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This chapter considers evaluation as essential for learning and for reflecting on whether actions to address the complex challenges pertaining to climate change are on track to producing the desired outcomes. The Paris Agreement of 2015 was an important milestone on the road towards a zero-carbon, resilient, prosperous and fair future. However, while the world has agreed on the need to tackle climate change for sustainable development, it is critical to provide evidence-based analysis of past experiences and ongoing innovations to shed light on how we might enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of actions at various levels. Thorough and credible evaluations help us identify what works, for whom, when and where and under what circumstances in order to mitigate climate change, achieve win-win situations for the society, the economy and the environment, reduce risk and increase resilience in the face of changing climate conditions. This chapter serves as an introduction to the book on Evaluating Climate Change Action for Sustainable Development that sets the scene on the current state of climate change evaluation and brings together experiences on evaluating climate change policy, mitigation and adaptation.

In 2014, the second conference on evaluating climate change and development offered the opportunity to take stock of evaluative evidence of the challenges, failures and success of climate change action. In 2011 one of the authors raised the possibility of a micro-macro paradox of climate change action (van den Berg, Evaluation 17:405, ): in his view evaluations of climate change action provided evidence that climate action works and achieves direct impact – yet climate change seems unstoppable. Several major, comprehensive evaluations were presented at the 2014 conference and provided an overview of actions taken and their successes and failures, as well as obstacles on the way to global impact. This chapter presents an overview of issues, evidence and the way forward for evaluators tackling climate action and sustainable development. The evidence provides support for the micro-macro paradox of 2011 and indicates that the global community has the technology and knowledge on how to stop climate change. However, actions that promote climate change still outweigh remedial climate action with at least a factor of 100. Thus current successes of programs and projects will not impact global trends, unless at the same time the non-sustainable subsidies and actions are stopped.

This chapter examines the demand for impact evidence and concludes that this demand goes beyond the experimental evidence that is produced during the lifetime of an intervention through “impact evaluations” as currently the term is used by many in the evidence movement. The demand for evidence of longer term impact at higher levels requires inspiration from an older tradition of impact evaluation and rethinking how the full range of impact evidence can be uncovered in evaluations. This is especially relevant for sustainable development which calls for a balanced approach on societal, economic and environmental issues. Climate change is a good example of this and a theory of change approach serves to identify key questions over time, space and scale to ensure that impact evidence can be found and reported throughout the lifetime of projects, programmes and policies and beyond in ex post impact assessments. Such an approach leads to mainstreaming of impact questions and related evaluation approaches throughout project and policy cycles. This chapter will demonstrate that evidence can be gathered throughout the lifetime of a project and beyond, in different geographic locations from very local to global, at different levels from relatively simple one dimensional interventions to multi-actor complex systems, up to global scales. It will thus argue for mainstreaming impact considerations throughout interventions, programmes and policies and for evaluations to gather evidence where it is available, rather than to focus the search for impact and its measurement on one or two causal mechanisms that are chosen for verification through experimentation.

The chapter presents a research for development program’s shift from a Logframe Approach to an outcome and results-based management oriented Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) system. The CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) is designing an impact pathway-based MEL system that combines classic indicators of process in research with innovative indicators of change. We have developed a methodology for evaluating with our stakeholders factors that enable or inhibit progress towards behavioral outcomes in our sites and regions. Our impact pathways represent our best understanding of how engagement can bridge the gap between research outputs and outcomes in development. Our strategies for enabling change include a strong emphasis on partnerships, social learning, gender mainstreaming, capacity building, innovative communication and MEL that focuses on progress towards outcomes.

It presents the approach to theory of change, impact pathways and results-based management monitoring, evaluation and learning system. Our results highlight the importance of engaging users of our research in the development of Impact Pathways and continuously throughout the life of the program. Partnerships with diverse actors such as the private sector and policy makers is key to achieving change, like the attention to factors such as social learning, capacity building, networking and institutional change when generating evidence on climate smart technologies and practices. We conclude with insights on how the theory of change process in CGIAR can be used to achieve impacts that balance the drive to generate new knowledge in agricultural research with the priorities and urgency of the users and beneficiaries of these research results.

Evaluating the contribution of agricultural research to development has always been a challenge. Research alone does not lead to impact, but research does generate knowledge which actors, including development partners, can put into use to generate development outcomes. In CCAFS we are finding that a theory of change approach to research program design, implementation and evaluation is helping us bridge the gap between knowledge generation and development outcomes.

A stronger focus on results achieved in international cooperation on climate change has become common in the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation SDC () and the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs SECO (). In 2014 these agencies have commissioned an assessment on the effectiveness of more than 400 of their climate change interventions over the timeframe of 12 years (2000–2012). This paper presents the methodological approach of the assessment and its results. In a second step and most importantly, it summaries the challenges and lessons learnt of commissioning and conducting such a stock-taking exercise in the field of climate change. These lessons are addressed to evaluators, practitioners and policy makers. In general, the paper concludes that preparing such a report on the effectiveness of the international cooperation in climate change is indeed a very challenging exercise. More specifically, the paper argues that firstly many more efforts are needed from evaluators to identify best methodological practices in dealing with such a mass of information, the wide and highly diverse portfolio and a lack of good quantitative and qualitative data. Secondly, practitioners need to invest more in project design and in monitoring in order to provide accurate data as a basis for sound assessment. Finally, policy makers should be well aware of the significant investments needed for such assessments as an instrument of accountability. This paper thus contributes to the debate among interested stakeholders on the need for better results measurement and results reporting in international cooperation on climate change.

The Climate Change Sub-programme (CCSP) of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has four components: Adaptation, Mitigation, REDD+ and Science and Outreach. It cuts across all UNEP divisions located in Nairobi and Paris, and relies a lot on partnerships to drive its work and scale up its impact. The CCSP evaluation conducted by the UNEP Evaluation Office over the period 2013–2014, aimed at assessing the relevance and overall performance of the CCSP between 2008 and 2013. The complexity, geographical spread and rather weak results framework of the CCSP, coupled to rather limited evaluation resources and a shortage of evaluative evidence, required the Evaluation Office to develop an innovative analytical framework and data collection approach for this evaluation. It combined three areas of focus (strategic relevance, sub-programme performance and factors affecting performance), five interlinked units of analysis (UNEP corporate, sub-programme, country, component and project level), a Theory of Change approach and an appropriate combination of data collection tools. This chapter discusses the overall evaluation approach and process, followed by a summary of lessons learned which could be useful for future similar exercises.

This chapter looks at the initial progress of the JCM implementation in contributing to sustainable development in developing countries through facilitating diffusion of leading low-carbon technologies and implementation of mitigation actions. The current progress of the JCM in 16 partner countries looks promising with an established MRV system and efficient governance process. MRV methodologies are easy to use and benefits from standardized forms, default values, and practical monitoring system, but the methods in determining the reference emissions need to be strengthened. Rigorous project promotion is needed in underrepresented partner countries, especially least-developed countries, by supporting national programs and initiatives. The JCM should aim not only to complement, but also to improve preceding market mechanisms, by implementing a regulatory framework for evaluating its contributions to sustainable development. There is a need to clarify ways of credit allocation, arrange ways of credits accounting for national report and towards national pledge, and define the pathway of the JCM to a tradable crediting mechanism or retain its status quo of producing non-tradable credits.

Policies that target poverty reduction are often at odds with environmental sustainability. Assessing magnitudes of trade-offs between improved livelihoods on one side, and forest cover on the other, is important for designing win-win development policies that may help to mitigate climate change. I use a mix of panel data for 670 villages over a 10 year period, and combine it with historical land records and grey literature, to understand the drivers of deforestation of Thailand – an area where smallholder ethnic tribes are located. Given that reserved forests are the last bastions of forests in Thailand, examining what drives land clearing these areas is important. I combine econometric findings with qualitative reports to infer that (i) it is important to measure the differential effects of policies on different crops, agricultural intensity and the agricultural frontier; and (ii) within forest reserves, policies that cultivation overall may be detrimental to forest cover after all. This has important implications for evaluators and policy makers.

This chapter presents the methodological approach adopted in the evaluation of GEF support to market change for climate change mitigation in four emerging markets: China, India, Mexico and Russia. The evaluation was completed in October 2013. This evaluation included 18 completed and fully evaluated GEF mitigation projects covering various sectors with opportunities for renewable energy, energy efficiency and methane emission reduction. A theory of change approach was used to undertake a comparative analysis across projects aiming to tease out changes across diverse markets or markets segments in different countries as a consequence of GEF support. While attention was given to the extent to which projects resulted in actual greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions, more emphasis was placed on understanding the extent and forms by which GEF projects contributed to long term market changes resulting in GHG emission reductions and assessing the added value of GEF support in the context of multiple factors affecting market change.

In many Least Developed Countries, the minimum level for basic services like energy access is not reached. In the cases of long-term investment in carbon intensive technologies, the expansion of basic services is likely to carry with it a significant increase in GHG emissions. This chapter discuss the importance of accounting for these avoided emissions through the case study of the Passive Solar Houses (PSH) in Afghanistan.

In Kabul winters are cold and 48 % of households cannot afford enough fuel to heat their house. To reduce fuels expenses and improve living conditions, the NGO GERES is supporting local artisans to disseminate a PSH model made of a veranda built on the south-facing part of the house to conserve the sun energy captured and stored in the walls. During the 2013–2014 winter, the fuel consumption and indoor temperature of PSH and control houses were monitored to assess the impact of the technology.

The results show an energy saving of 23 % resulting in annual greenhouse gases emission reduction of 0.37 tCOe/year as well as an average indoor temperature increase of 1.43 °C to reach 18.22 °C. Then, a regression model was developed to estimate the emissions that would have occurred if the control group had reached the same indoor temperature than the PSH and, in a second scenario, the minimum indoor temperature of 18 °C recommended by the WHO. For both scenario, the avoided emission represent approximately half of the total climate change mitigation impact with 0.40 tCOe/year and 0.34 tCOe/year respectively.