Local governments are at the forefront of climate change adaptation planning. Although there is significant research on adaptation planning processes, there is scant empirical evidence of how local governments are completing the adaptation planning cycle by monitoring or evaluating their efforts. This leads to a fundamental lack of understanding about what actions work, in which contexts, and why? This article explores the practice of monitoring and evaluation of adaptation by local government, drawing on data from a national survey of Australian local governments, enhanced by interviews with selected respondents. It finds that monitoring and evaluation of climate change adaptation is challenging for local governments. Monitoring efforts focus on tracking implementation of actions, and evaluation of adaptation plans and projects is rare. It argues that for effective adaptation planning and learning, greater attention needs to be paid to building evaluative capacity of local governments to complete the adaptation planning cycle.

地方政府处于气候变化适应规划的最前沿。尽管对适应规划过程进行了大量研究，但很少有经验证据表明地方政府如何通过监测或评估其工作来完成适应规划周期。这导致人们根本不了解哪些行动有效，在哪些情况下有效，为什么？本文探讨了地方政府对适应的监测和评估的实践，借鉴了对澳大利亚地方政府的全国调查数据，并通过对选定受访者的访谈得到了加强。研究发现，对地方政府的气候变化适应情况进行监测和评估具有挑战性。监测工作侧重于跟踪行动的实施，很少对适应计划和项目进行评估。