Strategy Evaluation of Ford Foundation Program on Natural Resources and Climate Change

The Ford Foundation’s NRCC-I was one of three of the foundation’s international programmes. With the Ford Foundation’s reach into more globally recognised issues at the time, there was a need to revisit and rethink how strategies of international programmes, such as NRCC-I, were able to accommodate and facilitate intended change in multiple regions with a diversity of contexts.

The Ford Foundation asserted that the natural resources and climate change (NRCC) sector could contribute to the reduction of North–South and within-country inequalities by working globally to ensure that natural resource governance served the public interest and reflected the aspirations of rural, low-income, traditional, Afro-Descendant, and Indigenous communities. The strategy of the Ford NRCC-I programme focused on the reduction of inequalities related to the control, use, and transformation of forest resources and mineral and hydrocarbon resources. With work grounded in six regional offices – Mexico and Central America, Andean Region, Brazil, Western Africa, Southern Africa and Indonesia – and at the global level (e.g., engaging international fora), Ford’s programme sought to strengthen communities’ self-determination through expanding and protecting their rights over land and natural resources, to free prior and informed consent, and to share in the benefits that flowed from natural resources in their territories. The efforts supported by NRCC-I aimed to support public and private institutions that enhanced communities’ rights and bolster public and policy narratives that made the value of their rights common sense. 

Particularly for NRCC-I, the topics covered by the programme, which included but were not limited to natural resources management, climate change, just energy transitions, and equitable resource allocation, were highly topical both at the global level and locally in many regions in the world.

As stated in the Terms of Reference (ToR) for this evaluation, Dala Institute was to provide thought partnership support to the Ford Foundation to do the following during this evaluation:

• Explicate the NRCC-I programme’s underlying theory of change and assumptions
• In sum, and at the global and regional levels, assess how the strategy sought to respond to the challenges/problems articulated in the theory of change, what progress was made towards outcomes, and what Ford’s contribution was
• Generate lessons in order to strengthen and refine the theory of change and underlying assumptions to inform the next five-year cycle of strategic grantmaking