Page - (000099) - in Evaluating Climate Change Action for Sustainable Development

Chapter5 Lessons fromTakingStockof 12Years ofSwiss InternationalCooperation onClimateChange MonikaEggerKisslingandRomanWindisch Abstract A stronger focus on results achieved in international cooperation on climate change has become common in the Swiss Agency for Development and CooperationSDC(www.eda.admin.ch/sdc) and theStateSecretariat forEconomic AffairsSECO(www.seco.admin.ch). In2014 these agencies have commissioned an assessment on the effectiveness of more than 400 of their climate change interventionsover the timeframeof12years (2000–2012).Thispaperpresents the methodological approach of the assessment and its results. In a second step and most importantly, it summaries the challenges and lessons learnt of commission- ing and conducting such a stock-taking exercise in the field of climate change. These lessons are addressed to evaluators, practitioners and policy makers. In general, the paper concludes that preparing such a report on the effectiveness of the international cooperation in climate change is indeed a very challenging exercise. More specifically, the paper argues that firstly manymore efforts are needed fromevaluators to identify bestmethodological practices in dealingwith such amass of information, thewide and highly diverse portfolio and a lack of goodquantitativeandqualitativedata.Secondly,practitionersneedtoinvestmore inprojectdesignand inmonitoring inorder toprovideaccuratedataasabasis for sound assessment. Finally, policymakers should bewell aware of the significant investmentsneeded for suchassessments asan instrumentof accountability.This paper thuscontributes to thedebateamonginterestedstakeholderson theneedfor better resultsmeasurement and results reporting in international cooperation on climate change. M.EggerKissling (*) Evaluation andCorporateControllingDivision, SwissAgency forDevelopment and Cooperation,Berne, Switzerland e-mail: egger.consulting@bluewin.ch R.Windisch Quality andResourcesDivisionWEQA,SwissStateSecretariat forEconomicAffairs SECO, Berne, Switzerland e-mail: roman.windisch@eda.admin.ch ©TheAuthor(s) 2017 J.I.Uitto et al. (eds.),EvaluatingClimateChangeAction for Sustainable Development,DOI10.1007/978-3-319-43702-6_5 81