BREAD FOR THE WORLD EVALUATION PROJECT

Project title: Pushing for more climate action ambition in international and national policy through strengthened civil society engagement

Donor name: Brot fur die Welt (Bread for the World)

1. Introduction

About CAN

Climate Action Network (CAN) is a worldwide network of over 1500 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in more than 130 countries, working to promote government and individual action to limit human-induced climate change to ecologically sustainable levels.

CAN members work to achieve this goal through information exchange and the coordinated development of NGO strategy on international, regional, and national climate issues. CAN has regional and national network hubs, called nodes, and international members, that coordinate these efforts around the world.

CAN International is the secretariat of the CAN network. CAN-I has been implementing a project “Pushing for more climate action ambition in international and national policy through strengthened civil society engagement”, funded by Bread for the World for the period 01/11/2019 to 31/10/2022. As per the contract, an external evaluation of the project is to be conducted in the final year of the project. These Terms of Reference (ToR) set out the details of what the evaluation for this project needs to cover.

The Project

The project “Pushing for more climate action ambition in international and national policy through strengthened civil society engagement” works on three key components. The first is around a political push for rules and details of the Paris Agreement to influence these rules in a way that are best suited for the highest environment and social integrity and that these rules enable the most vulnerable to cope with climate change. Second, to push for immediate increase in climate ambition, and that this increase in ambition is not limited to only mitigation but also related to provision of finance as well as technical and institutional support. Third, to link the national with the international. To ensure that the Paris Agreement is delivered, national action and ambition need to be compatible with the vision and goals of the Paris Agreement.

The target groups for the project are:

a) CAN membership: CAN is a network of over 1500 NGOs in 130 countries. There are multiple people from member organizations that engage with various aspects of the network like policy, campaigns and communications, and help devise the network strategy. CAN convenes various working groups and regular meetings with this wider membership to brainstorm on critical and emerging issues to discuss policy positions and plans necessary actions to engage in policy forums including the annual COPs and other meetings.

b) Negotiators and government representatives: With this project, CAN has also been impacting negotiators as well as elected government representatives. CAN has been reaching out to all governments and the respective negotiators. There are 197 governments who are represented in the UNFCCC. The negotiators are important for this strategy as CAN directly works with them during the negotiations.

c) CAN nodes: In addition to the wider CAN membership, the individual CAN nodes as organizational entities also directly benefit from this project. It is the Nodes who structurally have the convening power in CAN at national and regional level. It is at the national level where the Paris Agreement needs to be implemented, making this civil society convening power ever so important.

Indirect target groups include the wider climate movement and sustainable development community, and grassroots groups and local communities.

The project has the following overall goal and two objectives:

Goal: More ambitious policies and action will catalyze the transformational change needed to stay below the critical 1.5°C threshold of global warming that will safeguard people and the planet from the impacts of climate change.

Project objective (outcome level): To increase ambition in climate policy and action through strengthened links between the national and international CAN activities by supporting CAN nodes and members to more effectively engage with decision-makers.

Objectives (output level) to monitor the extent to which the outcome level objective has been achieved:

i) The positions from CAN for the implementation of the Paris Agreement are reflected in the UNFCCC process debates.

ii) Voices of network members from the Global South have gained greater weight in CAN-I work.

This project also draws from the learning of the previous project from 2016-2019 “Coordinating CSOs in the UNFCCC”, and the recommendations from the evaluation of the same. Some of the learning and recommendations were:

● To strengthen activities that prove most impactful and pivotal in the climate community, and focus on both the implementation of climate action and the increase of climate targets at the national level.

● To continuously build the capacity of civil society representatives in “Southern” countries, thus allowing them to more effectively engage with decision-makers, whether that is at domestic level or in international fora.

● Further strengthening of the political and thematic coordination tools – Political Coordination Group (PCG) and Working Groups (WGs), by allowing a more diverse set of voices to shape strategies and policies. Therefore, we aim at reinforcing representation of the national and regional networks in these groups.

● To support leaders from a number of countries to allow for further policy and advocacy efforts at national level, and linked to the international sphere will help develop more impactful activities that respond to the changing political focus of multilateral climate policy.

2. Purpose of the evaluation

As part of the funding agreement between Climate Action Network and Bread for the World, a project evaluation is required during the last year of the project. The previous project funded by the same funder and its consequent evaluation had provided important insight from external evaluators on how to formulate the further phases of the project besides informing what worked and what did not. This evaluation too will help us learn from the current project and prepare for the next phase.

The project is in its third and last year of implementation, with about six months left for its closure. Coming at this stage, the evaluation will provide us with key learning from the project and help us formulate the next phase of our project. Our project is about influencing policies at the multilateral advocacy forums on climate change. With the next decade being critical before irreversible climate changes set in, we are keen to derive key learning from this project which contributes significantly to our work at these multilateral forums.

3. Key questions

Following the OECD-DAC criteria for evaluations, the evaluation seeks to determine the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability of the project. The key questions under each parameter are listed below.

Relevance:

i. How relevant are the target groups that the project is working with?

ii. What value add does each of them bring to the project?

iii. How relevant are the objectives in the current scenario of climate negotiations?

Effectiveness:

i. Are the objectives of the project being achieved?

ii. Do the target groups and other stakeholders identify the project as being effective? What are their observations on achievement of the objectives and outcomes?

Efficiency

i. Is the project achieving its objectives and outcomes with the resources provided by this grant? Are there any gaps? If so, what?

Impact

i. To what extent is the project contributing to the project goal and CAN’s 2030 strategy?

ii. Are there any unintended positive or negative outcomes from the project?

Sustainability

i. Are the project’s achievements going to have a lasting effect? If yes, what are the factors which make it sustainable? If not, what is the course correction that the organisation needs to make?

Cross cutting criteria

Some of the key elements of the project is to enhance participation from Global South nodes and members of the network, and the interlinkage from national to international. The evaluation should assess to what extent the project is able contribute to these factors within each of the five criteria.

4. Evaluation design/ methods

The evaluation should be undertaken using the OECD-DAC standards and should be impartial, credible, precise, and ultimately result in a report which can be presented to Bread for the World in compliance with donor regulations. There are no restrictions on the format of the report – creative suggestions are welcome.

Within the current project, the Climate Action Network Secretariat, the Network of CAN, and the UNFCCC are all stakeholders involved in the potential outcome. CAN (the Network and the Secretariat) carry out the objectives to ensure positions are reflected at the UN level. To best evaluate the methods of this project, CAN-I will provide the following material to the evaluator(s):

● The project proposal

● All interim project reports and annexes

● Publications and other reports, if any

● CAN position papers

● UNFCCC Outcomes

5. Process of the evaluation/time frame

Offers will be accepted until 22 April 2022. Total expected duration of the evaluation is 30 days between 1 May – 30 June 2022, including feedback from CAN-I team and revised versions thereof.

The final product, i.e., an evaluation report with key observations and recommendations is expected by 30 June 2022.

6. Expected product

The evaluator(s) are expected to submit an evaluation report constituting an assessment of the project based on the five DAC criteria and the cross-cutting criteria, highlighting project achievements and gaps, lessons learnt as per the target groups, and their recommendations.

7. Key qualifications

● Familiarity with NGOs;

● Knowledge of the UNFCCC process and outcomes;

● Familiarity with project evaluation that is international in scope;

● Previous experience evaluating projects involving networks or geographically diverse stakeholders;

● Experience with remote organizations or evaluations conducted via a paperless process;

● Working knowledge of English required, German considered an asset;