Executive summary
I The Least Developed Countries and the Small Island Developing States contribute the least to greenhouse gas emissions but are the most affected by the impacts of climate change. In 2007, the EU launched the Global Climate Change Alliance initiative to help these countries increase their resilience to the effects of climate change.
In 2014, the initiative entered a second phase, the Global Climate Change Alliance Plus, covering the period 2014-2020. The EU provided total funding of €729 million for the two phases.
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II In 2020, the Commission decided not to continue the initiative for a further phase.
During the 2021-2027 period, the Commission will fund actions tackling climate change in developing countries through thematic and geographical support under the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument. Our audit aimed to draw lessons from the two phases of the Global Climate Change Alliance, both for future climate change actions and for future global development initiatives.
The objective of our audit was to assess whether actions achieved their intended results efficiently and whether the Commission maximised the added value of the initiative.
III Overall, we found that the initiative did not demonstrate its impact on countries’ resilience to climate change. In terms of efficiency, completed actions generally delivered their outputs, but sometimes at a high cost.
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IV The initiative did not measure the improvements in the beneficiaries’ situation, nor did it focus sufficiently on the needs of those most affected. The cost of using new technologies made it more difficult for the poorest households to benefit from the programme. In addition, few actions included activities specifically addressing the needs of women.
V The initiative focused on building institutional capacity, but sustainability was limited due to high staff turnover. Therefore,the expected evolution from capacity building and pilot activities to more scaling-up of adaptation actions reaching more beneficiaries did not take place systematically.
VI Neither of the two phases of the Global Climate Change Alliance attracted the expected additional funding from Member States and the private sector. Despite this significant financing gap, the Commission did not revise its initial ambitious objectives over the 15-year duration of the initiative. Furthermore, in the second phase,the Commission’s funding allocation criteria led to proportionally less support being allocated to the most vulnerable countries.
VII The Commission did not sufficiently analyse the reasonableness of the budgeted costs of most of the sampled actions. Our analysis showed that the management costs of actions varied widely, and were particularly high in the Pacific. We found that the Commission could have made savings with a more detailed analysis of the costs.
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VIII Although the initiative started in 2007 and supported more than 80 countries, awareness remained limited amongst developing countries as well as in the EU Member States. This was partly because the actions funded were not distinguishable from other EU actions addressing climate change in developing countries. Moreover, the efficiency of the initiative was impacted by the complexity of its organisation, in particular the duplication of support facilities and funding streams.
IX There will be no additional phases of the Global Climate Change Alliance, but it has provided useful lessons for any other global development initiatives that the EU might implement in future.
X On the basis of these conclusions, we recommend that the Commission:
(a) focus on those most affected by climate change;
(b) incorporate lessons learnt into future global development initiatives.
NOTE – This article was originally published in reliefweb and can be viewed here
Tags: #alliance, #climate, #climatechange, #climatecrisis, #environment, #getgreengetgrowing, #global, #globalwarming, #gngagritech, #greenstories
