Background
The IKI Secretariat at Zukunft – Umwelt – Gesellschaft (ZUG) gGmbH has commissioned Arepo to conduct a mid-term evaluation of the IKI project “Innovation Regions for a Just Energy Transition.” This project, led by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, is being implemented by a consortium of partners. Its primary goal is to support key stakeholders in coal regions across Chile, Colombia, Indonesia, Mongolia, South Africa, Thailand, and Viet Nam in their transition towards a sustainable, low-carbon, and just energy system. The project is structured into a global component and two country-specific components. The global component focuses on facilitating policy exchanges and fostering the co-creation of knowledge among coal regions in the participating countries. Meanwhile, the country-specific components provide targeted support for a just energy transition in Colombia and Indonesia, addressing the unique challenges and opportunities in each context.
Tasks
A significant component of the evaluation focuses on Indonesia, where the project provides targeted support to the South Sumatra and East Kalimantan regions. Arepo assesses the project using criteria based on the OECD-DAC framework, which covers key thematic areas such as relevance, planning, governance and coherence, effectiveness, transformative impact, and sustainability. These are further supplemented by evaluation questions related to social and environmental safeguards, IKI standard indicators, and project-specific learning objectives. Interim evaluations serve as a valuable tool to assess project progress mid-implementation, allowing for course corrections where necessary. They also help generate insights and recommendations that can enhance ongoing activities and inform future projects with similar objectives.