Page - (000059) - in Evaluating Climate Change Action for Sustainable Development

development includesevaluationasafollow-upandreviewprinciplefor theagenda (UN2015, p. 37). Evaluations at higher scales and at the global level are not often done and are difficult to design, implement and report on.Many problems could bementioned, such as reliability and comparability of data, external validity of evidence of causality,butaparticularproblemthatraises itsheadinrelationtoimpactevidence, is the problem whether evidence at local levels and lower scales translates into evidence at global levels, at higher scales and over longer time periods. The first chapter of this book has dealt with this issue in detail. In 2013 I argued that a “micro-macroparadox”,whichpoints to successes at themicro level that seemnot to be reflected in trends at themacro level, is particularly relevant to the linkage betweenenvironmentanddevelopmentand thus tosustainabledevelopmentwhich aims toachieveabalancebetweensociety, the economyand theenvironment (van denBerg2013,pp41–43).ClimateChangeprovidesgoodexamples for this.Many climatechangerelated interventionsaresuccessfulandachievewhat theysetout to do. However, the success of individual activities has not affected global climate change substantially. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change con- cluded in its 2014 report: “without additional mitigation efforts beyond those in place today, and even with adaptation, warming by the end of the twenty-first centurywill lead to high to very high risk of severe, widespread and irreversible impactsglobally (highconfidence)” (IPCC2014,p. 77).Notice theuseof the term impact for global phenomena. 3.2 Demand for ImpactEvidence Although the evidence movement has aimed to narrow down and reduce the meaning of the term “impact” as referring towhat can be found through counter- factual testing, the term impact is an ordinaryword in the English language, the meaning of which varies according to context. While science and in this case evaluationmay prefer a precise definition and a narrowmeaning of terminology, ingeneral thiswillnotchangehowterminologyisusedinconversationanddebates. Whenthepublicdemandstoseeproofof impact, theywillusethetermimpact inan undefinedway.To correct the public tends to be rather difficult if not impossible. The question thus emerges whether narrowing the definition of impact is helpful andwhether another approachwouldnot bemore appropriate,which is to identify howthe termisused,whatkindofevidencewouldbe required tomeet thedemand and to identify clearlywhat the advantages anddisadvantages are of the tools and thus of the reliability, validity and credibility of the evidence. Agood example of the discrepancy betweenwhatworks and does notwork at the local level andwhether “impact” is achieved according to theway the public thinks about it, is climate change.At the level of individual activities good, solid evidence is found on what works, especially on mitigation of climate change. Mitigation activities aim to reduce the level of greenhouse gas emissions and thus 3 Mainstreaming ImpactEvidence inClimateChange andSustainableDevelopment 39