Evaluating the Implementation of State-Level Global Climate Change Programs

Abstract

Effective management of global climate change and its impacts requires dedicated subnational (i.e., state-level) responses within countries. To ensure that state-level programs effectively advance the goals of sustainable development, they must be evaluated by three criteria: compliance with the goals of higher authorities, efficacy, and credibility. This article offers some preliminary evaluation criteria for assessing these activities and assesses the need for their further refinement. The authors suggest how to operationalize these criteria to ensure that state-level efforts encompass the causes and consequences ofglobal climate change, and they prescribe who should undertake such policy evaluation. They conclude that good evaluation requires transparent, usable data on energy consumption and emissions broken down at the regional level; adoption of evaluation goals appropriate to a country's level of development that have the concurrence of subnational regions; and external evaluation by nongovernmental organizations, particularly scientists, to ensure independence and credibility.