MCC Evaluation Services for Indonesia Green Prosperity Project

Date

Nov-19

Contract

MCC Evaluation Services for Indonesia Green Prosperity Project

Integra was awarded a $500,000 contract to evaluate the impact and performance of the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s (MCC) Green Prosperity Project in Indonesia. The Green Prosperity Project was the largest component of MCC’s Compact Agreement in Indonesia, implemented from 2011 to 2018. It aimed to improve Indonesia’s abilities to manage its natural resources and increase access to alternative energy sources for Indonesia’s rural communities. The Project also represented MCC’s first foray into low emissions development through natural resource management.

Under the MCC Evaluation Services contract, Integra conducted three concurrent evaluations of Green Prosperity’s efforts to develop on-grid renewable energy sources, implement community-based forestry models, and rehabilitate peatlands that had previously been cleared for agricultural use. As part of the evaluation, Integra focused on the effectiveness and sustainability of the project’s natural resource management strategy (i.e. community-led forestry approaches, peatlands rewetting efforts) and grant facility, which was established as a financing scheme for on-grid renewable energy initiatives.

The Integra team collected data and designed the evaluation approach. In assessing the on-grid renewable energy grant facility, the team focused on the short-term and long-term impacts of facility investments, as well as assessing outputs and outcomes of these investments. Our peatlands team, also in the design phase, evaluated the success of peatland re-wetting efforts, which aim was to protect Indonesia’s biodiversity and provide valuable soil carbon to Indonesia’s rural communities. Meanwhile, our social forestry team designed an evaluability assessment of the community-based forestry interventions made under Green Prosperity, preparing MCC to evaluate the social forestry portfolio at a later date.

Once the evaluation designs were finalized, our teams deployed to the field to interview stakeholders, collect data, and assess the successes of the project and its activities. The end-result was a high quality, independent evaluation of MCC’s efforts to encourage lower emissions, better natural resource management, and sustainable practices among Indonesian environmental stakeholders. Through this evaluation, Integra determined the effectiveness of MCC’s approach to low emissions development and sustainable resource management, which informed a design that will potentially be replicated to improve the livelihoods of rural communities around the world.

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