Page - (000104) - in Evaluating Climate Change Action for Sustainable Development

TheoryofChange for theAreaof Intervention ‘ClimateChange Adaptation’ Switzerland’s engagement for climate change adaptation enhances the adap- tive capacity and resilience in partner countries through a combination of interventions allowing to secure and improve living conditions and liveli- hoods of people affected by climate change. How the terms are used in the assessment: • CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION ¼ Avoiding the unmanageable. Preventing, reducing or avoiding human-made greenhouse gas emissions, for example bypromoting renewable energies. • CLIMATECHANGEADAPTATION¼Managing theunavoidable. Increasing resilience and capacity to copewith and adapt to the effects of climate change, for example by improving earlywarning systems for extremeweather events. Since there is noaccepted standardmethodology for the summative assessment onportfolio levelasrequestedin themandate, theconsultantsappliedaninnovative and adaptive approach to develop a suitable methodology. The finally applied methodology covered the following three steps: • Portfolio appraisal: In a first step, the consultants conducted an independent appraisal of the portfolio, reviewing and developing an understanding of the nature of all 508projects, exploring thequality of available data, validating the proposed climate change relevance of the projects and identifying suitable clusters in reference to the proposed result chains. This resulted in a portfolio of423assessableprojects,categorizedintosix thematicclusters(energy,cleaner production, natural resources, hazards, livelihoods, knowledge) and the funding and grants to organizations as a separate cluster. Furthermore six countries including 30 projects (five in each country) were identified for field visits and in-depth studies. The selection had to consider the following criteria: – Thematicbalance:Theselectedprojectshad to includeandbalance interven- tionsinthethreeAreasofIntervention(EnablingFramework,Adaptationand Mitigation). – Geographical balance: The selected projects had to include and balance interventions in priority countries from different continents including the formerSovietRepublics/countries fromEasternEurope. – Institutionalbalance:Theselectedprojectshad to includeandbalanceprojects ofSDCandSECOand reflect bilateral andmulti-bilateral funding schemes. – Performance balance: The selected projects had to represent strengths and weaknesses/successes andchallengesof theSwiss InternationalCooperation inClimateChange. – Time balance: The selected projects had to represent thewhole observation period, considering the increasing relevance of climate change in Swiss InternationalCooperationover time. 86 M.EggerKissling andR.Windisch