Background

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) is the single largest source of funds and expertise for projects aimed at protecting the global environment, and since 1991 it has provided over $7.6 billion in grants. Considering the scale of these investments, it is clearly vital that the GEF portfolio is achieving the desired impacts in improving the status of the global environment. In practice, however, there has been uncertainty about the nature and extent of the lasting impact that has been achieved by this investment. In part this is due to the complexity of environmental processes and long timeframes needed to generate impact, but also because standard project monitoring and evaluations tend to focus on the more easily measurable immediate and tangible achievements of a project, rather than its ultimate impact.

Our contribution

To address this deficiency in existing environmental evaluation methods, GEF recruited CDC to develop and test a new and practical approach to understanding the impacts of GEF projects through the application of a "theory of change" approach designed to enable the evaluator to gain a better understanding of the fundamental change processses required to deliver ultimate impacts, and the key requirements of the project design needed to achieve this. The new methodology was piloted with three biodiversity projects in East Africa (including Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in northern Kenya and Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda), but with the ultimate intention to adapt the methodology for application in other GEF focal areas. Our role included designing the evaluation analytical framework, desk research on the three case study projects, and field verification and stakeholder consultations.

The methodology developed through the study was found to be a highly practical and cost effective way of understanding what impacts are being produced by environmental projects, and the factors responsible - termed impact drivers - for this. As a result, the GEF mainstreamed the methodology as a central component of its Fourth Operational Performance Study of its entire project portfolio, to which we provided technical support. Subsequently, CDC was requested by the GEF to develop a practical handbook for use in the future application of the methodology, which can be downloaded here.

Customer