The Synthesis Report 2018-2019 summarises all independent evaluations undertaken by the UNEP Evaluation Office in the 2018 - 2019 biennium.
During this period 61 evaluations of UNEP interventions that, together, encompass a resource envelope in excess of USD 265 million of expenditure, were completed.
The report provides brief highlights drawn from a selection of evaluations of high strategic importance including: evaluation of the Resource Efficiency Sub-programme, the joint UNEP / UNDP Poverty and Environment Initiative, the Clean Seas Campaign and an assessment of the Montevideo IV Programme on International Law Panel to name but a few.
The synthesis report assesses evaluation reports by evaluation criteria and rating, and it contains key observations on performance and areas for attention. (Note: S/HS refers to a 'Satisfactory' (S) or 'Highly Satisfactory' (HS) performance rating):
Positive performance
Strategic Relevance (98% S/HS ratings) remains the highest-performing criterion and is closely linked to the project design and approval process, during which alignment with strategic priorities is checked.
Financial Management (70% S/HS ratings) has moved from a lower-performing criterion to the higher performing group, in large part due to a re-definition of the criterion, which has seen strong performance ratings for communication between project and financial management staff members.
Effectiveness performance ratings (55% S/HS ratings) show the familiar pattern of stronger performance at output level (57% at S/HS levels), decreasing to lower ratings for likelihood of impact (46%). From a results perspective performance at Project Outcome level is a critical indicator, currently 50% of all projects achieve performance ratings at S/HS levels.
Overall Project Performance ratings (56% S/HS) are heavily influenced by the performance at outcome level and their sustainability. Currently just over half of those projects evaluated achieve a S/HS rating for overall project performance.
Among the Factors Affecting Performance the highest performing factors are critical for change to happen: Stakeholder participation and cooperation (68% S/HS); country ownership and driven-ness (68% S/HS) and quality of project management and supervision (67% S/HS).
Areas for attention
Among the Factors Affecting Performance the lower performing factors that would benefit from attention are: Preparation and readiness (55% S/HS), which is defined as the period between project approval and first disbursement, and communications and public awareness (54% S/HS).
Quality of project design (45% S/HS) is on the low side and should improve substantially in the coming years as evaluations in this biennium are currently assessing projects approved between 2011 and 2014.
Monitoring (41% S/HS) still shows low levels of performance in the monitoring of project implementation (as opposed to the design of, and budgeting for a monitoring plan and project reporting). Monitoring project implementation is at the heart of the potential for effective monitoring to improve project performance through adaptive management and course correction.
Efficiency (39% S/HS) remains a challenging criterion to assess as financial information is frequently not available at the disaggregated levels necessary to consider cost-effectiveness. Evaluations view no cost extensions as having a negative effect on efficiency.
Sustainability (36% S/HS) shows a lower than desired level. This is, in part, influenced by performance at the level of outcomes because, under the ‘sustainability’ criterion, evaluations assess the likelihood of the benefits derived from the achievement of outcomes being of an enduring nature.
Responsiveness to Human Rights and Gender scored the lowest performance (32% S/HS). This may show some improvement in the coming years as project proposal templates began incorporating this element from 2010 and institutional capacity development and take up should have followed thereafter. However, this is an area where stories of positive achievement in UNEP projects need to be shared to promote learning and improvement.
