The IEU Releases New Working Paper on Complexity, Climate Change, and Evaluation

The Green Climate Fund’s (GCF) Independent Evaluation Unit (IEU) has published its second working paper. Titled Complexity, climate change and evaluation, IEU Working Paper No. 02, it examines how we can think about climate change investments that are ‘complex’. Key attributes of complexity include the fact that these investments are aiming to meet a multitude of goals, are directed at a variety of stakeholders and actors (‘heterogeneity’), are being implemented in contexts that are interconnected (‘networks’) and are likely to have outcomes and results that may not be completely known (‘emergence’). The paper by Sadie DeCoste and Dr. Jyotsna Puri (Jo) reviews approaches in different disciplines to understand complexity and then illustrates some possible ways in which to understand complexity, by creating a ‘complexity rubric’. They then apply this rubric to a cross-section of GCF investments to demonstrate possibilities and discuss implications for evaluations specifically.

Read the full working paper here.