Translating adaptation policy into practice : Reporting requirements and organizational capacities within FLLoCA in Embu, Kenya

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines Financing Locally Led Climate Adaptation (FLLoCA) within the Embu County organisation in Kenya. It does so from the perspective of a theory of the translation between policy and practice, grounded in organisational learning. The thesis is limited to the field of monitoring and evaluation, as this can be used as a tool to assess how policy implementation is progressing. The problem formulation highlights that Locally Led Adaptation (LLA) is fundamental to ensuring that policies do not risk maladaptation. FLLoCA is built on LLA, yet the theory also indicates that there is often a gap between policy and practice, as these two concepts fail to reflect one another. Consequently, there is an area within the translation between FLLoCA policy and practice for this thesis to analyse. Data collection was carried out through a thematic analysis of documents and interviews. This resulted in three themes on which the findings are based. The analysis of the findings discusses these themes in relation to the three phases of translation; i) policy ii) translation iii) practice. The main conclusions of this thesis are that the translation of FLLoCA policy into practice within the Embu County organisation has both positive aspects and challenges. Challenges include political interference in decisions that should be made at local level, as well as capacity issues relating to funding and systems. Furthermore, FLLoCA has positive aspects in term of training of skills and resources, it is also highly regarded for its bottom-up approach.