Factors Contributing to the Effectiveness Ratings of the Climate Change Adaptation Projects in Agriculture: Implications from the Developing Countries

As the impact of climate change becomes increasingly disruptive worldwide, the gap in adaptation finance is widening. Despite advancements in adaptation planning and implementation in every sector and region, the growing resource gap necessitates more ‘effective’ climate adaptation projects. Against this backdrop, the purpose of this paper is to provide an exploratory analysis to identify and examine potential factors associated with the effectiveness ratings of multilateral-funded agricultural climate adaptation projects that have been implemented on the ground, completed and documented. Forty-four projects from multilateral funds were collected and analyzed for this purpose. The study employed a two-pronged approach to cross-complement the implications—key contributing factors to the effectiveness, rated per the actual outcome of the projects, were identified from the terminal evaluation documents of the highly satisfactory and unsatisfactory projects (conventional content analysis); and, effectiveness ratings were assessed against various socio-economic indicators of the countries where the projects were executed through Spearman’s correlation analysis to identify the possible association. The results implied that the contributing factors associated with the effectiveness ratings converge around several elements: (i) capacity building and education; (ii) local engagement and social inclusion; (iii) healthy and resilient livelihood; and, (iv) governance and commitment. Additionally, social inequality indicated its relevance to the project effectiveness ratings. While effectiveness ratings were found to have a positive and moderate correlation (r: 0.274; p < 0.1) with Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI), such a correlation was not explicit with HDI. In addition, the study found strong correlations with multiple ‘inequality’ indicators—the gender inequality index, inequality-adjusted life expectancy index and inequality-adjusted income index. These results from the various ‘inequality-adjusted’ indexes further suggest the importance of considering all levels of the community, particularly those groups in the most disadvantageous positions, often farmers, to close the inequality gap. Overall, the findings and implications from this study are expected to provide a basis for future climate adaptation investments in agriculture.