ABSTRACT
Not all international cooperation takes place through projects and programmes in the field. An important field of work pertains to developing global governance frameworks and to influencing international and national policy-making processes. Evaluation of such normative work has received even less attention than the evaluation of projects and programmes. In this chapter, the authors argue that there are no clear differences between the methods used to evaluate normative aspects of development work and the methods used to evaluate more operational (or ‘on the ground’) activities. Any perceived differences are in the relative lengths and complexities of the causal chains leading from the intervention to the desired results and impacts. The arguments articulated in this chapter are founded on theory-based approaches to evaluating development interventions. They are based on the realization that development interventions, whether designed with clear intervention logic or haphazardly/opportunistically formulated, have an underlying intent – to produce change from one state or condition to another. Thus, development interventions are embodiments of theories. Inherent in this assertion is the idea that not only is there a clear underlying logic or theory on which the interventions (new programmes or policy) are based, but also that given stated or unstated assumptions the interventions’ outcomes can be traced back to the activities undertaken. If one views development interventions as a set of activities with causal intent, it is possible to deploy theory-based approaches to explore the intended changes and determine whether the interventions have, indeed, produced the expected changes (and explore whether interventions yielded unexpected changes). This chapter describes approaches to evaluating the environmental aspects of international development with particular reference to the work of the United Nations Environment Programme in general, and its normative aspects in particular.
