How Effective is the ADB in Facilitating Access to Climate Finance?

A real-time evaluation of the Asian Development Bank

In the context of climate change, real-time evaluations are used to provide timely and useful information needed to progressively assess the implementation of interventions. Unlike summative evaluations, findings from real-time evaluation help make rapid adjustments and improvements to ongoing activities and subsequently help ex-post evaluations.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) recently conducted a real-time evaluation of its initiative to support access to climate finance.

Asia is one the regions hardest hit by the effects of climate change. For poverty to be eliminated in the region and the overarching goal of sustainable development to be achieved, mitigation and adaptation measures must be scaled up.

While the international community has made considerable progress in providing funds intended to combat the effects of climate change, access to these funds remains deeply problematic and difficult especially for stakeholders in developing countries.

A significant part of the last United Nations Climate Change conference in Warsaw, Poland last November 2013 was dedicated to discuss access to climate finance. Since then, further discussions have focused not only on sources of funding, but also on how they should be targeted and channeled. The emergence of several funding initiatives in recent years has not always translated to immediately and easy access to governments, private sector, civil society organizations and other major stakeholders.

In order to streamline the process and facilitate access, Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) especially regional banks have been identified as streams through which these funds are channeled. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is among these regional banks.

Recently, the Independent Evaluation Office (IED) of the ADB undertook an evaluation of its initiative to support access to climate finance to governments, private sector, NGOs and other stakeholders in the Asian region. So how well is the ADB doing?

Please join in the debate on real-time evaluation of climate change. What is your view on these approach to climate change interventions in general?