Climate action and development are inextricably linked. This link has been confirmed by a new independent evaluation that assesses and analyzes how climate finance programs can lead to broader social, economic, environmental, and market development impacts.
The report, “Evaluation of the Development Impacts from CIF’s Investments,” finds that although development impacts can generate derivative benefits from climate finance programs, these impacts are often not planned for, or understood, and hence not tracked in implementation.
The Climate Investment Funds (CIF) held a launch event that focused on how designing, planning, and tracking development impacts can lead to greater impact in climate finance. The event worked through the invaluable evidence that draws on CIF’s extensive investment portfolio and demonstrated how measurement and modeling can be used to assess high-priority development impacts to support more informed investment decision-making.
Watch the webinar:
Industrial Economics
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 the Evaluation and Learning (E&L) Initiative of the Climate Investment Funds (CIF). The E&L Initiative is at the forefront of making CIF's learning laboratory mandate a reality through learning that is evidence-based, timely, and relevant. Neha has over fifteen years of experience in climate, environment, and economic and social development, with deep expertise on evaluation methods, results measurements, and learning.
In the past, Neha worked at the Independent Evaluation Group of the World Bank on monitoring and evaluation capacity building. She has also worked on evaluative research and program design with organizations, including the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab and India Infrastructure Publishing.
Neha holds a Master’s degree in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School and a second Master’s degree in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Climate Investment Funds
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.
World Bank
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).
Asian Development Bank
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.
Brazil Ministry of Environment and Climate Change
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.