Evaluation Office of UN Environment

Evaluation Office of UN Environment Terminal Evaluation of the UN Environment Project: “Policy, macro-economic assessments and instruments to empower governments and business to advance resource efficiency and move towards a Green Economy” (61-P3)” January 2017 Evaluation Office of UN Environment Photos Credits: Front cover: SolarCentury (2014) This report has been prepared by independent consultant evaluators and is a product of the Evaluation Office of UN Environment. The findings and conclusions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of Member States or the UN Environment Senior Management. For further information on this report, please contact: Evaluation Office of UN Environment P. O. Box 30552-00100 GPO Nairobi Kenya Tel: (254-20) 762 3740 Email: [email protected] Project Title: Policy, macro-economic assessments and instruments to empower governments and business to advance resource efficiency and move towards a Green Economy Project Number: PIMS 688 IMIS 1227 January 2017 All rights reserved. © 2017 Evaluation Office of UN Environment 1. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This terminal evaluation was prepared for the Evaluation Office of UN Environment by Robert Hofstede as an Independent Consultant. The report benefits from a peer review conducted within Evaluation Office of UN Environment. The Evaluation Office of UN Environment would like to thank the [ETB] project teams and in particular Steven Stone, Chief, ETB and Vera Weick, Project Coordinator for their contribution and collaboration throughout the Evaluation process. Sincere appreciation is also expressed to the Evaluation Reference Group who took time to provide comments to the preliminary findings. The Evaluation Office of UN Environment would also like to thank partners of the Green Economy Initiative in Kenya, Jamaica and Ghana for hosting the evaluator during the field missions. The evaluator would like to express his gratitude to all the people that have collaborated with this evaluation. It was an evaluation of a complex project, with many subprojects and dozens of organizations involved with its delivery. All people that were interviewed or otherwise provided their opinions and experiences with the project are deeply acknowledged and I hope their recommendations have been duly included in this report. The evaluation could not have been done without the full collaboration and openness of the ETB team at UN Environment. All its staff has spent many hours during 2016 to speak to the evaluator, provide information and review draft texts. I particularly thank ETB Chief, Steven Stone, and the project coordinator, Vera Weick, for their continuous support and patience. A special work of thanks to the ETB staff that executed the self-assessments of the sub-projects, as a crucial ingredient to the overall evaluation. Finally, the efficient collaboration with the UN Environment Evaluation Office has not only helped to improve the quality of the evaluation but also to make this a pleasant task to do. Evaluation team Robert Hofstede – Lead Consultant or Team Lead Evaluation Office of UN Environment Elisa Calcaterra – Evaluation Manager Mercy Mwangi – Evaluation Programme Assistant 2. ABOUT THE EVALUATION1 Joint Evaluation: No Report Language(s): English Evaluation Type: Terminal Project Evaluation Brief Description: The Green Economy Initiative (GEI) can be considered one of UN Environment's most visible contributions to the global environmental debate during the past decade. The project under evaluation formed the GEI during the period 2010-2014. As an umbrella project, it covered all the work conducted by the Initiative, which was financed through 16 individual sub-projects. Some of the sub-projects provided start-up funding for projects, which later became independent, such as the Partnership for Action on the Green Economy (PAGE) and the Green Growth Knowledge Platform (GGKP). Key words: Green Economy, macro-economics, assessment, policy, green growth 1 This data is used to aid the internet search of this report on the Evaluation Office of UN Environment Website – Project Identification Table UN Environment 688 IMIS number: 1227 PIMS ID: 1 – Resource efficiency is increased and pollution is Resource Expected Sub-programme: reduced over product life Efficiency Accomplishment(s): cycles and along the supply chains 613 and 617 (2010-2011) 621 UN Environment 12/04/2010 PoW Output(s): and 623 (2012-2013) approval date: 612 (2014-2015) Expected Start Date: 15/03/2010 Actual start date: 12/04/2010 Planned completion Actual completion date 31/12/20112 31/12/2014 date: (according to PIMS): Total expenditures Planned project 12,775,215 reported as of 30 May 16,877,176 USD4 budget at approval: USD3 2015: Planned Actual EF expenditures Environment Fund n/a n/a reported as of [date]: (EF) allocation: Planned Extra- 12,775,215 Actual XBF expenditures budgetary financing n/a USD reported as of [date]: (XBF): 2,362,614 XBF secured: Leveraged financing: USD First Disbursement: Date of financial closure: 2017 No. of revisions: 7 Date of last revision: 27 June 2014 Date of last Steering n/a Committee meeting: Mid-term review/ Mid-term review/ evaluation (planned n/a n/a evaluation (actual date): date): Terminal Evaluation February- (actual date): June 2016 Executive summary Introduction 1. The Green Economy Initiative (GEI) can be considered one of UN Environment's most visible contributions to the global environmental debate during the past decade. The project under evaluation, the Green Economy Umbrella Project (GE Project), formed the GEI during the period 2010-2014. The relevance of the GE Project, that produced the Green Economy Report (GER) and socialized the concept at Rio+20, was evidenced by the broad acceptance of the Green Economy (GE) approach in Rio+20 including a prominent position in its final text. After Rio+20 many countries demanded advisory services from UN Environment. The GE Project became UN Environment's main response to the country demand, not only through the application of different tools developed by the Project, but also because within its scope, the Partnership for Action on Green Economy (PAGE) was developed. Nowadays, more than 60 countries are implementing some elements of the Green Economy- 50 of which have been supported by the GE Project. The GE Project was 2 Revision 5 extended the project duration to 30/07/2014, revision 6 to 31/12/2014 and revision 7 did not modify it 3 Budget increased to 18,500,000 USD in Revision 6 4 Finally, the realized funding under the project was US$ 14,022,296 and the remainder (2,854,880) was transferred to the follow up project. See paragraph 51. delivered through 16 sub-projects, ranging from relatively unrestricted funding for core GE activities at global level to fully-fledged projects in order to provide consulting services to a series of countries. 2. This Terminal Evaluation (TE) is undertaken at completion of the project in order to assess strategic relevance, sustainability, project performance, and determine outcomes and impacts stemming from the project. It should however be noted that this evaluation can in many ways be considered a mid-term evaluation because the GEI is not being closed, but rather it is the administrative project which enabled most of its functioning until 2014 which came to an end. As part of this exercise, an assessment of the quality of the project design of the follow-up project was also conducted (See Annex 9). The evaluation has two primary purposes: (i) to provide evidence of results to meet accountability requirements, and (ii) to promote operational improvement, sharing learning and knowledge through results and lessons learned among UN Environment and key project partners. Therefore, the evaluation identified lessons of operational relevance especially for the ongoing phase of the follow up project and for the structure, vision and mission of the Green Economy Initiative (GEI) as a whole. The TE has been conducted using two methodologies: i) participatory evaluation of the sub-projects and ii) external evaluation of the Green Economy umbrella project. The participatory evaluation of the sub-projects was based on self-assessment: sub-project management teams gathered the information for the evaluation. The final formulation of the findings and conclusion of the sub-project evaluations are under the complete responsibility of the external evaluator, who validated the self-assessments. The external evaluation of the umbrella project was executed completely by the external evaluator. All key activities undertaken by the GE Project and information produced at general level were compiled and their quality, outcomes and impact assessed through interviews with implementing partners at global level, UN Environment staff and key beneficiaries. 3. The evaluation had several limitations. The GE Project had a wide scope and included 16 sub-projects of different character, scope, donor, partners, administrative arrangements and execution period. One single evaluation cannot do credit to all the different lines of work, levels of impact and results in different countries. Because of budget and time constraints, the evaluator could visit only a few countries. Although this was complemented with an extensive series of telephone interviews, the evaluation could not cover partners in all countries and stakeholders involved within the whole suite of supported activities. Finally, many people that were interviewed during the evaluation invited the evaluator to consider the Green Economy Initiative

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