Across the world, extreme heat is fast becoming one of the most urgent climate risks, especially in the Global South. In response, a range of adaptation measures - from early warning systems to cool roofs - are already underway at household, community, and institutional levels. We know adaptation is happening, but there is limited understanding on which interventions are truly effective.
Our research for the Community Driven Heat Solutions Compendium, which collated heat adaptation solutions in practice across the Global South, found a consistent challenge of scaling heat adaptation efforts. Many strategies have a potential to scale, but there is little evidence of their long-term effectiveness to support growth. Without learning what works, we risk opportunities to prioritise, refine and scale strategies that deliver meaningful outcomes given the limited time and resources.
Most heat responses today remain reactive, designed to cope with today’s emergencies, not tomorrow’s risks. Governments, philanthropies, and private actors have invested in solutions, but systematic assessments are few and far between.
Take the city of Ahmedabad in India, which launched South Asia’s first Heat Action Plan in 2013 in response to a heat wave. Through our engagement with city officials and community organisations, we learnt that over a decade later, evidence on what strategies have worked is still thin. No regular evaluation mechanism exists to track effectiveness or capture lessons. It's not that there is no impact—it is that we don't know what it is.
This matters. Without evaluation, adaptation risks becoming fragmented, inequitable, and short-lived.
The limits of conventional evaluation
Our research on how success is currently assessed points out challenges with traditional project-level M&E approaches in use. Hazards are intermittent and compounding; exposure and vulnerability shift as communities and institutions adapt; and isolating the effect of any one intervention is difficult. Project cycles are short while benefits emerge over seasons or years.
Effects are highly place-based and group-specific, much relevant activity sits in informal systems beyond administrative data, and repeated surveying can burden those most at risk. Conventional evaluation often leans toward externally driven reporting, misses local priorities and practice, and emphasises inputs/outputs over the outcomes people value. The result is that what’s easiest to count can crowd out what is needed to inform decisions to scale.
This gap also offers an opportunity: to rethink evaluation altogether. Instead of replicating top-down reporting systems, we can ask - what would it mean to design evaluation around community priorities and lived experience?
What community-driven metrics could look like
Communities already know, intimately, how heat shapes their lives. It dictates working hours, children’s school attendance, women’s workloads, and even people’s sense of safety in public spaces. These everyday experiences can and should shape how we define “success” in adaptation.
Through two workshops, at the 19th International Conference on Community-Based Adaptation to Climate Change (CBA19) in Brazil and at a subsequent virtual convening of over 100 subject-matter experts, we asked researchers, practitioners, and funders from across the globe to reflect on heat evaluation from the perspective of what might matter to communities.
Participants spoke about fewer missed workdays during heatwaves, reliable access to safe drinking water, children being able to attend school despite extreme heat, and the importance of dignity, safety, and equity in adaptation measures. They also pointed out that most current metrics are little more than “proofs of delivery” (e.g., count of cool roofs installed, trees planted, alerts circulated), but these do not show who benefits, for how long, or whether systems are truly adapting.
Instead, they argued for evidence that captures the durability and retention of solutions over time, the degree to which vulnerable groups are included, and whether institutions embed and sustain measures beyond project cycles.
These insights underline the power of community-led metrics: when people shape how success is measured, evaluation becomes a process of learning and ownership rather than an external reporting exercise. Importantly, when communities shape how success is measured, ownership can grow. Rather than being extractive, evaluation can become a tool for collective learning.
Looking Ahead
Closing the evaluation gap is not about generating more data that obscures rather than informs, but about reimagining evaluation as a process of collective learning.
At Transitions Research, we are beginning to explore what this might look like in practice. Community-led tracking and learning can take the form of participatory monitoring tools developed with local groups, coupled with efforts to build the capacity of communities to design, collect, and interpret their own data.
Shared learning platforms can help connect experiences across different contexts, while community-defined metrics, once integrated into official Heat Action Plans and funding requirements, can ensure that evaluation becomes part of policy and investment systems rather than an add-on. As heat risks intensify, we cannot afford to act blindly. By grounding evaluation in community priorities, heat adaptation can become more accountable to those most at risk, more equitable in its outcomes, and ultimately more effective.
Read more about the insights from the two workshops on Community-driven Metrics for Heat Adaptation.
About Transitions Research
Transitions Research is a Goa-based research collective examining radical transitions at the interface of technology, society, and sustainability. Through the Climate Adaptation Learning Lab (CALL), we work to enhance the resilience of socially vulnerable communities by identifying, co-creating, and scaling on the ground solutions. To learn more or collaborate, reach out to [email protected]
Photo by Dibakar Roy on Unsplash
