Performance assessment of policies and practices, including gender
Policies and practices need to be assessed, while stakeholders need to be able to quantify progress and learn from successful and unsuccessful approaches. Climate finance and funding mechanisms are often conditional on the results of evaluation and assessments. Performance assessment goes beyond the traditional monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) approach to include policy performance assessment as the basis for evidence-based policy and practice.
This is broader than the traditional MRV and is called monitoring, measuring, reporting and verification (MMRV). MMRV is needed to achieve intended emission and risk reduction effectively, in line with the Paris Agreement and Low Emission Development Strategies (LEDS).
REDD+ needs effective and reliable information systems; the implementation of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) implementation, both in adaptation and mitigation, calls for appropriate metrics, transparent assumptions, time frames and realistic implementation pathways. Private-sector pledges also require performance assessments. Evidence-based approaches will improve confidence and enable effective and transparent policy implementation.
Finally, in relation to forest and tree resources, men and women face varying challenges and opportunities to mitigate and adapt to climate change impacts, vis-à-vis climate change policies and interventions, and related risk and benefit sharing, due to gender-differentiated roles and responsibilities. FTA examines the structural causes of this situation and the factors that can strengthen the voice, influence and entitlements of marginalized groups in adaptation and mitigation policies and interventions.
Current and planned key research activities are: | |
• | Reference levels: Research that supports the setting of country targets, baselines/reference levels/points of departure for REDD+, Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs), Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) and low-emission development strategies (LEDS); developing criteria and tools to measure and contribute to private-sector assessment |
• | Carbon and climate: Research to understand carbon source/sink dynamics to improve regional and global models and feed into Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change processes |
• | Non-carbon benefits: Measurement of biodiversity, governance and livelihood outcomes, social equality, and informing the implementation of safeguarded information systems, and identifying causal change |
• | REDD performance: Impact assessment of REDD+ policy and practice, building on eight years of comparative research and longitudinal datasets |
• | Policy recommendations and learning platforms: Support of gender equity in REDD+ processes – MMRV in practice: Develop approaches for cost-efficient, transparent, reliable MMRV that countries can use |
• | Complexity of land-use decisions: Coupled bioeconomic modeling to understand the emergent properties, complexity and conditions of landscape systems. Development of decision-making tools, e.g. landscape management for LEDS, models of future scenarios and climate/carbon outcomes under different land-use policies, and spatial economic analyses to assess the cost and equity implications of policy mix options |