Impact Evaluation of Finland supported Environmental and Natural Resources Projects in Zambia

The Ministry for Foreign Affairs commissioned an impact evaluation on environmental and natural resources projects in Zambia. The objective of the evaluation was to give an independent view on the impact and sustainability of the projects as well as to a general assessment on Finland’s support to environmental and natural resources sectors.

The evaluation included three projects that Finland supported between 2010–2019: Integrated Land Use Assessment phase 2 (ILUA II) – 2010-2017, Civil Society Environment Fund phase 2 (CSEF2) – 2015-2019 sekä Decentralised Forest and other Natural Resources Programme (DFONRMP)– Introduction project – 2015-2018.

The evaluation concluded that that all three projects have been successful in developing organizational capacity of their target beneficiary organizations and have contributed to an enabling environment that can contribute to long-term positive impact on the environment, forest resources in particular, as well as on the livelihoods of people that are depending on that environment. The work on enabling environment by DFONRMP in particular has already led to widespread impact through application of the community forestry legislation and model by other stakeholders and projects. Across the three projects, the mainstreaming of cross cutting objectives was tried with different levels of success. Coherence between the three projects was found to be good, whereas the opportunities for synergies between projects were not fully utilized.

The evaluation provides useful information and recommendations for the Ministry for Foreign Affairs as well as for the local actors and international donors active in environmental and natural resources sectors in Zambia.

Evaluation Report

Impact Evaluation of Finland supported Environmental and Natural Resources Projects in Zambia (Opens New Window) (pdf, English, 1,9 MB, 83 pages)