Environmental Evaluation and Global Development Institutions

Geeta Batra is Chief Evaluation Officer and Deputy Director of the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), Washington, DC, USA. Geeta has 24 years of experience in international development across the World Bank, International Finance Corporation, and the Global Environment Facility. She spent eight years in advisory and lending operations, and 16 years in evaluation. Geeta has applied a spectrum of evaluation methods to enhance quality and use of evaluations to improve program design, development outcomes, and sustainability.Juha I. Uitto is Director of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Independent Evaluation Office (IEO). He has worked as an evaluator with the GEF and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for more than two decades focusing on evaluation at the nexus of environment and development. For five years, he served as Executive Coordinator of the UN Evaluation Group. He spent the 1990s as research manager at the United Nations University. Educated at the Universities of Helsinki and Lund, Juha holds a PhD in Social and Economic Geography. He has published widely on topics related to sustainable development, environmental hazards, and evaluation. He has held visiting positions with Rutgers University and Kyoto University.Osvaldo Feinstein is Professor at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid’s Master in the Evaluation of Programs and Public Policies and Member of the International Advisory Panel of UNDP’s Independent Evaluation Office. He is an editor and author of books and articles on evaluation, development, and economics. He is the former manager and adviser at the World Bank’s Evaluation Department and consultant with the IDB, AfDB, WBG, GEF, ILO, UNESCO, MOPAN, DFID, IDRC, ILPES, CEPAL, UNDP, IFAD, CGIAR, CLEAR-AA, AEVAL, BdF EIPA, and IEF. He has experience in Latin American and Caribbean countries, and in Asia and Africa, Eastern Europe, France, Italy, and Spain.

• 1. Introduction 2. Evaluation at the GEF 3. Evaluation and the replenishment process 4. Evaluation methods 5. Performance, effectiveness, and sustainability of GEF interventions 6. Toward transformational change 7. Boosting the benefits: Use of GEF IEO evaluations 8. Lessons from the GEF experience