Evaluating Climate Change and Development

From: Juha Uitto , via the MandE NEWS email list

Folks,

I’d like to draw your attention to a new book, ‘Evaluating Climate Change and Development‘, edited by Rob van den Berg and Osvaldo Feinstein. This to my knowledge is the first volume that systematically addresses issues relating to climate change from an evaluation point of view. How do we know that the policies, programs and projects targeted towards mitigation, adaptation and vulnerability actually work? The book reviews evidence and approaches and also contains a wealth of case studies from the developing world.
…end of email…

Amazon Abstract: 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.

Editor PS: See also Evaluating adaptation to climate change from a development perspective: Current state of evaluation of climate change adaptation interventions and next stages‘ by Merylyn Hedger,Tom Mitchell,Jennifer Leavy, Martin Greeley, IDS, 2009. Funded by DFID and GEF