American Evaluation Association (AEA) 2011

The GEF Evaluation Office organized a panel discussion on the new M&E Policy and participated in a session presenting innovative approaches to evaluating climate change adaptation programs at the conference of the American Evaluation Association in Anaheim in November 2011.

Valuing Diversity- How to Construct Consensus for M&E Policy with Multiple Stakeholders - Experiences with the Global Environment Facility (GEF)

Reforms at the GEF led its Council to request the Evaluation Office and Secretariat to work with the GEF partnership and revise the GEF Monitoring and Evaluation Policy. The revised policy was presented and adopted by the Council in November 2010. The session at the AEA Conference in Anaheim provided a template for integrating views from diverse stakeholders based on GEF experience. The process of developing guidelines for results-based tracking, quality assurance, compliance and inclusive engagement has led to a policy aiming to meet the needs of management, implementing agencies, evaluators, and beneficiaries. The session shared lessons for navigating organization's unique systems to improve measurement and evaluation through the lifecycle of programs and projects.

The Global Environment Facility Evaluation Office has gathered substantial experience in evaluating climate change adaptation through three evaluations of major adaptation programs, the GEF Strategic Priority on Adaptation (SPA, $50 million), the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF, $415 million) and the Special Climate Change Fund ($180 million) as well as through further activities such as hosting a community of practice of climate evaluators (climate-eval). The Evaluation Office's presentation on adaptation at the AEA 2011 presented main lessons learned and experiences with the specific difficulties of evaluating adaptation, namely the uncertainty of threat as well as response resulting in a challenge to define success for adaptation activities. The presentation illustrated how the GEF Evaluation Office approached this challenge. It introduced six key success factors for adaptation programs that emerged from the evaluations and can serve as building blocks for future adaptation evaluation frameworks.

Themes and Speakers

• Chair: Baljit Wadhwa, Senior Evaluation Officer, GEF Evaluation Office
• Carlo Carugi, Senior Evaluation Officer, GEF Evaluation Office
  Revising GEF's M&E Policy: Arriving at Minimum Standards in Partnership with Diverse Sets of M&E Requirements
• Dima Socair Reda, Senior Results Management Coordinator, GEF Secretariat
  Delicate Balances in Nature and in Monitoring: The Coming Together of Rigorous Results Tracking Through Diverse and Flexible Mechanisms
• Alan Fox, Evaluation Advisor, UNDP Evaluation Office
  Perspectives from a GEF Implementing Agency
• Osvaldo, Feinstein, Independent Consultant
  Evaluation Capacity Building at Country Level: GEF Focal Points: Experiences from Expanding the Role of the GEF Focal Points in the Revised M&E Policy