practitioners to demonstrate “results” of investments and interventions This pressure is both well intentioned and necessary, as tax-payer money should be used most efficiently and effectively, and the lessons from successes and failures should be used to improve development aid. This focus on “results” is evident in the field of climate risk management, as it relates to the concept of resilience measurement. Pressure on development institutions is increasing to design approaches to systematically measure resilience benefits for climate risk management through a single metric or indicator/index that allows for comparability and aggregation of resilience-related outcomes. It is important to consider the potential pitfalls of over-relying on imperfect quantified indicators to measure progress and to prioritize future investments for resilience building (Leiter and Pringle, 2018)
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