Main beneficiaries & outcomes
Main beneficiaries of the solution include the more than 210 million people living in the mountains of the region, and over 1.3 billion people in the plains. Despite benefits being wide-reaching, the principal objectives of the project focused on enhancing the adaptive capacities and climate resilience of the poorest and most vulnerable habitants. To this purpose, the solution paid close attention to the socio-economic, governance, and gender characteristics of the population as the three main drivers of vulnerability. Some of the most vulnerable social categories were found to include wage earners, marginal farmers, fishermen, lower caste people, people with low access to politics, char dwellers, women, tea pickers, and migrant families.
Moreover, special importance was given to understanding the gender vulnerabilities in the different study areas within the participating countries, and adequate measures were carried out to ensure the strengthening of women’s adaptive capacities and resilience, and to promote their participation in the adaptation to climate change. The project contributed as well to the UNCEDAW Committee’s “General Recommendation No.37 on Gender-related dimensions of Disaster Risk Reduction in changing climate” which guides state parties on the implementation of their obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women concerning disaster risk reduction in a changing climate.
Planning and implementation
The planning and implementation processes were under the responsibility of the HI-AWARE consortium members, which included: the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), The Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS), The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), The Climate Change, Alternate Energy and Water Resources Institute of the Pakistan Agricultural Research Centre (CAEWRI-PARC), and the Alterra-Wageningen University and Research Centre (Alterra-WUR). ICIMOD functioned as the consortium leader.
The development of the project proposal comprised consultations with key stakeholders in the four participating countries, as well as a comprehensive review of relevant, but limited, literature to better understand the local and regional priorities and identify strategic opportunities. Moreover, trainings, and exposure visits, were also conducted to identify knowledge gaps and co-design interventions with communities that were later relayed to policy makers.
The project was divided into three working packages:
- Work Package 1 (Generating Knowledge) focused on the generation of scientific knowledge to address major research gaps that prevented the support of planned adaptation, especially in areas such as food and agriculture, energy, health and nutrition, urban habitat, and hazards management.
- Work Package 2 (Research into Use) systematically promoted the uptake of knowledge and adaptation practices at various scales by practitioners and policymakers, to reduce vulnerabilities of communities and build livelihood resilience.
- Work Package 3 (Strengthening Expertise) looked to build the capacity of researchers, students, and science and policy stakeholder networks to do interdisciplinary research on climate change vulnerability, resilience, and adaptation.
Under work package 2, the consortium members looked to engage with key stakeholders, including researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, at distinct levels to provide them with a mix of incentives, tools, and capacities that could help them use the research findings and pilot-tested measures from the project in the region’s communities. However, whether the research was to be used by the stakeholders depended on three factors: the political/policy context, the strength of evidence, and the quality of relationships between policymakers, practitioners, and research communities.
Finance
Most of the funding for HI-AWARE was provided by the Department for International Development (DFID), United Kingdom that was given to the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada to manage. Additionally, the IDRC also contributed with funding. ICIMOD, in its role as the consortium manager, was accountable for its performance to IDRC, who then further reported to DFID.
In order to analyse important adaptation options and needs, the solution included the performance of socioeconomic cost-benefits analysis under the work package 1 (Generating Knowledge).
Innovation
The HI-AWARE project was unique in its design of working for climate adaptation across four neighboring countries. By fostering a landscape view, the project identified how local people in the different countries face similar challenges, and also provided extensive evidence on how climate-related changes in the mountains and plains impact river basins downstream. Furthermore, activities looked as well to work across the different involved actors, including government, civil society, research institutes, and universities.
The innovation aspect was highly important for the project and for each of the climate adaptation measures studied and supported in the project area. Regardless of the wide variety of measures supported across the region, the research uptake of the project aimed to promote evidence-based and tested innovative adaptation practices and approaches at various institutional levels for helping communities adapt to climate change in the most appropriate way. To this end, measures were closely accompanied by research in adaptation options, new tools and technologies, as well as by the improvement and promotion of tested existing practices.
Performance evaluation
Long term maintenance and sustainability
Using a Participatory Impact Pathways Analysis, the HI-AWARE consortium partners together with ICIMOD’s Strategic Planning, Monitoring, and Evaluation unit (SPME), developed a collectively-owned Theory of Change and Impact Pathways and a logical framework (logframe) based on it. Furthermore, a monitoring, evaluation, and learning report that included the overall program theory of change, the logframe, risk analysis, and outcome logic models specific for each basin were also produced. The theory of change was periodically revised by the project team as part of multiple reviews held over the lifetime of activities, while the logframe became the program’s main management tool, and progress against it was reported regularly.
The Theory of Change not only helped the consortium to visualize impact pathways, but also aided members to stay focused, align their thinking, and assess the larger impact of smaller outputs. It was revised in 2016 during the midterm review and modified to reflect the changed policy and practice scenarios in the region.