CDKN’s mission is to support decision-makers in designing and delivering climate compatible development by combining research, advisory services and knowledge management in support of locally owned and managed policy processes. Within the broad scope of climate compatible development, the programme works across four strategic themes: Climate compatible development strategies and plans; Improving developing countries’ access to climate finance; Strengthening resilience through climate-related disaster risk management; and supporting climate negotiators from the least developed and most vulnerable countries. CDKN works in partnership with decision-makers in the public, private and non-governmental sectors nationally, regionally and globally.
The evaluation
The Year 5 Evaluation addresses CDKN’s progress since the Mid-Term Review and CDKN’s results up to the impact-level delivered in the first 5 years of the programme.
Our approach
Itad applied a mixed-method approach combining qualitative and quantitative methodologies including a relatively rigorous assessment of CDKN results. The essence of the evaluation was to validate five key Theories of Change (ToC) identified, establish CDKN’s relative progress along them, and situate CDKN’s Year 5 results progress within appropriate timescales. Each outcome-level ToC required a tailored set of methods and sampling strategies.
The evaluation was delivered by a Core Evaluation Team in collaboration with senior country counterparts and regional climate change advisors in India, Rwanda, Nepal, Kenya and Colombia. The team designed and applied an overall approach and set of methods that drew on Contribution Analysis (CA) to gather evidence to test and validate the five key ToC identified.
Itad designed a two-track evaluation approach to assess the CDKN programme from two perspectives or ‘entry points’ – Country case studies and Outcome/research case studies. We used CA in both types of case study to help identify the contribution of CDKN in complex policy environments in which other interventions have also taken place. From the overall ToC, we then derived a set of common evaluation questions for country case studies: testing key assumptions, the role of stakeholders and progress on route to impact.
The full report was presented to DFID and CDKN in early March 2015 and can be found here.
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