Page - (000175) - in Evaluating Climate Change Action for Sustainable Development

9.4 Assessing Impacts ofGEFSupport Anintervention theoryofchange ismeant toexplainhowinputsandactivitieswill lead to outputs and impacts and tomake explicit the key assumptions about how impactswillbeachieved.Manypublicationsdiscuss theuseoftheoriesofchangein evaluation (Chen 1990; van den Berg and Todd 2011; Weiss 1972). These approaches are particularly well suited to evaluate specific projects or programs. Theclimatechangeevaluation includedawidevarietyofprojectscoveringdiverse technologies and markets that are affected by different factors and conditions including policy instruments, institutions, and interactions among producers, sup- pliers and consumers. Thus, this specific challenge required an overall framework that allowed systematic comparison among such different interventions. Since its inception,GEFhasbeen supportinggenerationofglobal environmental benefits in different focal areas. However, for a long period there was no consistent overall conceptual framework thatwas applicable across its different focal areas to assess howGEF intends to achieve theglobal environmental benefits.TheGEF IEOhas, however, found that having such an explicit framework is important for its impact evaluationwork.GEF IEOhasprepared ageneric framework for thedevelopment of theories of change (TOC framework) to facilitate these comparative analysis (GEFIEO2012,2013,2014).Thisgeneral frameworkwasusedasabasis toassess impact ofGEFclimate changemitigation activities (Fig. 9.1). The generic TOC framework shows that the GEF support seeks to change behavior and institutionsby focusingon threebroad realmsof intervention: gener- ation and sharing of knowledge and information; development of institutional Fig. 9.1 General framework forGEF theoryof change (Source:GEF IEO2014) 9 MethodologicalApproachof theGEF IEO’sClimateChangeMitigation. . . 159