Evaluation of Danish Support for Climate Change Adaptation

In 2026, the Department for Evaluation, Learning and Quality (LEARNING), Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, will commission an evaluation of the Danish support to climate change adaptation 2019-2025, with special attention to Locally Led Adaptation (LLA) and equitable partnerships. The evaluation will mainly be formative and have a focus on interventions initiated under a sharply increased allocation for climate change adaptation within the Danish development assistance budget. The last evaluation of Danish Support for climate change adaptation was concluded in 2020, covering the period 2008-2018. Overall, it found that there was not sufficient focus on policy contexts and mainstreaming in the Danish support for Climate Change Adaptation (CCA), with CCA opportunities and challenges insufficiently understood and underestimated, in part due to low levels of capacity among partners and wavering levels of political support at country level. This weakened and complicated efforts to both mainstream climate change adaptation through ongoing development cooperation programmes and/or engage directly with climate adaptation specific projects. The recommendations of the 2020 evaluation holds a number of proposed measures, which together with the Danida management response provided a road map of intended actions to be initiated as follow-up to the evaluation. The realisation of these intensions will be assessed in the upcoming evaluation. Since 2018, Danish support to combat effects of climate change in developing countries has advanced. It has included the appointment in 2019 of a dedicated Danish Climate Ambassador, the long-term strategy for global climate efforts “A Green and Sustainable World”, launched by the Danish Government in October 2020, the establishment of Green Front-Line missions at selected Danish Embassies as well as the Department for Green Diplomacy and Climate (GDK, later KLIMA). In addition, the strategy for Danish Development assistance 2021-25, “The World We Share” (published in June 2021), had a strong focus on the fight for climate, nature and environment. The appointment of a Minister for Development Cooperation and Global Climate Policy in 2022 and the establishment of the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilities with an international department in the same year, also expressed political commitment to promote action against climate change. During 2019-2025, there has been significant increase in Danish climate financing for developing countries. Commitments for support for climate change adaptation alone increased to estimated more than DKK 3 billion in 2025 and were more than DKK 9 billion in the period 2019-2024. A major shift happened with the new Danish Government in 2022 and the decision to earmark 25% of the development assistance budget for climate, and of this 60% for climate change adaptation. It even increased further in the following years to 30% for climate, still with 60% allocated for adaptation. Given the relevance of the CCA agenda, and the significant developments in Danish support since 2018, it is found timely to revisit the CCA theme with an evaluation lens looking at Danish climate change adaptation portfolio in the period 2019-2025. The choices of modalities (e.g. multi or bilateral engagements, global funds mechanisms) and partners (intermediates, national governments, local communities) will be evaluated to assess the effectiveness and sustainability of the interventions supported. To capture support with transformative impacts, it will look into the design and success of mainstreaming climate adaption into societal processes, justified by the strong synergies between climate change adaptation investments and the development assistance agenda. The evaluation will have a special focus on LLA, equitable partnerships and building effective country systems for CCA financing and governance. Emphasis is expected to be on strategic decisions on national level (e.g. derived from the UNFCCC processes, national development plans and strategies, NDCs and NAPs) and will include the role of various implementing actors (on national, international and local levels) and modalities within financing climate adaption in LDCs. To this, the purpose is to identify and describe operational frameworks for implementing partnerships among key actors and stakeholders on CCA, not at least in Africa. The evaluation will also touch upon aspects of CCA implementation which challenge effectiveness and outcomes, not at least the risk for maladaptation and low efficiency and effectiveness of delivery mechanisms at local and end-user levels. The evaluation has the overall dual purpose of accountability and learning, but will be mainly formative and provide recommendations for future Danish support for climate change adaptation. The objectives of the evaluation are: (1) To provide an overview of the main trends, and an assessment of relevance and coherence in Danish support for climate change adaptation 2019-2025, taken departure in the available data in the Background Study made by INKA Consult; (2) To assess the effectiveness and efficiency of the Danish climate change adaptation support to a selected number of interventions 2019-2025, with special focus on partnerships, LLA and building effective country systems for CCA financing and governance; (3) To assess the contribution to resilience and transformative change of a small sample of previous interventions (before 2019); (4) On the basis of the lessons learned to prepare recommendations for future Danish support for climate change adaptation.