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Norad published a new report conducted by the Evaluation Department at Norad, in collaboration with CMI and Vista Analyse. The report looks at the support of the Norwegian International Climate and Forest Initiative to civil society.
Some background: Norway supports the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) framework through Norway's international climate and forest initiative (NICFI). Since the start of NICFI in 2008, around NOK 40 billion were allocated to the purpose of reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in the global south. About NOK 6 billion of this have been directly designated to civil society organisations.
The report now explored to what extent Norad has ensured the coherence of NICFI’s support to civil society to reach its stated goals. The evaluation aims at providing a basis for strengthening the management of the NICFI support that is provided to civil society organisations.
The report focused on different sub-themes, such as evidence-based calls for proposals and adaptations in the project cycle. In this regard, findings showed that the development of objectives and priorities in the call for proposals were not always based on a systematic compilation and analysis of results data from the previous project cycle. Attempts of triangulating and incorporating different forms of knowledge from various sources are limited. Work on developing common indicators to track the achievement over the project cycle are still work-in progress though important steps towards more strategic management of civil society support, such as establishing working groups, country-specific focal points, and sub-theories of change, have been taken. Moreover, the alignment of support to Indigenous people and local communities (IPLCs) in the Amazon with other thematic areas (horizontal) and other NICFI interventions and relevant policies in the Amazon (vertical alignment) was evaluated. As a third focal point, the report assessed to what extent the support to civil society organisations has been rights-based. Efforts of ensuring participation and engagement with IPLCs, women’s participation or respect for women’s rights were documented. However, in the 2021-2025 round, only 1 out of 7 civil society groups supported is run by IPs themselves. The report therefore recommends considering the inclusion of specific grants for IPs and to generally strengthen the rights-based support, advance the inclusion of different knowledge types, refine country-specific theories of change and reviewing the indicators used to measure process.
The report can be accessed here.
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