International Climate Finance monitoring, evaluation and learning

Mitigating and adapting to climate change is a major challenge. To make sure International Climate Finance (ICF) programmes have the maximum impact and value-for-money, we need to learn from what we have done in our portfolio so far. We need to know what worked well, what could be improved, and how we can make sure that our interventions lead to transformational change.

To do this, we need strategic monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL), at the portfolio level. This means looking at evidence across the whole collection of ICF programmes. The evidence can then be used to design and carry out projects in ways that best achieve our goals for dealing with the climate and nature crisis.

In 2025, a new monitoring, evaluation and learning programme was launched. This will generate evidence to help us learn from the ICF portfolio. The findings will be published when completed. This follows on from a previous MEL programme, which ended in 2020. As part of this, 3 independent evaluations were carried out to fill gaps in the evidence related to ICF policy and strategy.

The previous MEL programme covered the following areas, and the full reports as well as the management responses are attached above.

• Portfolio evaluation 1: Integration of International Climate Finance (ICF). This evaluation addressed the question of how the integration of climate finance within development programmes supported the achievement of climate change outcomes

• Portfolio evaluation 2: Mobilising private finance through demonstration effects. This portfolio evaluation examined how private investors were influenced by evidence from ICF-supported projects to invest in low-carbon, climate-resilient projects

• Portfolio evaluation 3: Support for policy change. This evaluated how ICF supported changes to global, national, sub-national policies to contribute to mitigating and adapting to climate change