In the context of climate change adaptation and mitigation, it has been argued that the use of a baseline as a comparator may be misleading since adaptation interventions will, by definition, take place in a changing environment with evolving climate-related hazards and risks (Brooks et al., A more accurate assessment would, therefore, need to factor in these changing circumstances to establish a good understanding of what the situation would have been in the absence of a policy approach on adaptation (Brooks et al., For example, a simple before and after comparison may show that climate vulnerability has deteriorated, while a comparison to a counterfactual would reveal that the situation would have been even worse without the explicit and implicit adaptation initiatives in place.