Page - (000034) - in Evaluating Climate Change Action for Sustainable Development

Chapter2 ActiononClimateChange:WhatDoes It MeanandWhereDoes ItLeadTo? RobD.vandenBergandLeeCando-Noordhuizen Abstract In2014, the secondconferenceonevaluatingclimatechangeanddevel- opment offered the opportunity to take stock of evaluative evidence of the chal- lenges, failures and success of climate change action. In 2011 one of the authors raised the possibility of amicro-macro paradoxof climate change action (vanden Berg, Evaluation 17:405, 2011): in his view evaluations of climate change action provided evidence that climate action works and achieves direct impact – yet climate change seems unstoppable. Several major, comprehensive evaluations were presented at the 2014 conference and provided anoverviewof actions taken and their successes and failures, aswell as obstacles on theway to global impact. This chapter presents an overview of issues, evidence and the way forward for evaluators tackling climate action and sustainable development. The evidence provides support for themicro-macroparadoxof2011and indicates that theglobal community has the technology and knowledge on how to stop climate change. However, actions that promote climate change still outweigh remedial climate actionwithat leasta factorof100.Thuscurrentsuccessesofprogramsandprojects will not impactglobal trends,unlessat the same time thenon-sustainable subsidies and actions are stopped. Keywords Climateaction•Climatechange•Evaluation•Micro-macroparadox• Systems change R.D. vandenBerg (*) King’sCollegeLondonand InternationalDevelopmentEvaluationAssociation (IDEAS), Leidschendam,TheNetherlands e-mail: rdwinterberg@gmail.com L.Cando-Noordhuizen IndependentEvaluationOffice,GlobalEnvironment Facility,Washington,DC,USA e-mail: leecando.eval@gmail.com ©TheAuthor(s) 2017 J.I.Uitto et al. (eds.),EvaluatingClimateChangeAction for Sustainable Development,DOI10.1007/978-3-319-43702-6_2 13