The Western Alliance for Greenhouse Action (WAGA) is a partnership of eight councils that are committed to responding to climate change in Melbourne's West.

WAGA conducted a climate change risk assessment that identified 88 risks for the region, and then produced a regional climate change strategy.

We are now asking the question: How will we know how well we are adapting to climate change overtime, and how can we assist councils to track their progress and improve decision making?

We have begun a three year process of developing a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) framework for climate adaptation with our project partners RMIT University, Net Balance and the Department of Environment and Primary Industries. The framework will monitor the performance of councils in improving adaptive capacity and implementing adaptation actions through a set of indicators. This project will build on emerging international research and practice around effective M&E for climate change adaptation (Hedger et al. 2008, UNDP 2009, Pringle 2011, Villanueva 2011, Bours et al 2013, 2014). While there are a range of frameworks for M&E, very few have been implemented and tested for their effectiveness.

We will present the findings from our analysis of existing practice around M&E for climate change adaptation along with outcomes from a series of workshops with WAGA councils and other stakeholders on how to effectively develop and embed M&E as part of the adaptation process. We will also present our draft M&E framework and indicators for the WAGA region which will be piloted in 2015.