Moving beyond project metrics, this paper proposes a landscape-scale framework to assess how ecological recovery, livelihoods and community governance interact to strengthen climate resilience.
Impact assessment often measures project outputs: water structures built, trees planted, hectares restored or farmers reached. Yet resilience depends on relationships between water, soil, vegetation, livelihoods and community institutions extending beyond project boundaries. Can successful projects coexist with a vulnerable landscape?
Drawing on Raah Foundation’s work in India’s Northern Western Ghats, this paper examines fragmented monitoring and proposes a landscape-scale assessment framework. Settlements are organised into interconnected landscapes and five socio-ecological archetypes differentiated by hydrogeology, topography, soils, land use and community conditions.
The framework links five dimensions: hydrological function, soil and vegetation recovery, agroecological productivity, livelihood resilience and community governance. It combines biophysical indicators, household outcomes and institutional measures, recognising that ecological recovery unfolds across different spatial and temporal scales.
Using field implementation and programme monitoring experience, the paper distinguishes project outputs from landscape outcomes and examines challenges of attribution, shifting baselines, cumulative effects and long-term stewardship. It proposes that assessment ask not only whether interventions succeeded, but whether the ecological and social relationships sustaining resilience have strengthened.
The contribution is a field-informed approach to adaptive, community-grounded impact assessment relevant to restoration and climate adaptation beyond the Western Ghats.
Dr. Sarika Kulkarni is Co-founder and CEO of Raah Foundation, advancing community-led landscape restoration, water security, agroecology and climate resilience in India’s Western Ghats.