Chapter 2
Action on Climate Change: What Does It
Mean and Where Does It Lead To?
Rob D. van den Berg and Lee Cando-Noordhuizen
Abstract In 2014, the second conference on evaluating climate change and development offered the opportunity to take stock of evaluative evidence of the challenges, failures and success of climate change action. In 2011 one of the authors
raised the possibility of a micro-macro paradox of climate change action (van den
Berg, Evaluation 17:405, 2011): in his view evaluations of climate change action
provided evidence that climate action works and achieves direct impact – yet
climate change seems unstoppable. Several major, comprehensive evaluations
were presented at the 2014 conference and provided an overview of actions taken
and their successes and failures, as well as obstacles on the way to global impact.
This chapter presents an overview of issues, evidence and the way forward for
evaluators tackling climate action and sustainable development. The evidence
provides support for the micro-macro paradox of 2011 and indicates that the global
community has the technology and knowledge on how to stop climate change.
However, actions that promote climate change still outweigh remedial climate
action with at least a factor of 100. Thus current successes of programs and projects
will not impact global trends, unless at the same time the non-sustainable subsidies
and actions are stopped.
Keywords Climate action • Climate change • Evaluation • Micro-macro paradox •
Systems change
R.D. van den Berg (*)
King’s College London and International Development Evaluation Association (IDEAS),
Leidschendam, The Netherlands
e-mail: rdwinterberg@gmail.com
L. Cando-Noordhuizen
Independent Evaluation Office, Global Environment Facility, Washington, DC, USA
e-mail: leecando.eval@gmail.com
© The Author(s) 2017
J.I. Uitto et al. (eds.), Evaluating Climate Change Action for Sustainable
Development, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-43702-6_2
13
Action on Climate Change: What Does It
Mean and Where Does It Lead To?
Rob D. van den Berg and Lee Cando-Noordhuizen
Abstract In 2014, the second conference on evaluating climate change and development offered the opportunity to take stock of evaluative evidence of the challenges, failures and success of climate change action. In 2011 one of the authors
raised the possibility of a micro-macro paradox of climate change action (van den
Berg, Evaluation 17:405, 2011): in his view evaluations of climate change action
provided evidence that climate action works and achieves direct impact – yet
climate change seems unstoppable. Several major, comprehensive evaluations
were presented at the 2014 conference and provided an overview of actions taken
and their successes and failures, as well as obstacles on the way to global impact.
This chapter presents an overview of issues, evidence and the way forward for
evaluators tackling climate action and sustainable development. The evidence
provides support for the micro-macro paradox of 2011 and indicates that the global
community has the technology and knowledge on how to stop climate change.
However, actions that promote climate change still outweigh remedial climate
action with at least a factor of 100. Thus current successes of programs and projects
will not impact global trends, unless at the same time the non-sustainable subsidies
and actions are stopped.
Keywords Climate action • Climate change • Evaluation • Micro-macro paradox •
Systems change
R.D. van den Berg (*)
King’s College London and International Development Evaluation Association (IDEAS),
Leidschendam, The Netherlands
e-mail: rdwinterberg@gmail.com
L. Cando-Noordhuizen
Independent Evaluation Office, Global Environment Facility, Washington, DC, USA
e-mail: leecando.eval@gmail.com
© The Author(s) 2017
J.I. Uitto et al. (eds.), Evaluating Climate Change Action for Sustainable
Development, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-43702-6_2
13