Aid Performance and Climate Change

This book will encourage government officials who commission aid evaluations to require the use of evaluation protocols that incorporate the impact of climate change and related factors. These protocols are based on guidelines by the OECD Development Assistance Committee, but are extended to address climate change, mass extinction and water crises, the wasteful and contradictory practices of aid agencies, and weak learning arrangements. Combining an empirical, eye-witness approach with methodological conclusions, this book is an essential resource for those looking to improve aid design and evaluation, and will be a necessary tool in the training of the next generation of aid professionals.

The richer countries spend about US$165 billion yearly on overseas aid, mainly to keep human development going. These efforts are undermined by climate change, water-catchment damage, biodiversity loss, and desertification, and their interactions with social systems at all scales, which few aid designs or evaluations fully address. This must change if aid performance is to be improved.

Constraints to be overcome include limited understanding of the very complex systems that aid investments affect, and of the ecology behind climate change adaptation and mitigation. Aid Performance and Climate Change targets these problems and others, by explaining how to use multiple points of view to describe each aid investment as a complex system in its own unique context. With examples throughout, it reviews cases, ideas, and options for mitigation using technology and ecology, and for adaptation by preserving resilience and diversity, while exploring related priorities, treaties, and opportunities.

Combining an empirical, eye-witness approach with methodological conclusions, this book is an essential resource for those looking to improve aid design and evaluation, and will be a necessary tool in training the next generation of aid professionals to respond to the causes and consequences of climate change.