Independent Magazine - issue 12

Balancing environmental and socio-economic benefits in environmental conservation and climate change adaptation interventions

Environmental and socio-economic benefits must be balanced in environmental conservation and climate change adaptation projects. It is necessary to look beyond doing-no-harm towards doing good to the environment. Moreover, failure to ‘Do No Harm’ is likely to lead to low sustainability of benefits of IFAD interventions. Raymond Mubayiwa, Senior Evaluation Officer at the Independent Office of Evaluation of IFAD (IOE), stated these facts during a panel discussion titled ‘Balancing environmental and socio-economic benefits in environmental conservation and climate change adaptation interventions’. The discussion took place under the auspices of the Canadian Evaluation Society (CES) 2025 National Conference, on 14 May 2025.

The CES 2025 National Conference took take place from 12 to 16 May 2025, under the theme ‘Doing Good (In) Evaluation: The Basics and Beyond’. The event provided an accessible platform for exchanging best practices, exploring emerging trends, and gaining new insights into the continually evolving landscape of evaluation. In her panel discussion, Raymond was joined by fellow presenters Fabrizio Felloni, Deputy Director, Independent Evaluation Office, Global Environment Facility; Genta Konci, Evaluation Specialist, Independent Evaluation Unit, Green Climate Fund; and Anna Sting, Evaluator Team Leader, German Institute for Development Evaluation.

In their discussions, the panellists drew from recent evaluations exploring varying levels of integration between environmental, climate goals and community concerns. Topics addressed included the application of theories of change, assessing local level trade-off and win-win opportunities, inclusion of Indigenous perspectives, and the influence of national policies on local incentives.

Debates focused on the urgent and coordinated action that is needed to address climate change and biodiversity loss, through both mitigation and adaptation, while simultaneously protecting and restoring natural resources that underpin ecosystem stability, human well-being, and sustainable development.

Drawing on the findings of the Thematic Evaluation of IFAD’s support for smallholder farmers’ adaptation to climate change, Raymond explained that a strong subset of IFAD climate projects are performing at or beyond doing no harm. In the same context IOE’s Senior Evaluation Officer also discussed the findings of IFAD’s evaluation synthesis on community-driven development (CDD), which highlighted that the impact of CDD projects on NRM was positive at farm level and to a less extent at community level. As such there is need for community-development funds to be structured and designed to facilitate natural resource management investments at the more encompassing territorial or watershed level.

At the community level, mitigation, adaptation and environmental protection can yield significant co-benefits—such as improved livelihoods, health, gender equality, and social cohesion—but may also impose short-term costs, such as reduce access to natural resources such as forests, rangelands or fisheries. Therefore, fostering community incentives and support is crucial. A shift is underway from traditional conservationist models to approaches emphasizing co-benefits and community engagement, including with Indigenous Peoples communities.