Since 2023, the CLARE programme has been building and supporting a portfolio of 35 research and capacity strengthening projects involving more than 170 organizations across Africa and Asia-Pacific with the aim of informing and enabling socially inclusive and sustainable action on climate change adaptation and resilience.  

In 2025, at the programme’s mid-point, CLARE commissioned a team of external evaluators at Southern Hemisphere to help understand early signals on how impact-oriented research supported by the program is generating change, whether and how the programme support structures and capacity strengthening efforts are enabling the process, and what the CLARE programme team or others making similar investments can learn.  This post reflects on some of the key lessons from surfaced in the evaluation report by Southern Hemisphere that may also be relevant to others undertaking or supporting climate adaptation research for impact. 

Understanding early outcomes of CLARE-supported research for impact 

The evaluation found that CLARE projects’ contributions to the sample of early outcomes it explored – which had materialized just one or two years into the project timelines – were typically the results of teams’ engagement and outreach efforts. In other words, they were linked to CLARE’s intentional focus on supporting research that directly involves communities, governments and practitioners most affected by and dealing with climate change impacts. While we often hesitate to suggest that research can contribute to outcomes until late in the project timeline or indeed after its closure, when final results are published and available for use, the early outcomes explored in CLARE show how strong approaches to co-production of research with those who will use it can lead to signs of change towards climate-resilient practices, relationships, and behaviours early in a project’s life cycle. Examples included governments issuing early warnings informed by project teams’ innovations, government agencies sharing climate data to inform their efforts for the first time, and communities organizing to take early action in the face of more frequent climate-induced threats or to pool resources that would allow them to implement climate resilient agricultural practices 

While we expect these outcomes will continue evolving as the research matures and findings are consolidated, capturing them early on helps to understand the pathways towards change that research oriented for impact can enable along the way. Evaluators noted the need for greater emphasis on research teams’ capacity to capture and use these early stories of change, and on ensuring programme monitoring frameworks are well set up to capture these early outcomes of co-production research. 

Capturing these early stories of change demonstrates that key features of impact-oriented research such as relationship building, co-production, and establishing trust are not precursors to change, but can contribute to change in their own right and pave the way for ongoing evidence use in a changing climate. 

The importance of southern leadership and transdisciplinary collaboration for impactful climate adaptation research 

As a part of its examination of the programme’s relevance and fit-for-purpose, the evaluation highlighted the importance of CLARE’s emphasis on southern leadership and transdisciplinary partnerships in climate adaptation research — from the time of the original call for research proposals and ongoing through project implementation —in ensuring the programme’s relevance. This focus is highly valued by project teams, but requires continued attention throughout project implementation. Read the related brief on this topic for a summary of the results and challenges that evaluators found in CLARE’s early work to embed southern leadership and enable partnerships that engage a range of knowledge holders, disciplines and knowledge domains in climate adaptation, which may be relevant to others aiming to do or support this type of research. 

Lessons on supporting capacity for impactful climate adaptation research 

CLARE’s design includes an explicit focus on and investment in capacity strengthening of actors throughout the evidence ecosystem. The mid-term evaluation explored efforts to strengthen capacities of those directly involved in CLARE-supported research teams, whether through activities offered at the program level, or through activities led by their specific project team.  

A survey of the CLARE community showed that the vast majority of survey respondents (n=125, 23% response rate) – including academic researchers, practitioners, knowledge brokers, students, and community members who are a part of CLARE research teams – indicated that participation in CLARE-supported activities had strengthened their capacity to do climate adaptation research. Most respondents noted that CLARE had particularly contributed to their capacities to work in transdisciplinary research teams, consider differential vulnerability to climate change, and to design and conduct research in a way that positions it for use and influence.  

Offering useful and effective capacity strengthening to a portfolio as diverse as CLARE’s was not without challenges, with the evaluation noting that the programme can improve its approach to coordinating and targeting its offerings, and balancing a demand-led approach to capacity strengthening offerings with a more predictable calendar of activities. Nonetheless, findings that members of the CLARE community are applying their learning in their respective projects demonstrate the importance of this investment. 

As CLARE’s early outcomes suggest, capacity to do research differently is an important enabling factor for the kinds of change that CLARE hopes to contribute towards in enabling socially inclusive and sustainable action to build climate resilience.  

The full evaluation report (and accompanying summary brief) shed more light on the results, lessons and challenges that CLARE encountered in the early years of the programme. CLARE is working to address these insights, and hopes they may be of use to others looking to do or support research for climate adaptation and resilience.