Seite - (000105) - in Evaluating Climate Change Action for Sustainable Development

– A further critical requirementwas the availability of an adequate documen- tationof the selectedprojects. – Finally, someprojects shouldhaveproducedvisible effects thatwouldallow anattractive visualizationof achievements. • Key questions: The Climate Change Report on Effectiveness investigates the achieved results of the selected423climate-relevant projects carried out by the SDCandtheSECOintheareasofclimatechangeadaptationandclimatechange mitigation. The key questions for the analysiswere:What contribution did the projects make towards improving people’s ability to cope with the negative effectsofclimatechange (adaptation)?What contributiondid theprojectsmake towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions (mitigation)? To what extent did Switzerland’s engagement for enabling frameworks contribute to the develop- ment of fair and binding climate-sensitive political frameworks at the interna- tional level and inpartner countries? • Detailed investigations:Thesecondstepcomprisedmoredetailed investigations of these 30 projects during field visits to the selected six countries (Nepal, SouthAfrica, Peru,Mongolia, Serbia andAlbania). Thedesk studyof 31 addi- tional projects (including an in-depth studyof projects inVietnam) ensured the balancedcoverageacross thevarious themesandmodalitieswithin theportfolio. The project documentation includedplanning and reporting documents such as Credit Proposals, Annual Reports, Progress Reports as well as Evaluation Reports. Thedetailed investigations involveddirect interviewswithknowledge holders at project level. • Portfolio analysis: The third step was to analyse the complete portfolio of 423projects,and todetermineadaptationand/ormitigationeffectivenessscores, with the aimof estimating the overall effectiveness of each thematic approach and of the whole portfolio. This assessment drew on the portfolio appraisal, detailed project reviews, questionnaires, interviews, and focus group discus- sions. Overall effectiveness scores for the 423 projects for which sufficient information was available were distributed across all themes. These scores wereeither ‘tentative’or ‘confirmed’andboth represented the reviewer’s judge- menton theproject’s effectiveness, from ‘extremely strong’ (score7) to ‘none’. Tentative scores were based on the information presented in key documents, informed by similar projects that have been reviewed through in-depth assess- ments, as well as sectoral specific reputation of the implementing partner. Confirmed scoreswere based on the findings of the 61 detailed desk and field studies, and replaced the tentativescores ineachof thesecases.Thedistribution ofeffectivenessscores in thesampleofconfirmedscores (n¼61)wascompared with that in the larger sampleof tentative scores (n¼362), and thedistributions were found to be significantly correlated. Though not as perfect as an in-depth study of all 508 projects would have been, the use of tentative scores in the overall assessment was necessary. The portfolio was far too diverse to yield meaningfullyrepresentativeresultsoraggregateresultsstatements for thewhole portfolio. 5 Lessons fromTakingStockof 12Years ofSwiss InternationalCooperation. . . 87