Global Affairs Canada’s Climate Finance Programming, 2010-2024 – Evaluation Summary

About the evaluation

Global Affairs Canada’s (GAC’s) Evaluation Division conducted an evaluation of departmental climate finance (CF) programming to support the effective delivery of the Government of Canada CF commitments and inform future policy decisions. The evaluation assessed the relevance, coherence, delivery (efficiency) and results of GAC’s CF programming, covering the period between 2010 to 2024.

Key findings

• GAC has disbursed large volumes of CF within commitment implementation timeframes and in accordance with the established commitment budget targets. The department has grown its internal capacity to deliver CF, the majority of which has been delivered as innovative concessional CF using the Unconditionally Repayable Contributions (URCs) instrument.
• GAC’s CF programming has aligned with evolving global climate and development priorities and has supported a wide range of mechanisms within the global climate finance architecture. However, the broad CF policy objectives have not been strategically translated into programming to ensure coherence and impact and have been constrained by the parameters of the commitment funding profile and budget targets.
• The relevance of GAC’s programming instruments and mechanisms varies across contexts. URCs have demonstrated strong potential to support climate change mitigation and attract additional climate finance, while grant funding has higher relevance in low-income contexts with high climate adaptation and resilience needs and higher potential to advance gender equality outcomes.
• The majority of GAC’s CF has been delivered through multilateral channels, which provide limited visibility or opportunities to influence programming decisions, as well as limited oversight. URC partners pursued lower risk investments and did not demonstrate consistent attention to ensuring financial and development additionality of investments.
• To date, GAC’s CF programming has achieved strong results in climate change mitigation and has mobilized some private sector financing, particularly in middle-income countries. Progress has been made in advancing gender equality opportunities, implementing nature-based solutions, increasing climate resilience of local communities and building capacity of government institutions. Overall, insufficient focus on CF results and gaps in the availability and quality of CF performance data have limited GAC’s ability to demonstrate value of its CF contributions.

Summmary of recommendation areas

Commitment-level

1. Establish a clear strategic focus and targeted priorities for CF, align those with the funding profileand instruments and communicate them effectively to implementing partners.
2. Pursue a portfolio-level programming approach to leverage partner strengths.
3. Streamline performance measurement.
4. Review interdepartmental governance.

Climate finance URCs

5. Improve communication, transparency, and visibility of URC investments.
6. Review environmental and gender coding.

Repayable Contributions

7. Improve financial risk management of repayable contributions.
8. Review internal governance.