Mapping CGIAR adaptation activities to benefits

Despite years of adaptation actions and policies, the limited lessons captured around adaptation effectiveness and impact remains an important and significant knowledge gap. This project sought to fill that gap by demonstrating the practical value the adaptation benefits framework co-developed by Ed Carr and gathering preliminary lessons regarding what adaptation actions deliver the greatest number of adaptation benefits.

This preliminary study reviewed the last 10 years of the CGIAR‘s portfolio of adaptation work, organizing it by the adaptation benefits it delivers. Using a Large Language Model (LLM), we screened and categorized all climate change-related articles from the CGIAR repository of climate change related articles and then identified those reflecting empirical studies of adaptation. We then used the LLM to identify the adaptation benefits (reduced exposure, reduced sensitivity, increased adaptive capacity) intended by the actions and policies reflected in each study, the degree to which the actions and policies delivered those benefits, and who received those benefits.

The study demonstrated that the adaptation benefits framework allows researchers to capture lessons about what works in adaptation, and under what conditions, across contexts and presents a preliminary map of what works in agrarian adaptation.