Editing IPCC:AR6/SRCCL/Chapter-7 (section)

=== 7.5.5 Performance indicators ===

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Measuring performance is important in adaptive management decision-making, policy instrument implementation and governance, and can help evaluate policy effectiveness ( ''medium evidence, high agreement'' ) (Wheaton and Kulshreshtha 2017 <sup>[[#fn:r1138|1138]]</sup> ; Bennett and Dearden 2014 <sup>[[#fn:r1139|1139]]</sup> ; Oliveira Júnior et al. 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r1140|1140]]</sup> ; Kaufmann 2009 <sup>[[#fn:r1141|1141]]</sup> ). Indicators can relate to specific policy problems (climate mitigation, land degradation), sectors (agriculture, transportation, etc.), and policy goals (SDGs, food security).

It is necessary to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of performing climate actions to ensure the long-term success of climate initiatives or plans. Measurable indicators are useful for climate policy development and decision-making processes since they can provide quantifiable information regarding the progress of climate actions. The Paris Agreement (UNFCCC 2015) focused on reporting the progress of implementing countries’ pledges – that is, NDCs and national adaptation needs in order to examine the aggregated results of mitigation actions that have already been implemented. For the case of measuring progress toward achieving LDN, it was suggested to use land-based indicators – that is, trends in land cover and land productivity or functioning of the land, and trends in carbon stock above and below ground (Cowie et al. 2018a <sup>[[#fn:r1142|1142]]</sup> ). There is ''medium evidence'' and ''high agreement'' that indicators for measuring biodiversity and ES in response to governance at local to international scales meet the criteria of parsimony and scale specificity, are linked to some broad social, scientific and political consensus on desirable states of ecosystems and biodiversity, and include normative aspects such as environmental justice or socially just conservation (Layke 2009 <sup>[[#fn:r1143|1143]]</sup> ; Van Oudenhoven et al. 2012 <sup>[[#fn:r1144|1144]]</sup> ; Turnhout et al. 2014 <sup>[[#fn:r1145|1145]]</sup> ; Häyhä and Franzese 2014 <sup>[[#fn:r1146|1146]]</sup> ; Guerry et al. 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r1147|1147]]</sup> ; Díaz et al. 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r1148|1148]]</sup> ).

Important in making choices of metrics and indicators is understanding that the science, linkages and dynamics in systems are complex, not amenable to be addressed by simple economic instruments, and are often unrelated to short-term management or governance scales (Naeem et al. 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r1149|1149]]</sup> ; Muradian and Rival 2012 <sup>[[#fn:r1150|1150]]</sup> ). Thus, ideally, stakeholders participate in the selection and use of indicators for biodiversity and ES and monitoring impacts of governance and management regimes on land–climate interfaces. The adoption of non-economic approaches that are part of the emerging concept of Nature’s Contributions to People (NCP) could potentially elicit support for conservation from diverse sections of civil society (Pascual et al. 2017 <sup>[[#fn:r1151|1151]]</sup> ).

Recent studies increasingly incorporate the role of stakeholders and decision-makers in the selection of indicators for land systems (Verburg et al. 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r1152|1152]]</sup> ) including sustainable agriculture (Kanter et al. 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r1153|1153]]</sup> ), bioenergy sustainability (Dale et al. 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r1154|1154]]</sup> ), desertification (Liniger et al. 2019 <sup>[[#fn:r1155|1155]]</sup> ), and vulnerability (Debortoli et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r1156|1156]]</sup> ). Kanter et al. (2016) <sup>[[#fn:r1157|1157]]</sup> propose a four-step ‘cradle-to-grave’ approach for agriculture trade-off analysis, which involves co-evaluation of indicators and trade-offs with both stakeholders and decision-makers.

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