IEU publications
To serve the needs of our stakeholders, the IEU issues a variety of publications related to our work, including in the context of evaluations and learning. Keep up with the IEU’s latest publications here.
Featured publications
Independent Evaluation of the GCF's Approach to Country Ownership (COA2025)
This independent evaluation of the Green Climate Fund’s (GCF) approach to country ownership was approved by the GCF Board as part of the 2025 workplan of the Independent Evaluation Unit (IEU) and is submitted in time for its forty-third meeting (B
MELting Silos: Mixing Evaluations with Monitoring & Learning Across the Green Climate Fund
This IEU Learning Brief, prepared jointly by the Independent Evaluation Unit (IEU) and the Department of Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (DMEL), examines how the Green Climate Fund (GCF) can better align its monitoring, evaluation, and learni
Independent Evaluation of the GCF’s Simplified Approval Process (SAP2025)
The Green Climate Fund’s Simplified Approval Process (SAP) was created to make climate finance more accessible and responsive, thus enabling smaller, lower-risk projects to address urgent climate needs in vulnerable countries.
The Third Evaluability assessment of the Green Climate Fund’s Funding Proposals
This report presents the third evaluability study conducted by the Independent Evaluation Unit (IEU) of the Green Climate Fund (GCF). The study assesses whether GCF projects and programmes can be evaluated in a reliable and credible manner.
IEU Brief: GCF PROJECTS: Who benefits? How much? How? When? How do we know?
April 2018
The multi-year Learning-Oriented Real-Time Impact Assessment (LORTA) programme keeps track of the impact of GCF investments. Its goal is to assist GCF projects measure their impact in lowering greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing resilience to climate change, and if so, by how much. LORTA’s assistance includes, among other things, building and clarifying theories of change, co-building real-time and longer term measurement systems and helping projects use quantitative and qualitative...
Funding Proposal Review Checklist for Measuring Impact
April 2018
This checklist is intended to serve Funding Proposal appraisal teams in determining whether proposed projects are constructed to credibly measure and report on the impact attributable to the GCF investment. It looks at three key areas to help determine a proposal’s impact evaluability.
Approach Brief: RPSP2018
March 2018
The GCF’s Readiness and Preparatory Support Programme (RPSP) supports developing countries’ develop a transformational long-term climate action agenda through country-driven initiatives that strengthen institutional capacities, governance mechanisms, planning and programming. This 2018 1-page introductory brief provides a pre-implementation summary of the IEU’s planned evaluation of the GCF’s RPSP. It explains in simple terms the reasons for the evaluation, the intended methods and the...
LORTA Inception Report 2021
The 2021 inception report for the Learning-Oriented Real-Time Impact Assessment (LORTA) programme highlights the programme's objectives, methodologies, and progress. The report discusses the design and implementation strategies, evaluates the performance of ongoing projects, and provides insights into the effectiveness of the interventions and their contributions to climate resilience and low-emission development.