6. Monitoring and evaluating adaptation

In order to ensure that a city’s adaptation process is effective and sustainable over time, it is important to regularly evaluate the progress of planned actions and check the actual outcomes against the objectives that were set out when developing the strategy. Further, it is important to consider if necessary to adjust, add or drop certain actions in view of the monitoring results. Monitoring can also help practitioners determine if adaptation measures have incurred any unanticipated side effects. Important elements of the monitoring and evaluation process are the approach or framework, selection of suitable indicators, and a process to use the results of the evaluation to improve a local authority’s actions for the future. Please see Chapter 6.4 of the EEA report Urban adaptation in Europe: how cities and towns respond to climate change for additional information.

This step assists local authorities and Covenant of Mayors signatory cities in developing a monitoring framework, including appropriate monitoring and evaluation (M&E) indicators, and complete the adaptation-related sections of the reporting platform MyCovenant (see also the offline working version of the reporting template) to report progress on adaptation actions and update, revise and readjust the adaptation strategy and/or action plan according to the findings of the M&E procedure.