Impact Evaluation and Interventions to Address Climate Change: A Scoping Study

The International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) works to improve the lives of people in the developing world by supporting the production and use of evidence on what works, when, why and for how much. 3ie is a new initiative that responds to demands for better evidence, and will enhance development effectiveness by promoting better informed policies. 3ie finances high-quality impact evaluations and campaign to inform better program and policy design in developing countries. 3ie Working Paper series covers both conceptual issues related to impact evaluation and findings from specific studies or synthetic reviews. Foreword Substantial and increasing amounts of funding are available for climate change interventions. This paper argues that to ensure effective allocation of these resources, the selection and design of climate change mitigation and adaptation interventions should be based on evidence of what works, what doesn't, under what circumstances and at what cost. Currently the evidence base for bringing about behaviour change in the context of climate change interventions is minimal and there is a need for wider application of rigorous impact evaluation (IE) in the field. Climate change interventions have much to learn from experiences in the related fields of international development and conservation. The paper highlights some of the challenges faced when conducting IEs of climate change interventions and how these can be tackled. We argue that there are ample opportunities to conduct IE of climate change interventions. Increased financing of climate change interventions is urgently needed to mitigate global warming and enable countries and communities to adapt to its impact. However, if calls for increasing financing of climate change mitigation and adaptation by hundreds of billions of dollars a year are to remain credible, and gain and maintain support, evidence of the effectiveness of current spending is essential. van den Berg and Howard White for review and useful advice and comments on earlier drafts. The authors are responsible for all remaining errors. We are also grateful to Katharine Sims and Esther Mwangi for sharing details on the ongoing study in Mexico and the proposed evaluation in Uganda respectively, and also thanks to Paul Ferraro for useful guidance on references. Thanks are also due to participants at presentations at GDN, New Delhi and CIENS, Oslo. The views contained in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of 3ie.