by Jindra Cekan | Dec 31, 2024 | 3ie, Accountability, Adaptation Fund, blended finance, climate change, environment, ESG, European Evaluation Society (EES), European Union, Evaluation, ex post evaluation, ex-post evaluation, foreign aid, GIIN, IDEV, Impact, impact investing, international development, Localization, longtermism, Monitoring and Evaluation, OXFAM, Participants, post project evaluation, Private sector, Sustainability, Sustainable Finance
NEW YEAR, NEW SUSTAINABLE US?
Happy 2025!
(Image from: https://plumvillage.org/articles/can-the-new-year-really-be-new)
How will we be new this New Year? It may seem funny as an ex-post sustainability evaluator to write about the future rather than the past :). But ex-post learning is learning from past successes or failures for future improvements. Such learning is part of “longtermism” where “positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time. It’s about taking the sheer scale of the future seriously, and how high the stakes might be in shaping it” (which for many of us means learning from the past to do better in the future). “It means thinking about the challenges we might face in our lifetimes that could impact civilisation’s whole trajectory, and taking action to benefit not just the present generation, but all generations to come…. Many social movements have fought for greater recognition for disempowered members of society. Advocates of longtermism want to extend this recognition to future people, too.”
Taking the longer view also means taking a global view and continuing to address the disparities that our economic system generates, and seems to be generating more destructively. As Oxfam’s excellent Inequality annual report tells us, “since 2020, the richest five men in the world have doubled their fortunes. During the same period, almost five billion people globally have become poorer.” At the same time, the UN cites a World Bank estimate that an additional 68 to 135 million people could be pushed into poverty by 2030 because of climate change”. Given the EU is 450 million and US is 330 million, imagine 20-30% of our populations falling into poverty due to changes we can make – but did not – in addressing inequality and a sustainable, liveable planet. I don’t know what your long-term vision for y/our world is, but I’m quite sure adding to global poverty is not on the list.
What can we do anew?
- Where life is stable: Focus on our collective communities and our planet and helping others: the NYTimes on making new year’s resolutions for collective happiness. I would add, we need to make choices from a planetary perspective – I got a plug-in electric hybrid Toyota CHR this year so I would pollute less and am a vegetarian (aspiring vegan) to decrease my tiny share of the 30% of emissions due to our food systems. Am reading the book The Logic of Sufficiency and preparing to read Less is More will help us consume less, as we need less. Remember, as we in the Global North consume less, the Global South is likely to suffer less, as they have caused so little of today’s climate crisis. Generation Climate Europe states: “In 2019, the top 10% of global emitters (771 million individuals) were responsible for about 48% of global CO2 emissions, while the bottom 50% (3.8 billion individuals) were responsible for almost 12% of all emissions.” This is a staggering statistic we all need to act to reverse.
- Take a longer view, doing ex-post evaluations, for sectors such as agriculture, even for disasters: 3ie admitted that only 4% of all impact evaluations include long-term learning about food systems interventions evaluating long-term outcomes (including climate change) and a collection of sustainability learning by IDEV’s Sustainability Matters asks us to take a holistic approach, covering the full spectrum of environmental, social and economic sustainability. Both sources tell us we need to do more evaluation and learning over the longer-term as climate shocks increase. Disaster Science also discusses the need for a longer-term view – this means putting out fires but thinking longer-term (see longtermism above :)) about how we can make our interventions more sustained. We can ‘bake-in’ or ‘hardwire” sustainability as we shared here in a VV blog about health projects. Also this includes evaluating climate adaptation ex-post as the Adaptation Fund has shared (and I spoke at the European Evaluation Society Conference) positive and negative lessons from our ex-post learning from past design/ implementation for future sustainability. Proud that the Fund has created the Adaptation Fund’s toolkit, and in 2025, look for more ex-post learning from the Climate Investment Funds and other clients!
EES Conference presentation – Rimini in 2024 (photo by the Vladislav Arnaoudov)
- Use our money to do more measurable good: pushing the private sector for more equitable investments given public funds to do good are so stretched: Dr G. Marcelle notes that we need transformative sustainable finance (which is environmental, social, and governance (ESG)) to address inequalities and address climate change harm being done. As an evaluator, we need to measure real impact as the Adaptation and Resilience Investors’ Cooperative does or the Global Impact Investor Network (GIIN) which has set up benchmarks in Agriculture, Forestry, Energy, and Finance. And we so need mandatory, transparent and comprehensive reporting which fosters trust, not greenwashing or wishful thinking. Also consider what banks you are funding, some profit from more fossil fuels.
- Appreciate and learn from what works and do more of it, patiently, especially at the community level! This BBC article celebrates 5 successes against biodiveristy loss. This Barbados conference “Sustainable Energy for Equity, Security and Prosperity” I will attend in 2025 (!) may also cover the exciting new debt for climate resilience deal which is the world’s first! IDEV reminds us conservation is most powreful at the community level, but we must learn from monitoring data, locally. IFAD reminds us sustained development takes time and resources and patience.
- What else would you add?
Happy Sustainable New Year, New Us!
by Jindra Cekan | Nov 20, 2023 | Czech, EU, EU Green Deal, European Union, foreign aid, International aid, Prague European Summit, SDGs, Sustainability, Sustainable Finance
The EU and Sustainability
At the Prague European Summit I was invited to last week, sustainability was on the program three times. The most relevant session was Towards a More Sustainable and Prosperous European and Global Economy through Trade and Investments, pictured below.
I asked Panelists like Sabine Weyand, Director General for Trade at the European Commission, to define Sustainability. She defined it as actions the EU is taking, including mutually reinforcing Twin Transitions (Green and Digital) to foster a carbon-neutral EU by 2050 and the three pillars of sustainability, namely:
- 1st pillar is ‘climate and environment,
- 2nd, a zero carbon economy (including biodiversity), and
- 3rd, social sustainability (equity by member states and internationally).
These were followed by several panelists mentioning the issue of member countries needing to support and fund these. One would think that funding would be gratefully accepted and reciprocated given the astonishing €338bil the EU already spent across Europe, eight times the size of the Marshall Plan.
The panelists of these sessions sketched out ambitious plans. I researched this oft-promised “EU Green Deal” to understand its scale, if the sustainability of results (which I work on ex-post), the sustainability of our global ecology, and/or sustainability in terms of business functions resides, if at all. The results of this cursory research did not make these clear. But ambitions are massive.
EU Green Deal
The European Green Deal began when the EU Parliament adopted the EU Climate Law in 2021, which makes “legally binding a target of reducing emissions 55% by 2030 and climate neutrality by 2050. This moves the EU closer to its post-2050 objective of negative emissions and confirms its leadership in the global fight against climate change.”
SIDENOTE1: Given that our lawsuit against the Czech Republic government for not meeting its Paris Agreement commitments just failed and the Ministry of the Environment successfully claimed that reducing emissions by only 26% was enough (rather than the EU’s target of 55%), I wonder how much of these ‘legally binding’ targets will actually be met…
Turning to what I could find of the 1st and 2nd pillars (as the 3rd was missing from Green Deal online documents which I found other than mentions of a ‘Just Transition’):
- AID FUNDING (SDGs)
The EU as a leading global partner for the funding the SDGs & Paris Agreement
The EU seems to be shifting from the SDGs which appear to be bilaterally funded, although ‘collectively’ claimed. “The EU and its Member States are the leading donors of official development assistance (ODA) globally. In 2022, they collectively provided €92.8 billion (based on preliminary OECD figures), which accounts for 43% of global assistance.” So what progress is that generating? Not much:
SOURCE:https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2023/progress-chart/Progress-Chart-2023.pdf
SIDENOTE2: And since we’re talking about climate, can the EU or other donors aid-fund functioning weather stations? They have 5% of the number the US and EU do which massively limits mitigation: https://africanarguments.org/2023/11/without-warning-africa-lack-of-weather-stations-is-costing-lives/
- SUSTAINABLE FINANCE FOR CLIMATE, ENVIRONMENT, AND ECONOMY (the 1st 2 pillars of the mentioned Sustainability)
So, for the EU, where I now live most of the time, sustainable finance plans seem to be off to a good start. Nearly 2/3 of the promised €300 billion has been secured in only two years. Notably, this is 1/3 of the EU’s planned €1 Trillion, including private investments. Two German policy researchers, Findeisen and Mack, question their achievability. “Europe needs to spend an additional €350 billion on climate action every year until the end of this decade…to reach its 55% greenhouse gas reduction target by 2030.” Furthermore, “shortcomings of [Investment Plan] InvestEU in combatting climate change can be addressed and why it is no substitute for fresh public spending at EU level.” (See the excellent brief including concerns about the Sustainable Europe Investment Plan, outlined below. This overview of the EU’s Investment plan has broadly planned outputs (e.g., ambitions, financing, research, mobilizing), outcomes (e.g., energy generated, building new energy sources, restoring ecosystems, and building food systems and mobility), and impacts (e.g., a sustainable future):
Source: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52020DC0021&rid=7
Much of the plan is, understandably, European-focused, yet we all know that the Global South is where the deepest needs and opportunities lie. Drilling down further to see investments, activities, and even results on the ground was both interesting and harder:
“The inaugural milestone of the Global Gateway was the Africa-Europe Investment Package with approximately €150 billion of investment dedicated to bolstering cooperation with African partners. We have also started implementing Global Gateway in Asia and the Pacific and in Latin America and the Caribbean, where President von der Leyen announced a global investment by the EU and its Member States of over €45 billion. In 2023, ninety key projects were launched worldwide across the digital, energy, and transport sectors through Global Gateway to strengthen health, education, and research systems globally.”
So, as an Africanist and evaluative researcher, I looked into the EU’s reported figures (and results). Under Global Gateway, the EU has funded 33 projects in Sub-Saharan Africa, 11 of which are climate-related and another 7 that are transport-related. There are only short descriptions of projects without substantive partners, activities, or data, such as a €1billion “Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience in Africa“. Details would be instructive, to say the least. Research on African Voices regarding their projects unearthed one that should already be of concern: Namibia’s $10 billion Green Hydrogen project, which is to help 2.5 million people decarbonize. However, the tendering is not transparent, locals are in the dark, there are biodiversity concerns, and initial funding is missing. Much more transparent monitoring & evaluation data is needed to know it is on track.
I also consulted African Voices regarding COP28 that are relevant to the EU’s Africa investments.
- Funds are needed. Lorraine Chiponda. a Coordinator of the Africa Movement Building Space notes that “Africa receives a meager 3% of the total global climate finance and African countries still play a marginal role in the global finance system, making it a mammoth task to obtain funds for renewable energy investment.”
- Africa has much to offer. Joseph Nganga is Interim Managing Director at the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP) reminds us that “Africa, a region with a developing economy endowed with abundant natural resources, stands at a crossroads where strategic financial investments can steer its trajectory towards a prosperous climate-resilient future.”
- Moreover, financing needs are clearly expressed, which the EU, for one, should listen to. “This year at the African Climate Summit, countries were united in their call for a series of finance reforms that would have a meaningful impact on their fiscal and policy space to address climate change. These include a reduction in borrowing costs and risk premiums; debt management, restructuring and relief; scaling concessional climate finance from multilateral developments banks (MDBs); and reforms to the global tax regime.” Olivia Rumble is a climate change legal and policy expert and a director of Climate Legal
Much more is needed for equitable partnerships to address our increasingly desperate climate needs. While I was at the conference, the Copernicus Climate Change Service issued a warning that “For the first time ever, the planet globally exceeded a key warming threshold on Friday for the first time since at least the beginning of instrument records, new data shows. Simply put, a 2-degree rise in global temperatures was considered as a target for the end of the century and is considered a critical threshold above which dangerous and cascading effects will occur.” COP28 has a lot to accomplish.
Helpful? Let me know in the comments…
