My colleagues at the GEF Evaluation Office and I are here at the epicenter of climate change talks: Durban, South Africa. It is day 4 of the COP17, and Durban is starting to warm-up (literally, in some ways). We are four in our team who flew in to Durban, and now tapping away on our laptops, busy listing side events to attend, and of course preparing for our own side events on December 5 and 6.

You’ve finished writing your evaluation report containing a neat LogFrame and objective and verifiable indicators. Rating: highly satisfactory. That’s good, but is it true for the development intervention as a whole?

In the evaluation of climate change mitigation interventions a lot of questions revolve around the greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation impact. Did the intervention actually reduce GHG emissions? And if yes: Who can claim that his actions were the cause for that? What a difficult question. For one, it is always hard to measure something that did not take place like the GHG emissions that were supposedly avoided. But beyond this conundrum, additional attribution issues are introduced through the indirect nature of many climate mitigation interventions.

Water is one of the valuable natural resources that climate change will affect. The climate projects lie on extreme sides that could bring extreme consequences. Too much water would submerge human settlements and destroy livelihoods and properties; too little of it would result to drought in already arid areas.

There are people and places that may seem less prone to these impacts. However, they already encounter another water problem. For them, access to clean and potable water has been for a long time and still remain a problem. Compound this by climate change impacts and it can...