It's my deep pleasure to start this Newsletter with the announcement that the 19th meeting of the GCF Board approved IEU’s 2018 and three year rolling work plan.
At IEU we are excited but clear-eyed about the enormous responsibility this means for all of us. With only nine months remaining in 2018, it's an ambitious work schedule but we are ready!
The four key achievements we're aiming for this year are:
1. Building the IEU, including hiring a full complement of staff; and presenting the GCF Evaluation policy.
2. Undertaking and delivering three high quality evaluations that provide the GCF Board and the Executive Director with credible evidence about the performance of the Fund.
Key among these are evaluating GCF's Readiness Program and the Learning Oriented Real-Time Impact Assessments.
3. Building an evaluation-based learning, advisory and capacity strengthening programme.
4. Engaging with new and existing partners so the IEU can be cost-effective.
Further details about these activities will be available on our new website, to be launched soon.
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Onward and upward!
Dr. Jyotsna (Jo) Puri,
Head of the Independent Evaluation Unit,
IEU Talks - Behavioural Change Crucial to Climate Change
You may have heard of the recently awarded Nobel Prize for Economics that went to Daniel Kahman for his work on behavioural insights.
Behavioural insights were also the subject of one of IEU’s recent talks featuring Sara Castro-Hallgren from the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
One of Sara’s key research interests is changing behaviours to reduce carbon emissions. Says Sara, climate change actions often fail for very simple reasons. “We design and invest a lot in policy and programmes . . . but we don’t achieve the desired effect."
This is because we overlook the role of human behaviour.
Fortunately, this is improving through behavioural-based economics, which tries to understand why people do or don’t make “green” decisions. Sara says changes in human behaviour could reduce carbon emissions significantly. For example, by having less children, reducing meat consumption, or switching off car engines instead of letting them idle.
But the fact is, “we don’t change. Sometimes we want to, but sometimes
we fail despite our best intentions. There is a gap between the intention and the action," says Sara.
One solution to this, according to Sara, is to make the 'green' choice the default choice. For example, car-makers can install a simple 'start-stop' button to easily stop cars from idling and emitting greenhouse gasses. Or, do as Volvo have and make electric cars the default car they produce.
Sara Castro-Hallgren from the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs discusses the role of behavioural change in addressing climate change at the January IEU Talk.
'What works' in bringing about transformational change? IEU and CIF Combine Forces
The IEU has teamed up with the Evaluation & Learning Initiative of the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) to contract an independent evaluation team to examine transformational change.
The review will look at some of the specific attributes of transformational change, including the rigorous evidence of programs that lead to changes at scale (and depth), systemic changes and changes that are sustainable.
According to Dr. Jo Puri, Head of the Independent Evaluation Unit, the review will focus on four sectors. “Agriculture, energy and power, disaster risk reduction and management, and public health have accumulated a lot of evidence over the past 40 years on what it takes to be transformative,” says Jo.
The review is asking important questions: What is the rigorous evidence in other sectors on what has been transformative? Can we identify some correlations, or even some causative factors that can help inform big transformational changes and paradigm shifts? What are their drivers? Does scale of transformation differ by sector, intervention, context or other variables? These are just some of the questions we hope to get answers to.”
IEU and CIF will announce the successful contractors in March, with the 12-month evaluation commencing shortly after. An initial draft paper will be finalized and sent to IEU and CIF for comments late 2018, with the final paper due in April 2019. The findings of the joint review will inform strategy, policy and implementation at the GCF and CIF.
Watch this space!
Preliminary findings will be available at the end of the year.
IEU Talk - Evaluating REDD+
The IEU Talk for February posed the question 'How can we evaluate the impacts of REDD+* on forests and people?' Two scientists from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Dr. Christopher Martius and Dr. Amy Duchelle, visited IEU in February to discuss their findings on the subject. Ms. Moon Herrick, the REDD+ consultant within the GCF's Division of Mitigation and Adaptation was the discussant for the event.
Speaking first at the IEU Talk, Dr. Martius said CIFOR is "looking at how countries and project implementers go about delivering REDD+ projects."
With help from donors in Australia, Germany, the USA and the EU, CIFOR is comparing REDD+ in a number of countries through a "triple-E plus" lens. Says Christoper "(REDD+ projects) should be effective, cost-efficient, equitable and provide co-benefits."
Amy summarised various CIFOR approaches for measuring the impacts of REDD+ activities in several countries, including Brazil, Peru, Indonesia, Viet Nam, Tanzania and Cameroon.
Beginning in 2010, when REDD+ activities were just being rolled out, CIFOR initiated
*REDD+ = actions aimed at reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and to fostering conservation, sustainable forest management, and the enhancement of forest carbon stock
surveys of REDD+ interventions on 4,000 households in 150 villages in six countries. Scientists returned three to four years later to make their first set of evaluations.
Using a range of methodologies, CIFOR researchers evaluated REDD+’s impact on deforestation rates, and on a variety of socio-economic variables, including income, tenure security and local participation in REDD+, among others.
Moon provided a brief overview of the GCF’s involvement with REDD+. According to Moon, GCF is the only financing institution supporting all three phases of REDD+, including readiness and preparatory support, the regular project cycle and results-based payments.
To get more details of this IEU Talk, in particular Amy’s explanation of the evaluation approaches adopted to measure the impact of REDD+,watch the video of the IEU Talk, available with a range of other videos on IEU's YouTube channel.
(l. to r.) GCF's Moon Herrick and CIFOR's Dr. Christopher Martinus and Dr. Amy Duchelle discuss evaluating the impacts of REDD+ at the February IEU Talk.
IEU Partnering with the UN
The IEU is collaborating with the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) to help evaluate capacity building within the UN’s international strategy for reducing and better managing disaster risk. Scheduled for April, the event will feature two experts who will facilitate discussions on the best methods to evaluate capacity building. They will also present a public seminar to staff from both the GCF and the UNISDR.
Following the seminar, the experts will lead a 1 ½ day workshop that looks at the UNISDR’s Global Capacity Development Strategy (GCDS) – a capacity development initiative under the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction that specifically focuses on building the capacity of a multitude of UN organizations in disaster risk reduction, resilience and adaptation. Based on the seminar and discussions, and a review of documents, the experts will develop an approach paper that addresses the overall topic of monitoring and evaluating the global strategy, as well as adaptation.
IEU Signs MoU with ICIMOD
The IEU has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD). The MoU will promote cooperation of technical expertise, knowledge exchange, and strategic partnerships around evaluation.
Specific outputs of the MoU include joint papers on evaluating adaptation, facilitating the exchange of experts and staff between IEU and ICIMOD, and delivering evaluation training on behalf of IEU to the GCF Designated National Authority (DNA) for Nepal and other regions. Other important outputs include supporting the organization of workshops, seminars, IEU Talks, training courses, and joint events on topics related to evaluation and climate change.
Nepalese woman in the Himalaya mountains near Pokhara
It's my deep pleasure to start this Newsletter with the announcement that the 19th meeting of the GCF Board approved IEU’s 2018 and three year rolling work plan.
