A Scorecard to Assess the Enabling Environment for Water and Climate Innovations in Agriculture

Ires, Idil

A Scorecard to Assess the Enabling Environment for Water and Climate Innovations in Agriculture

Autores

Ires, Idil

Editor

International Water Management Institute

Descripción

This paper offers an enabling environment scorecard to diagnose the institutional and political economy constraints that prevent agricultural and climate innovations from scaling, and to guide targeted reform and investment decisions to help address them. It suggests that persistent scaling failures arise less from gaps in technology or finance than from weak institutional conditions, specifically the absence of predictable rules, credible enforcement, and coordinated risk management needed to sustain private investment. Grounded in New Institutional Economics and political economy analysis, the scorecard evaluates seven institutional pillars: policy coherence and credibility; legal foundations and rights security; regulatory frameworks; finance and investment architecture; partnership capacity; market linkages; and governance conditions. It also assesses seven cross-cutting levers— incentives, interests, trust, ideas and narratives, information, capacity, and affordability—linking these to staged scaling pathways from agenda setting through design, implementation, adoption, and adaptation. An illustrative application to solar irrigation in Kenya reveals a mixed landscape. Strong digital finance and information systems enable pay-as-you-go and carbon-linked business models. However, gaps in contract enforcement, regulatory coordination, and policy stability increase transaction costs and force firms to internalize risks that should be managed by public institutions. The scorecard provides a structured approach to identify binding constraints and inform coordinated, stage-specific reforms and investments. By clarifying where institutional conditions undermine credible private commitment, it offers governments, development partners, and investors a shared basis to prioritize action, align interventions, and reduce avoidable risk in scaling climate-resilient agricultural innovations.