Improving Panama’s Climate Change Adaptation Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning System

With financial support from the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) Partnership, FAO has been providing Panama’s Ministry of the Environment (MiAmbiente) with technical assistance to help strengthen the national Climate Change Adaptation Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) System.

A robust MEL system will provide the information needed to track the progress of climate change adaptation measures, and understand how effective they have been. It also provides the necessary inputs for making better decisions over time. Finally, it will help Panama meet the reporting requirements of the Paris Agreement’s Enhanced Transparency Framework (ETF). 

As part of its ongoing assistance to MiAmbiente, FAO’s Subregional Office for Mesoamerica hosted an event from 12 to 13 March 2025. This was part of a series of activities to promote coordination among the key sectors prioritized in Panama’s NDC.

In particular, the March roundtables focused on five sectors: infrastructure, agriculture, water resources, marine and coastal systems, and public health. These workshops explored ways to improve the reporting of progress on climate adaptation. They also promoted collaboration to build consistent metrics for adaptation, and Loss and Damage.

A team effort

Pedro Muradás, FAO Climate change adaptation specialist, led the team that has been analyzing Panama’s MEL system. He remarked that:

“Panama has made remarkable efforts to establish a MEL system  and it is a model of excellence for the region. However, there is still significant room for improvement - especially in making it sustainable over time.”

Looking to the future, he remarked that:

“Processes aimed at measuring adaptation efforts globally are expected to gear up in 2025. This will provide opportunities for Panama to build on the work that has already been done. I want to add that it has been a real pleasure to work with the MiAmbiente team, who are highly skilled and open to the suggestions we made.”

Room for improvement

The team conducted a detailed analysis of the 37 indicators (21 for Adaptation and 16 for Loss and Damage) that currently comprise the MEL system. They came up with detailed recommendations for each indicator, as well as suggestions for adding more indicators.

 The team found that it was necessary to:

• increase coordination with other national institutions to make sure adaptation-related metrics are included when tracking sectoral policies and international commitments;
  
• optimize available resources to keep the MEL system operational over time; and
  
• improve the system’s capacity to inform decision-making throughout the adaptation cycle.

Recommendations and next steps

The following steps were suggested for 2025: 

• Strengthen the Loss and Damage component of the national MEL System by increasing the number of economically quantifiable indicators. Monetizing both economic and non-economic losses and damages could potentially improve access to international financing.
  
• Coordinate efforts with the ongoing national adaptation plan (NAP) processes and the Climate Risk Atlas, especially for vulnerability metrics.
  
• Improve coordination among institutions to review adaptation indicators and their usefulness for decision-making.

Medium-term recommendations (from 2026 onwards) include: 

• Include appropriate indicators for reporting progress made towards the Global Goal of Adaptation, in alignment with the final outcome of the UAE-Belém Work Program.
  
• Strengthen the adaptation component of the MEL System by including new indicators, in agreement with other institutions involved in fulfilling adaptation commitments.
  
• Consider expanding the services of the National Climate Transparency Platform. This could include allowing adaptation initiatives to be uploaded into the system using bottom-up approaches, in accordance with established standards and protocols.