The CEO of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), Dr. Naoko Ishii participated in the closing ceremony of the conference. Her message focused on the importance of evidence in decision making.
In his opening keynote, Dr. Andrew Steer, CEO and President of the World Resources Institute challenged evaluators to seize the moment via their evaluative evidence to shape future development.
Key examples of some of these methodological advances include, network analysis, stakeholder mapping and other experimental and quasi experimental methods.
Further progress has been made towards a common and shared understanding of methods and approaches to track and measure climate adaptation, mitigation and policies.
The 2nd International Conference on Evaluating Climate Change and Development (November 4-6, 2014 in Washington D.C.) tackled the challenges of evaluation in a new development architecture facing the upcoming post-2015 framework. Almost 300 practitioners, academics, and policymakers from 59 countries met to exchange ideas and methods, as well as to identify new ways to support the demand and use of climate change and development evaluations in order to improve policy making.
Over the course of the 2014 conference, leading experts in evaluation research and practice were interviewed and shared their experience and knowledge with the participants and the broader audience.
Explains why it is vital organizations and governments learn how to evaluate climate mitigation and adaptation projects more effectively.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Second International Conference on Evaluating Climate Change and Development at IFC headquarters, Steer says it is becoming clear what projects are cost effective and offer global benefits.
Evaluation is a powerful tool for policymakers to understand what climate projects works and what do not, says Juha Uitto, director of the Independent Evaluation Office at the Global Environment Facility (GEF).
‘We have to learn for what has worked so far and in what specific situations. This conference is really part of that process,” he says.
Better evaluation measures are important to work out if climate policies are boosting development prospects as well as protecting the environment, says Jyotsna Puri, director of 3ie.
‘What has been ignored for a long time is to identify whether policies need to trade off with development and the environment,” she says.