Project background
The IKI Secretariat of Zukunft – Umwelt – Gesellschaft (ZUG) gGmbH commissioned Arepo to conduct an interim evaluation of the IKI projects “Sino-German Cooperation on Climate Change – Climate Partnership Project” and “Sino-German Cooperation on Climate Change – NDC Implementation”, which were implemented by project consortia under the leadership of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. Both projects aimed at the impact level of contributing to ambitious GHG reduction and long-term decarbonisation in the Chinese economy, which positively impacted the implementation of the Paris Agreement due to China’s global relevance. On the outcome level, they aimed at strengthening the MEE to effectively design and implement climate policy within the framework of the NDC and the 14th Five-Year Plan (FYP) in order to achieve China’s NDC targets for 2030 earlier than planned and to define the ambitious continuation of NDC implementation in the 15th FYP. Both pursued these joint impacts and outcomes based on different project outputs: the first focused on environmental and climate dialogues, trilateral cooperation, and climate finance, and the second focused on governance, mitigation, adaptation, and climate finance.
Tasks
A significant part of this evaluation involved field research in China. Arepo evaluated the projects using the criteria derived from the OECD-DAC criteria, which related to the thematic areas of relevance, planning, governance and coherence, effectiveness, and transformative impact and sustainability. These criteria were complemented by evaluation criteria on safeguards, IKI standard indicators, and project-specific learning questions.
The interim evaluations offered the opportunity to review project progress already during the project and to formulate conclusions and recommendations for the readjustment of activities and, if necessary, focus. Furthermore, lessons learned and recommendations for comparable projects were derived.