Why do we Need Ex-Ante Assessments?
By Elisa Fiorini Beckhauser
ECCA2025 brought in the experts to unpack this complex topic in the session "Strengthening Climate Adaptation: The Role of Ex-Ante Assessments in Policy Design".
The session brought together specialists from Germany, Austria and Switzerland to discuss the application of ex-ante assessments in national policies to improve decision-making processes.
Linda Hölscher began the session by explaining that ex-ante assessments provide a systematic and objective evaluation of a proposed policy's potential impacts before its implementation. This allows one to identify the policy's potential risks and benefits, contributing to better-informed decision-making.
The studies employ various methodologies, including cost-benefit analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, and multi-criteria analysis. They often seek win-win measures by analysing adaptation in light of limited resources and aiming to reduce maladaptation.
Why are ex-ante assessments useful?
They help to identify the most suitable policy measures, anticipate impacts of adaptation measures and prioritize them, minimize the degree of uncertainty, enable technical discussion with experts and stakeholders, and set up ex-post assessment (evaluation of the ongoing progress).
However, there is no ‘one size-fits-all’ methodology and approach that fits context and objective to all ex-ante assessments. These studies typically face challenges ranging from local and context-specific effects to the difficulty of distinguishing the effects of adaptation from those of related activities (i.e. attribution of successful adaptation efforts) to their cross-sectoral nature. Currently there are no solid indicators of effectiveness or measurement units, and the scenario remains highly complex due to limited data availability.
Can ex-ante assessments help to avoid maladaptation?
Wolfgang Lexer, of the Environment Agency Austria, observes that maladaptation occurs when adaptation solutions are worse than the original problem. This process often involves dynamic mechanisms across sectors, levels, spatial scales, and time scales.
The ultimate objective in avoiding maladaptation is to ensure that adaptation is successful - that is, effective, cost-efficient, socially just and coherent with sustainable development.
There is currently growing evidence that maladaptation is happening, yet this recognition is lagging in policymaking. However, it is essential to avoid maladaptation because the negative outcomes of adaptation actions pose a high risk, cause severe damage, and incur high costs. These negative outcomes also challenge territorial and social cohesion. Additionally, increasing financing for adaptation makes governments accountable for the wise use of public budgets, including in climate litigation cases, and they want to avoid stranded investments and sunk costs.
Using the German Adaptation Plan as an example, Andreas Vetter explained that the methodology used to promote successful adaptation focuses on enabling an effective, expert-based assessment and integrating an intersectoral perspective into the assessment approach. The criteria mainly refer to effectiveness, sustainable impact, interactions between policy instruments, and implementation costs.
Enhancing the quality and effectiveness of policy
In Germany's case, the ex-ante evaluation procedure enabled a comprehensive comparative assessment of climate adaptation policy instruments, facilitating their refinement and optimization. This significantly enhanced the quality and effectiveness of the policy instruments through effective interdisciplinary collaboration.
Roland Hohmann, from the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment, presented the Swiss example that focuses on the integrated implementation of climate-resilient development and adaptation measures in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Analysing Swiss adaptation strategy in light of the SDG goals revealed that it mainly interacts with and enables SDGs 16 (institutions), 9 (industry), 3 (health), 13 (climate action) and 6 (water). This indicates good coherence between the adaptation measures contained in the Swiss adaptation action plan and the SDGs. Finally, in light of sustainability principles, it is worth noting that the Swiss Adaptation Strategy has put important emphasis on considering the needs of present and future generations equally.
Chair
Clemens Hasse (German Environment Agency)
Speakers
Linda Hölscher (Adelphi)
Andreas Vetter (German Environment Agency)
Wolfgang Lexer (Environment Agency Austria)
Roland Hohmann (Swiss Federal Office for the Environment)
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