Flexible and comprehensive criteria for evaluating climate change adaptation success for biodiversity and natural resource conservation

Assessing the success of climate change adaptation initiatives and expenditures requires consideration of multiple complex dimensions that interact across time and space—a task that is difficult and sometimes controversial. These challenges are exacerbated in conservation contexts where there are no clear and accepted definitions, goals, strategies, and evaluation criteria for adaptation. Using a Delphi expert elicitation (n = 18) involving successive semi-structured interview and survey phases, we address this gap by developing a concise yet comprehensive set of criteria to evaluate the success of adaptation projects. Through this process we identified 16 evaluation criteria organized into four categories: (1) use of information, (2) project management, (3) ecological and social outcomes, and (4) advancing the field of adaptation. We then trialed these criteria using an online survey of adaptation practitioners (n = 47), including to assess the relative importance of the various criteria for evaluating climate adaptation projects as compared with the views of experts involved in the Delphi survey. Results highlight a potential disconnect between what is considered important in theory (as perceived by experts) and in practice (as perceived by practitioners). Finally, we discuss potential use of the evaluation criteria.