Evaluating Progress & Measuring Success
The objective of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves’ monitoring and evaluation (M&E) activities is to provide a credible and pragmatic framework to measure the outputs, intermediate outcomes, and long-term impacts that result from the sector’s activities. There is broad consensus across the sector that evidence of clean cookstove and fuels sales alone do not guarantee benefits. Rather, sales represent one aspect of the ‘results chain’ towards sustained adoption and benefits (see figure 1). As such, it is valuable to track the number of cookstoves sold and adopted as an important indicator of progress, without losing sight of the need to also assess outcomes and impacts through other approaches and measures.
The Alliance has developed an M&E framework for Phase I in order to measure progress and success towards the key milestone of 100 million households adopting clean and efficient stoves and fuels by 2020. This framework is aligned with the interim tiered performance standards for the sector initiated through the ISO International Workshop Agreement (IWA) in February 2012, and will enable the Alliance to track progress for all stoves and fuels while requiring minimum tiers for stoves to contribute towards the Alliance targets for efficient and clean. In parallel, the Alliance has been working to better define adoption metrics and measurement approaches, and to refine the exact indicator(s) for each IWA performance category.
The Alliance’s M&E strategy is roughly divided into four categories, covering the range from top-down to implementer based to participatory approaches, and incorporating qualitative as well as quantitative methods to assess a range of indicators spanning stove sales from dissemination to sustained adoption:
- National Results Reporting: The Alliance is partnering with the World Health Organization and the World Bank to ensure harmonized questions within influential top-down, routinely-collected national survey instruments (including Census, Demographic Health Surveys, UNICEF, etc)
- Annual Results Reporting:
- As the Alliance takes over lead responsibility for annual results reporting from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Partnership for Clean Indoor Air (PCIA), we are working closely to ensure that we can refine and further expand our results reporting framework to better enable our broader group of stakeholders to share their progress. The Alliance will launch its annual results reporting platform in March at the Clean Cooking Forum, with results to be released at the Alliance’s third year anniversary event in September 2012.
- For five years, Forest Trends’ Ecosystem Marketplace and Bloomberg New Energy Finance have published the State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets Report to shed light on trading volumes, credit prices, project types, locations, and the motivations of buyers in this market. This year, the Alliance is pleased to partner with Ecosystem Marketplace to obtain survey-based information on carbon offsets contracted from projects that reduce emissions from the distribution and use of clean cookstoves. The co-branded survey will be released around the end of January, with results expected towards the end of the summer.
- Measuring Progress in Priority Countries: The Alliance is developing M&E strategies tailored to Country Action Plans in each of its six phase I target countries: Bangladesh; China; Ghana; Kenya; Nigeria; and Uganda. A designated M&E point person will be appointed in each priority country to coordinate evaluation efforts. Country-specific indices of adoption will also be developed for each of these countries.
- Tools for Implementers: The Alliance is also developing a detailed implementer tool kit to facilitate participatory approaches to monitoring progress. This toolkit will include:
- Mobile and web-based tools for monitoring sales and dissemination of cookstoves and fuels; and
- Detailed survey instrument modules to assess adoption, severe burns, etc.
We look forward to receiving and compiling information on the exciting progress which has been made across the sector in 2012! For more information on the Alliance’s M&E efforts, please contact smehta@cleancookstoves.org.
*This framework will be re-evaluated at the end of Phase 1 in lightof new scientific evidence and sector capacity.