Linking Climate Finance and Development Impacts

Daniel Kaufman is a Principal at Industrial Economics (IEc), an economics and environmental consultancy based in the United States, with clients in the U.S. and internationally. He has more than 16 years of experience specializing in mixed-methods program evaluation, with a focus on economic development, environmental protection, and clean energy programs. He has consulted numerous international development organizations, federal and state government agencies, and non-governmental organizations. Much of his work aims to understand, measure, evaluate, and strengthen programs that provide economic and social benefits while achieving environmental and climate change goals. He has conducted evaluative research and fieldwork around the world, including in Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Pacific Islands, the Middle East and North Africa, Kenya, and southeastern Europe. He has also developed benefits taxonomies and user-friendly benefit estimation tools, grounded in literature, to measure innovation and market development benefits from clean energy grant programs. He is the Principal Investigator for the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) evaluation of climate finance's economic and social development impacts. As part of this evaluation, IEc and the CIF developed a taxonomy of the social and economic development impacts (co-benefits) of climate finance based on an extensive literature review. He holds a master's degree in international economics and finance from Brandeis University. 

Neha leads evaluations and learning engagements at the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) covering clean energy, energy access, sustainable forestry, and resilience. Before joining the CIF, Neha was a Results Measurement Specialist at the Independent Evaluation Group of the World Bank working on monitoring and evaluation capacity building and partnership strategy and development. 

She has over a decade of experience in evaluative research, program design, and capacity development with organizations including the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). She holds two master's degrees in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School and Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University. 

Nicole Pasricha is a sustainable development and finance professional with more than 17 years of emerging market and developing economies experience, particularly in the agricultural, forestry, renewable energy, and financial services sectors. 

Ms. Pasricha brings an interdisciplinary approach to the intentional design and operations of climate and finance solutions, having worked with leading organizations across the sustainable finance landscape including development finance institutions (FinDev Canada), multilateral organizations (The World Bank, Climate Investment Funds, CGAP), multinational companies (Dunkin’ Brands, Kraft Heinz), environmental non-profits (Rainforest Alliance), and impact ventures (Deep Science Ventures). Notably, Ms. Pasricha designed the impact investing framework for Canada’s DFI and advises the Climate Investment Funds on its economic and social impact assessment and modeling approaches.  

Debashish Paul Shuvra is a Disaster Risk Management Specialist at the World Bank. He is part of the South Asia Region (SAR) Climate Change and Disaster Risk Management (SSACD) team under Urban, Resilience, and Land Global Practice (GPURL). 

He is the Co- Task Team Leader of the Emergency Multi-Sector Rohingya Crisis Response Project (EMCRP) and Climate Adaptation and Resilience for South Asia (CARE) Project. Shuvra is a key team member of the Bangladesh team with interventions and managing over US$ 1.84 billion of high-priority disaster resilience, emergency recovery and response, and climate change projects. In addition, as a SAR Climate Change Focal Point for Bangladesh and Bhutan, he co-leads SSACD’s support for corporate climate commitments, including climate co-benefits maximization and Paris Alignment Assessments for projects in the Bangladesh and Bhutan portfolio. Shuvra has over seven years of experience at the World Bank. Prior to joining the Bank, he worked in project management, construction supervision, business-to-business sales, and Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) in the construction sector for three years. Shuvra holds an MBA from the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), University of Dhaka, and a B.Sc. in Civil Engineering from the Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology (BUET).

Helena is a senior project officer for the agriculture and natural resources sector in the Asian Development Bank in Indonesia, starting in 2010. As part of the Southeast Asia agriculture and natural resources department team, she works on various projects for the climate mitigation and adaptation under both green and blue climate financing projects with the Government of Indonesia, as well as the climate related water disaster management projects. The ADB committed to ensuring at least 75% of the total number of its operations support climate action in order to increase its climate financing to its developing member countries, including Indonesia that has made its enhanced nationally determined contribution target in 2022. Before joining the ADB, she worked in a multinational consulting firm as an environmental specialist.

Clarisse Cruz is a lawyer and has spent the past 11 years working as an Environmental Analyst at Brazil’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change. She mostly works on public policy with a focus on climate and forests and international cooperation. Previously, Clarisse was the head of the Forestry Department focusing on REDD+, conservation, and controlling deforestation and was the coordinator for the climate change mitigation unit. Currently, she coordinates the unit on bioeconomy at the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change.