Evaluating Climate Change and Development

Climate change has become one of the most important global issues of our time, with far-reaching natural, socio-economic, and political effects. To address climate change and development issues from the perspective of evaluation, an international conference was held in Alexandria, Egypt. This book distills the essence of that timely conference, building on the experiences of more than 400 reports and studies presented.

Developing countries may be particularly vulnerable to the expected onslaught of higher temperatures, rising sea levels, changing waterfall patterns, and increasing natural disasters. All societies will have to reduce their vulnerability to these changes, and this book describes how vulnerabilities may be addressed in a systematic manner so that governments and local communities may better understand what is happening. Different approaches are also discussed, including the use of human security as a criterion for evaluation as well as ways to deal with risk and uncertainty. Evaluating Climate Change and Development presents a rich variety of methods to assess adaptation through monitoring and evaluation.

The volume deals with climate change, development, and evaluation; challenges and lessons learned from evaluations; mitigation of climate change; adaptation to climate change; vulnerability, risks and climate change; and presents a concluding chapter on the road ahead. Collectively the authors offer a set of approaches and techniques for the monitoring and evaluation of climate change.

Author Biography

Rob D. van den Berg is director of evaluation at the Global Environment Facility in Washington, D.C. He is the co-editor of three books and author of more than twenty articles in the areas of policy formulation, evaluation, research and development cooperation, and the historical dimension of development. Osvaldo Feinstein is a consultant with the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. He is a senior adviser at the Spanish Evaluation Agency, professor at the Master in Evaluation of the Complutense University of Madrid, and a member of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research’s Science Council Panel on Monitoring and Evaluation. He is also the series editor of Transaction’s World Bank Series on Evaluation and Development.